Patriots Loss To Eagles Illustrates Importance Of Special Teams - And How Great The Pats Have Been At It
By Matt Dolloff (@mattdolloff)
BOSTON (CBS) -- It may be stating the obvious to most fans that special teams are important to winning, but it often gets lost when analyzing every little detail of offensive and defensive football. That third phase of the game is as crucial as the others, and you don't have a great chance of winning if you are bad at it.
Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Patriots had an atrocious day on special teams and it was ultimately the deciding factor. It was also a reminder of just how great the Patriots under Bill Belichick have been at the unheralded third phase over the years.
It's ultra-rare to see the Patriots make the kind of mistakes they made on Sunday; New England is used to seeing Julian Edelman or Danny Amendola field every punt cleanly, Stephen Gostkowski drill every kick perfectly down the middle, and the punting unit to expertly pin the other team within its own 10 yard line. It's used to seeing Matthew Slater win the field position battle practically by myself, and for the Patriots to recover most onside kicks, especially the surprise ones.
Patriots Nation is not used to seeing muffed punts. It's not used to the team forgetting how to tackle when Darren Sproles has the ball. It's not used to the curious decision-making and weak execution on plays like Nate Ebner's drop kick that shift the momentum of games. It's not used to letting a blocker through on a punt, especially not when they're backed up against their own end zone.
The Patriots simply don't make those kinds of mistakes on special teams, and the loss showed just how wrong things can go when you don't execute properly in those situations. A missed tackle here, a missed blocking assignment there, and suddenly instead of making two routine stops you have a team scoring two special teams touchdowns and going up three scores on your home field. Lesser teams make those mistakes much more frequently, and it translates directly to losses.
Even the Patriots' recent history with tricky kicking plays has been strong. They recovered a surprise onside kick against the Colts in Week 6, and again versus the Redskins in Week 9. They have caught teams sleeping on special teams before, but Ebner's drop kick wasn't fooling anyone. The Eagles knew something was up on the sheer fact that Ebner was holding the ball and had enough time to adjust and react and foil the plans of the Patriots, who essentially had no chance at recovering it.
The Patriots' execution on special teams has been so impeccable over the years, it's shocking and jarring to see them make so many boneheaded mistakes and play as sloppily as they did against the Eagles on Sunday. That they rarely mess up in that phase of the game has long been one of the sneaky-huge reasons they are so hard to beat. When you barely ever have a sniff at a game-changing play on special teams, you're going to have a hard time beating anyone.
But when you do play as poorly as the Patriots did on Sunday, those special teams mistakes get magnified, whether fair or not. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick didn't have their best days either, but without the multiple disasters on special teams they may have still been able to grind out the win. They've done it so many times in the past, it's easy to forget how good they usually are in those situations.
Execution on special teams is essential to winning consistently in the NFL, and the Patriots' shockingly poor performance at it on Sunday was a painful reminder of that.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read more from Matt here. Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.