Patriots' high-speed offense proves to be the difference in playoff win

FOXBOROUGH — When Josh McDaniels and Tom Brady put their feet on the gas, there isn’t a team in the NFL that can keep up.

Just ask the Titans — in the first half of Saturday’s AFC divisional playoff game, the Patriots’ offense hit the turbo button at the end of the first quarter, leaving Tennessee in the dust and turning a close game into a blowout.



After getting bogged down throughout the first two offensive drives of the night, Brady and McDaniels made a conscious decision to speed the tempo. The Patriots then proceeded to click with three impressive drives to close out the first half where they ran Tennessee right out of the building. Those drives — only one of which took more than three minutes — turned a 7-7 tie into a 21-7 rout, and helped propel New England into the AFC title game for the seventh consecutive season.

“Tempo was good for us,” said Bill Belichick. “Josh, I thought, did a great job managing the game, calling the game, as he always does, and put the players in good positions repeatedly, and they made some great plays.

“Some plays are harder than others,” he added. “But we had some good throws, tough catches, good runs, tough blocks. And there were some plays that, as I said, he had good design on and called them at the right time and they were hit well.”

Brady worked the three series brilliantly, utilizing Dion Lewis (62 rushing yards, 79 receiving yards) and James White (one rushing touchdown, one receiving touchdown) in both the run and passing game. Meanwhile, Tennessee struggled to keep up, occasionally leaving guys wide open as the Patriots kept going faster and faster.

“They were doing a good job getting it down to the backs, slot receivers and just (making) high percentage throws,” said Tennessee coach Mike Mularkey. “I mean, you saw some of the plays that Brady made. Pretty tough to defend when he makes some throws like that.”

In all, the three first-half scoring drives featured 29 plays (eight in no-huddle) for 212 yards, an average of 7.3 yards from scrimmage per play.

“We had (the Titans) misaligned a few times (and) had some easy throws where we had some guys uncovered,” said Brady, who ended up going 35-for-53 for 337 yards with three touchdowns and no picks. “But that’s a good way to kind of keep the pressure on the defense. There’s a lot of ways to do it. I think that’s the great advantage of playing at home – communication is really good. Ultimately, our guys made a lot of great plays, executed really well, so many great catches, great blocks. It was just a great team win.”

“We started pushing the pace, and that really helped us,” said Lewis. “The first two drives, we started slow, but we really picked it up after that.”

On their first scoring drive of the night, Lewis accounted for 56 of the 73 yards, a sequence where he had pickups of 31 and 14 yards. The 31-yarder was close to being a 50-yard touchdown pass, but Lewis was ruled down 19 yards shy of the end zone.

“I didn’t hear a whistle, so I got up and kept running,” Lewis said of the play, a neatly executed screen pass that nearly ended up in the end zone. “I’ll play (until) I hear the whistle, no matter what.”

No matter — the Patriots would punch it in a few plays later on a 5-yard shovel pass to White for his first touchdown of the night. That tied the game at seven with 13:24 left in the second quarter.

“You see them struggling to get the calls and line up and stuff. It just happens sometimes when offense are moving faster,” White said of the impact that fast football can have on an opposing defense. “I think it wore them down a little but. It’s tough for defenses to adjust that fast when we’re moving that fast, to get everybody lined up and stuff.”

The second drive came after a three-and-out on the part of the Titans, one that accelerated by an offensive pass interference call on Tennessee receiver Eric Decker. Following the Titans’ punt, the Patriots went no huddle on four plays of what turned out to be a six-play drive that took a tidy 1:56 and ended with White’s second touchdown of the night, a six-yard romp around left end to make it 14-7 with 9:27 left in the half.

Following a big penalty on the Titans that allowed the Patriots to keep their next drive alive, Brady and the New England offense went back to work. This one took a little longer — 91 yards and 5:18 — but the results were the same. Four of the 16 plays on that drive came out of the no huddle, a series that was capped off by a 4-yard pass from Brady to Chris Hogan where the receiver gleefully flung the ball into the end zone.

Three straight drives, three straight rapid-fire touchdowns for the Patriots. And just as quickly as they had arrived, the Titans were being ushered right out of the postseason.

“We just got to push the tempo, make (the defense) communicate and then make plays from there,” said Lewis. “At the same time, we still have to execute. We can’t just go fast and not execute, so I think we did a good job (tonight) at executing when we were going fast.”