FOXBOROUGH - The Patriots have faced some damn good defenses this season. Cleveland and Atlanta immediately jump to mind, but they also caught the Ravens when they were in peak form, and Drake Maye had to go nuclear in the final quarter to erase an 11-point deficit.
That Zach Orr defense, while not a 1-for-1 carbon copy of the Chargers defense, does come from the same tree as the one Maye and company will see on Sunday night at Gillette. LA defensive coordinator Jesse Minter blossomed as an assistant in Baltimore under John Harbaugh before taking what he had learned to the University of Michigan to coach for the ‘other’ Harbaugh, Jim. When Jim left Ann Arbor for Los Angeles, he took Minter with him. That may have been his best decision. Minter now oversees one of the league's most creative and effective units.
Minter’s core tenets - as described by the man himself - are communication, effort, tackling, ball disruption, and block destruction. He wants the scheme to matter - they are a four-man front in base and play a lot of quarters coverage behind - but also hammers down on the fundamentals. The Chargers' defense finished 6th in total yards allowed and 9th in points against. The nerd numbers back that up (mostly). LA is 10th in overall DVOA (7th in weighted DVOA), 10th against the pass (further broken down into 13th vs #1 WRs, 3rd against #2s, second against #3s, and 25th against TEs) and 18th (!) against the run.
“They are statistically excellent in every category across the front defensively,” Mike Vrabel said. “They don't just stop the run well ... they're good on third down. They're good on short yardage, excellent in the red zone.”
“You've got to be physical. You know? I mean, the only answer to physicality is physicality,” Stefon Diggs told us on Wednesday. “They fly around. They swarm to the ball. It's kind of like an