Bedard: Brian Flores has his coming out party as Patriots defense matched Rodgers' wits

FOXBOROUGH — Better later than never.

The Patriots defense finally had its coming out party in Sunday night's 31-17 victory over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers.

Actually, let's be a little more specific.

Brian Flores, the de facto defensive coordinator, had his coming out party as chief of the Patriots' defense, thanks to his players' largely flawless execution against the most dangerous quarterback in the league.

"To be honest, Coach Flo, he gets us prepared for the game," Elandon Roberts told BostonSportsJournal.com. "Everybody’s got a job to do. His job is to get us prepared for the game. What you see out there, what you see out of us, it’s the spitting image of him. He’s going to put us the in the best position and we're going to try to perform at the best of our ability because we know he knows what he's doing. He did a great job this week, as always."

Make no mistake, what the Patriots did against the Packers was almost a complete departure as far as
coverage from what they've shown to this point in the season — at least it appeared to be, which was the goal via disguise.

In the aftermath of the Chiefs game, we wrote why the Patriots would be hard-pressed to have that type of suffocating, three-and-out defense most fans crave — especially against athletic quarterbacks. You can read the explanation, but most of it has to do with Bill Belichick's desire to leave one or two safeties deep to prevent the big plays.

Well, they almost completely junked that against Rodgers. The safeties were much more involved in the every-down defense. Even it was just a disguise, that made a big difference.

Take these looks on two third downs — the first of the game, and then in the fourth when the Patriots were trying to prevent a Packers' comeback.





Notice how all 11 Patriots defenders are within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage (in this first picture). With this scheme, literally, any Patriots player could bring pressure. That forces, by rule, the Packers' backs and receivers to adjust their routes and assignments.

Even in the second picture, the New England safeties are much closer to the line than they would normally be.

"You try to make them adjust and force communication," said Devin McCourty. "You saw us all get up there, trying to disguise. (Rodgers) checks, he gets people in (to block), and then we’ve got people covering for longer than we really want to.

"It was a real mental game. It was a tough, physical game trying to cover those guys, but it’s always a back and forth, like a chess match. We’re doing something else but we’re trying to make everything look the same. It was tough. It was a battle against them trying to do that each snap. It was hard."

When you're taking on a quarterback as good and as cerebral as Rodgers, the defense is going to need all the help it can get in preparation.

They got a little help from their own in-house quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Brian Hoyer, who aren't too shabby with head games in their own right.

"I think the cool thing about this week was the couple of snaps that we got against Tom and all of the snaps that we got against Hoyer ... both of those guys are very cerebral at reading coverage and how we were disguising," said McCourty. "Hoyer would come up to us with Tom and be like, ‘That’s good, do it this way,’ and we felt that tonight.

"Some of the disguise looks that we were trying to make it tough for Aaron, we knew that would be clutch. He still had a couple of throws where he put the ball where you just couldn’t get it. ... When you go against the greats, it’s hard to be perfect. But you got to be close if you want to have a chance to win."

The results spoke for themselves. Rodgers was held to a completion percentage of 55.8, 6.02 yards per attempt and a passer rating of 89.2. That's a pretty good day at the office.

Obviously, Belichick has a great deal of influence on the gameplan. But the players were universal in their praise of the role that Flores played in the preparation this week.

"He has a big influence every week," said Dont'a Hightower. "He comes up with the gameplan, obviously Bill has a lot to do with that, but this week (Flores) handled a lot of things trying to give Aaron a few different looks that he hasn’t seen yet and he really harped on that all week. We worked on that all week and I think it partially gave Aaron (some trouble) but he might have caught on eventually — he’s a good quarterback. I think it gave him a few different looks he hasn’t seen before."

Said Kyle Van Noy of Flores: "Great coach, put a good gameplan together and we executed it. Kudos to him and Bill for getting us in the right spot and playing fast. .. Anytime you have a guy like Flo, he’s aggressive and that's how he is as a person. It’s cool to see him have success because he deserves it. He works hard, has a great family, and I’m happy for him."

Let's be honest — and the Patriots players certainly were — Rodgers had his fair share of plays against the Patriots as well. New England tried to bait Rodgers into an interception — similar to the one McCourty had for a touchdown in the previous game against Buffalo — on the play where Jimmy Graham scored to tie the game 17-17 early in the third quarter. Duron Harmon was going to jump pass, but Rodgers sniffed it out, waited a beat, and then burned Harmon and Patrick Chung for a touchdown.

https://twitter.com/packers/status/1059283425360637952

And even after holding the Bills and Packers to a combined 23 points, the Patriots are still on pace (359) to allow the most points ever under Belichick (348, '02) and third-most all-time in franchise history.

But on Sunday night, the Patriots signaled that, if needed, they can scheme and disguise against the best the NFL has to offer and win a game where the offense struggled to produce much without the use of tempo or trick plays.

That, is definitely a great sign.

"We’re rolling. You can say that, I guess," said Hightower. "It really comes down to executing on game day. They always have a really good gameplan. We did a great job today with the couple adjustments that we made. It’s definitely starting to be more fluid now. Hopefully, we can start growing and evolving in that direction."