Patriots dominate market with a bunch of free-lancers

FOXBOROUGH -- Remember when “Do Your Job” was a thing?

Bill Belichick has simply spat in the face of the mantra that was so booming back in February of 2017. The call that every high school coach from Augusta to Woonsocket has exhausted on Friday nights has now gone the way of the wishbone.

“Do Your Job” is that old T-Shirt you used to check your oil on Sunday morning before heading into the rain here at Gillette Stadium for the eighth straight Belichick clinic on attacking defense, the 27-10 undressing of Baker Mayfield and the rudderless Cleveland Browns.

As you click onto to your favorite defensive stats packs this Monday, the Patriots own every stat category that matters, first in points/game (7.6), yards/play (4.1), yards/pass (5.1), third-down percentage (16), forced fumbles (14) and interceptions (19 including Lawrence Guy’s artistry on Sunday).

This is not a product of “Do Your Job” or the “Patriot Way.”

Belichick has turned these guys loose. Once scorned and banished to football Siberia (Cleveland) for, gulp, freelancing too much in his first Patriots go-round, Jamie Collins has captured “favorite son” status.

Hey Jamie, you pound out 12 solo tackles with 1.5 sacks in an afternoon, and it’s all good if you’d like to have your own personal pose-down, a la Arnold Schwarzenegger, circa 1980.

You don’t just rip off 12 solos by doing your job. You’re balling, and Collins is one of 11 roaming and destroying out there.

The defense’s personality is refreshing, in spite of this totally mundane “Boogeymen” thing.

“Those plays come out of great effort,” said  the aforementioned Guy, who certainly wasn’t two-gapping when he penetrated into the backfield, read the pulling tackle, closed down like he’s supposed to and took Mayfield’s pathetic push pass right between the 9 and the 3 on his chest.

Yes, he was well-coached both earlier in the week in pre-snap. But Guy was free-lancing on that play, allowed brilliantly by Belichick to do so.

"That's just one of those plays where you play every down hard and stuff like that happens. It was a great defensive play,” he said.

One of the great underplayed stories on this defense is the impact of Chase Winovich, the rookie who now has 4.5 sacks through the first half season.

Belichick took this asset and realized, if he tries to discipline Winovich, force responsibilities on him that don’t suit his 6-foot-3, 250-pound frame, he’d be shackling the kid.

Instead, the third-round pick out of Michigan, who played 16 snaps on Sunday, is allowed to roam and hunt.

The proof is in the results.

"You just have to win your own one on one matchup,” said Adam Butler, another of those flourishing with his two sacks on Sunday. “Guys won when they were supposed to, guys got penetration and it was effective."

It’s a common occurrence for the Patriots, who are now a whopping plus-17 in turnover differential at the midpoint of the season, yes tops in the NFL there, too.

This is no coincidence.

“We want to be aggressive on defense. That's just kind of our mentality. It's worked for us so far,” said linebacker Dont’a Hightower. “Obviously, there's plays that we've given up and corrections and stuff, but that's part of football.”

The mistakes made now are aggressive mistakes, and they are few and far between, a point that can be attested by the four TDs allowed by the defense being equal to the four they’ve scored, including Hightower’s scoop and score on Sunday.

That TD was set up by another guy attacking and doing more than his job. Linebacker Kyle Van Noy charged low, obliterated the lead block, sending that lineman’s cleat skyward – actually kicking the ball out of Nick Chubb’s hands.

Technically, was it by the book? Certainly not. There was little thought to leverage or edge-setting. It was Van Noy making a monster football play that put the Patriots in charge early, 10-0.

“The turnovers and our ability to capitalize on those was really good and kind of the difference really,” said Belichick, whose manipulation of CBS coverage, coaxing the network to show multiple tri-screen shots of himself, Steve Belichick and Jerod Mayo to add a “who’s running this defense” theme to the mix did not go unnoticed on Sunday.

“A great play by (Dont'a) Hightower coming out on the strip fumble and [Kyle] Van Noy played that play well, so it was good team defense. It's good to be 8-0.”