Grading the 2019 Patriots: Patriots were better overall, but tilted too much to the defense; Brady improved

Before an NFL team turns the page on the previous season and moves forward to the next, they put the team and their players under a microscope to see what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to be changed/altered to make progress in 2020.

Obviously, we have no idea what the Patriots’ internal grading looks like, and we don’t anticipate Bill Belichick opening up his grade book to the public anytime soon. So, we’re left to do our homework with some assistance from people who have knowledge of how the Patriots view things.

So we’ll start our dissection (which is a homage to my mentor, Bob McGinn) with an overview of the team and positions, and then we’ll move onto individual player grades/assessments. Finally, we’ll conclude with our imitated but never duplicated offseason depth chart coded for performance and contract status, and with a comprehensive analysis of team needs headed into the ’20 offseason.

Here's the 2018 version.

Part I: Grading the 2019 Patriots: Patriots were better overall, but tilted too much to the defense; Brady improved
Part II — Team grades for passing offense, rushing offense.
Part III — Team grades for passing defense, rushing defense, special teams.
Part IV — Team grades for personnel moves, coaching and overall.
Part V—Individual offensive grades.
Now: Part VI—Individual defensive grades.

And with that, let's get started...

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The 2019 Patriots season was unlike any other. They started 8-0 against a soft schedule and then finished 4-5 to have their season end in wild-card weekend for the first time in a decade.

The biggest takeaway from the 2019 Patriots? They were better this season than last season over the course of 17 games, but they were way too defensive-heavy. In the end, they would have been better off being less talented on defense and helping the offense a bit more.

The positional group with the largest drop from 2018 probably won't surprise you, and will explain what's been going on the last two seasons.

And Tom Brady was indeed better this year than he was a season ago.

Let's start off with the '19 grades on a per-game basis. Please note that due to the averages and the fact that I don't give out many 5.0s each week (I'm a tough grader; might need to loosen those up a little), the grading should roughly be viewed as:

Coming next: Team grades in eight categories.

A: 5.0-3.2
B: 3.1-2.75
C: 2.74-2.25
D: 2.24-2
F: Below 2

From best to worst, here are the rankings for each individual unit, with average points.

Defensive line: 3.94 (3.92 last season)
Running back: 3.56 (3.34)
Linebackers: 3.50 (3.24)
Quarterback: 3.38 (3.13)
Defensive backs: 3.35 (3.08)
Offensive line: 3.09 (3.47)
Receivers/tight ends: 2.74 (3.16)

After never being a strength dating back to 2016, this was the second-straight season where the defense was the overall backbone of this team over the course of 17 games. The offense posted a 3.19 average; defense 3.6. Overall, the Patriots were a 3.49 — which was a little bit of a jump from last season (3.29 was their normal team area) — when they won the Super Bowl. Sort of shows how strong the defense was over the course of the entire season. And it illustrates how the team wasn't as balanced as it has been in the past. The Patriots became too defensive-heavy and weren't good enough on offense.

Here's a look at the grade progression from 2016-19.

[table id=413 /]

Ranking the units from most improved to least improved:

Defensive backs: +0.27 (+0.63 last season)

Yes, it's a little bit of a surprise that this unit graded out far and away the best on the team — I would attribute it to me not giving them much credit in the first eight games of the season when the pass rush was great and the opposing quarterbacks terrible — but it still took another big step this season. When you combine the improvement over the past two seasons, you can really appreciate the smart work BillBelichick and NickCaserio have done with this group — especially the addition of StephonGilmore.

This makes sense because players like Jonathan Jones and JC Jackson took another step, and even players like Devin McCourty and Duron Harmon were improved.

Linebackers: +0.26 (+0.42 last season)

This position and the defensive line are hard to compare from one year to the next because the Patriots basically switched schemes and went to more of a 3-4 hybrid instead of a 4-3. For example, Kyle Van Noy played more linebacker last season but this year he was on the line. So there were really only two linebackers and there wasn't a whole lot of heavy lifting with a very good line and a great secondary. But Dont'a Hightower being more healthy this season — he played 15 games the past two years but in 2018 he was limping around — and impactfully made all the difference. He looked five years younger compared to last season.

Quarterbacks: +0.22 (-0.60 last season)

I'm glad it came out this way — and this is why I go through all this, to take as much bias out as possible and view the entire season the same way — because this backs up what I thought: that Brady was better this season than he was last year, and it coincides with the drop off in his weapons.

Running backs: +0.22 (-0.29 last season)

This was the big shocker on the surface to me. How could the running backs be better this year considering what they did at the end of last season? Well, a couple of things and it does make some sense. The first is I put much of the success/failure running the ball on the line, though the backs didn't get as much credit in '18 and they didn't get blamed as much for '19. Also, if you remember, the Patriots had a ton of injury problems at running back for much of the '18 season. This year they were basically fully healthy the entire time.

Defensive line: +0.02 (+0.43 last season)

This was basically a unit topping out. They were great the year before with Trey Flowers, and they were great again (with a different scheme) this past year.

Offensive line: -0.38 (+0.39 last season)

This seems accurate. The line took a big leap last year with Trent Brown and the other four spots staying the same, and then regressed with Isaiah Wynn's injury/Marshall Newhouse, David Andrews being sidelined, and regression from Shaq Mason and Marcus Cannon.

Receivers/tight ends: -0.42 (-0.31 last season)

This group has slid completely off the map over the past two seasons. In 2017, the Patriots had BrandinCooks and All-Pro Rob Gronkowski. For 2018, they didn't replace Cooks and Gronkowski regressed, and then this season Gronkowski retired and the team basically didn't do anything at the position, Edelman had so many injuries it was like he did a tour of duty in the armed forces, and nothing emerged on the outside for the second-straight season. We've reached the bottom of the barrel in both spots.

Not hard to see why each group rose or fell in '19.

Ranking the five best and worst overall team performances

Interesting that four of the five games were in the first six weeks of the season. And the Patriots had four games over 4.0 last season. Just two this year.

This Patriots team was very consistent — not a ton of highs, and very few lows. In 2018, they had three games under 2 — none this season — and then took off late.

RANKING THE STUDS AND DUDS

Here are the 3 up and 3 down rankings for the 2019 season by game:

By using a point system (3-2-1 from 1 up/down to 3rd up/down), we can get a better sense of a player's value over the course of the season (but players who had one or two splash games, like Rex Burkhead and Jakobi Meyers, do kind of skew it a bit. So it's not foolproof or anything):

There were some surprises.

I think on a down-to-down basis and how much he was asked to do on every down, Kyle Van Noy truly was the best player on the team all season. Stephon Gilmore was probably most valuable, but there are many plays he doesn't factor into. Van Noy has to do his job on every single play, and he did it well.

Joe Thuney absolutely earned his No. 2 ranking and I think this was all largely accurate outside of Gilmore, but that's because he didn't need to impact every game (especially in the first eight weeks).

Tom Brady had a bounce-back year, going from 10th to sixth.

Mason was sixth a season ago and dropped to 16th.