Taking a closer look at four key Patriots plays from Monday's blowout loss to the Bills, including:
- Terez Hall and Akeem Spence ending up in the wrong gap on an easy rushing TD;
- Adrian Phillips and Josh Uche not on the same page on an easy passing TD;
- Cam Newton choosing a passing target unwisely;
- No pass rush and Kyle Dugger's lack of experience lead to Stefon Diggs' 50-yard score.
Let's break down the plays with video analysis:
2ND & 5 AT NE 5 (14:56) (Shotgun) Z.Moss up the middle for 5 yards, TOUCHDOWN.
This is Buffalo's initial score, and this is a straight up run fit bust ... by somebody, either nose tackle Akeem Spence or linebacker Terez Hall.
At the snap, Deatrich Wise is two-gapping to the right in the B and C gap, while Spence is head up on the center. Hall appears to be aligned to take the A gap to their left of the center.
After the snap, both Spence and Hall wind up in the A gap to their right, and no one is in the A gap to the left, leading to a very easy rushing touchdown. So somebody was wrong.
What you didn't see on the telecast was that Hall spent a considerable amount of time basically telling Spence that he screwed up, and I can see why he said that.
Hall takes off to the right A gap right at the snap. To me, this is a called run blitz. If it was regular defense, Hall just would have shuffled his feet, read a key and then went into his gap.
Hall obviously thought Spence was going to take the left A gap and Hall would take the right A gap and hope some movement up front would stop the rush.
That didn't happen due to a communication error, and the Bills are up 10-3.
