Week 14 Patriots’ offensive and defensive statistics from PFF

Our friends at ProFootballFocus.com were kind enough to share their quick stats from Sunday’s game. Make sure you check out their PFF Edge and PFF Elite products to give you insight, and an edge with your fantasy team. The PFF guys really know the game, so make sure you follow them at @PFF.

Week 15 Patriots Offensive Stats:

Tight end Rob Gronkowski had a game for the ages as he became the 14th player since 2006 to earn a PFF grade of 99.9 in a single game, the highest grade attainable by a player. Gronkowski caught nine of his ten catchable targets for 168 receiving yards and averaged 4.94 yards per route run, the highest of any tight end in Week 15. The Patriots tight end leads all players at his position by a significant margin with 2.56 yards per route run on the season, which would rank him third among wide receivers behind only Julio Jones and Antonio Brown.

QB Tom Brady was once again extremely accurate on his deep passes as he completed five of his seven passes for 148 yards (the most among all quarterbacks in Week 15) on attempts traveling at least 20 yards from the line of scrimmage. Brady leads all quarterbacks with 32 such completions on the season; however, he is tied for just ninth in the NFL with only 5 touchdowns on deep passes.

Left guard Joe Thuney’s struggles continued as he was responsible for 5 of the 11 pressures given up by the Patriots offensive line since he allowed one sack and four quarterback hurries. Thuney has now allowed nine total pressures (two sacks and seven quarterback hurries) in the last two games, which is more than what he had allowed in the previous seven games combined.

Continuing his late-season surge, left tackle Nate Solder had one of the best performances against the Patriots players and earned a PFF overall grade of 83.7. Solder was especially efficient in pass blocking as he did not allow a single pressure on 40 pass blocking snaps. New England’s left tackle kept Tom Brady clean for an entire game for just the second time this season.

Running back Dion Lewis had to play a bigger role with the injury of Rex Burkhead, but he did not disappoint once again. Lewis made the best of his runs as he averaged 3.31 yards after contact and broke three tackles on 13 runs. Lewis ranks sixth in the NFL with 35 broken tackles on rushing attempts; however, he’s the only running back who broke more than 30 tackles, but had less than 150 carries.

Week 15 Patriots Defensive Stats:

The Patriots struggled with tackling all afternoon as they missed 11 tackles, which equals 16.4 percent of their tackle attempts. As a result, the Patriots have the fourth highest missed tackle rate among teams that have played before Sunday night. Coming into the game, the Patriots had missed 12.8 percent of their tackle attempts, which was the 16th lowest rate in the NFL.

New England needed help rushing the passer and they got it with the return of edge defender Trey Flowers who led the Patriots with six total pressures (one sack, two hits, three hurries) on 29 pass rushing snaps. This continued Flowers’ streak of recording at least two pressures in every single game this season while he also knocked down the opposing quarterback (either by a hit or a sack) in every game he has played this season.

The Patriots tried rotating players to help the pass rush as they had six different defenders rush the passer at least 15 times. As a result, there were eight different New England defenders who picked up at least one pressure against Pittsburgh.

Even though the Patriots got pressure five of the nine times when they blitzed Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger, overall it did not pay off. Roethlisberger completed all seven of his pass attempts for 80 yards and a touchdown when blitzed and had a passer rating of 153.9 on these attempts.

Pittsburgh took advantage of edge defender Trey Flowers dropping into coverage on a couple occasions. Flowers was targeted at a career-high three times and allowed three receptions – all to Le’Veon Bell – for 30 yards against the Steelers. However, these were the only three snaps when Flowers dropped into coverage all game.