SANTA CLARA, Calif. - The Patriots’ quickest path to victory on Sunday may very well come down to the work of their defensive tackles.
They play with extension, they play with power, they play with quickness. They’ve got athleticism coming out of the earholes. And attitude? This group may lead the team in that regard.
“We all some killers,” Christian Barmore told me. “We take our emotions out in the game because we love how hard this is. We like some lions, man. We ready to hunt.”
“DGAF (editor: Don’t give a bleep),” Milton Williams added. “We just don’t care. We don’t care who you got or what you’re running.”
“We know how good we are. We know what we can do,” added Khyiris Tonga.
Mike Vrabel loves to use the word “intentionality,’ especially when it comes to the team’s player acquisition process. To him, it isn’t just about finding players who can fit the system the head coach envisioned; it's also about the personalities. This room has both.
How they got here is a different story. Barmore was a 2nd-round pick out of Alabama who would have easily gone in the first if there weren't questions about his maturity level. Williams played for Louisiana Tech, got picked in the third round, but was generally viewed as a rotational piece, not someone who would command $100 million in free agency.
But this goes well beyond that dynamic duo. The Patriots come at you in waves, although they’re doing it with other teams’ castoffs. Tonga is on his 4th team in 5 years. For Cory Durden, undrafted, it’s his 3rd in 3. Leonard Taylor got let go by the Jets after he also didn’t get selected. A year before, some draftniks believed Taylor was a first-round pick.
“We have a lot of guys that were thrown to the side or were told they’re not good enough, and the team went in another direction,” Williams said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that are just playing for each other … and dominate when we get a chance.”
“There's competition within our team, and there's competition against the guys we're playing,” noted Durden. “So you just never want it to be a drop off. And as a whole, we feel like we're the best D tackles in the league. We're the best overall D tackle room in the NFL. That's kind of our goal. We play with a chip on our shoulders. We want to show that every week.”
That’s truly come into focus as the season has gone on. Despite joking that Williams would play significantly more snaps than he did at his previous stop in Philadelphia, Vrabel and the defensive staff have managed reps, with only Barmore above 65%. Some of that has been injury-related. Williams missed five with a high-ankle sprain, while Tonga and rookie Joshua Farmer lost multiple games as well. But as Williams has admitted, that time off, combined with a manageable workload, has allowed him to feel fresher than he should this late in the season.
“That’s how you build a great defensive line,” Williams said. “Everyone staying engaged. Everyone contributing.”
“I think we just take pride in how we play,” added Tonga, acknowledging the belief that they are the top DL room in the NFL. “We really believe that. I mean, that's only two teams left...”
Perhaps the Patriots invested as much money and resources into the position because they sensed a league-wide shift, in part because the Eagles (with Williams a key cog) dominated a year ago. Or maybe that’s just where they found value in free agency and the draft. But consider this: of the four teams that played on Championship weekend, six of the top nine interior defensive linemen in terms of pressure rate were in those games. The Pats had two of them - Barmore (6th) and Williams (9th) - with a 44% pressure rate when that duo is on the field together (big number). The Seahawks also had two of the top nine (Leonard Williams and Byron Murphy).
“The trend does ping pong back and forth,” Pats interim DC Zak Kuhr told me. “Man, you've got to have great edges. Okay, now they can allocate resources to your edges. They can't do as much in the interior. Then they start to do that, and it's back to edges...
“But absolutely, when you have interior disruptors, that changes the game. We experienced that in Tennessee (Jeffery Simmons), you know, Dexter Lawrence (Kuhr was with the NYG last season). I mean, he's a game changer. But is that like where the league is going? You know, the league can always shift easily offensively, and now you've got to be able to adjust to that.”
“I don’t care what kind of quarterback you are, how talented you are,” Williams said. “If you’ve got pressure right in your face, there is really not too much you can do. We’ve seen it with the greatest. Tom Brady, and with what we did to Patrick Mahomes last year.”
Williams is so obviously the leader of this group, and in many ways the defense, despite not being a pregame speech kind of guy. But Barmore is the X-factor. He had one stretch in which he recorded exactly 1 QB hit over 5 games, and I asked Vrabel if they needed more from him (he said they did, as with all their good players). But Barmore has been at a higher, more disruptive level lately, coinciding with the Pats’ defense reaching a higher level.
“He’s a freak,” Tonga said. “Like for him to be able to bend like that, at his weight and his size...(shakes head). I mean, he's been doing it all year, and he's the guy who doesn't talk much. He just shows it on film. Really glad to have him on our side of the ball.”
“Man, love Barmore. to death, bro,” K’Lavon Chaisson said. “I think that's the key to this defense. The tenacity, the urgency, the aggression that he plays with. He doesn't get as much recognition as he should. He's holding down the run game and pass game. He's causing disruption. I think he's everything and more for this defense... He knows the dirty work he needs to do for this defense.”
“I do things for my team that they need me to do,” Barmore said when I apprised him of Chaisson’s comments. “I’m not the type of guy to chase plays. Whatever I got to do, even if I don’t like it, I do it for the team. I just want to win.”
In the playoffs, Barmore has eight QB pressures and a sack. That’s well behind Williams, but equally as important.
“Love having him as a running mate, “ Williams said. “It's been great. We challenge each other every day. We are competing every day, and we want the best for each other. We want to eventually be the best, so we stay on each other and push each other.”
“That’s my dawg,” Barmore said of Williams. “Every week, he tells me it’s on to us. Every week, I think we are doing that.”
The results back that, and all the Pats need is just one more game filled with disruption and anger and violence, and yes, great technique from this group, and this unlikely road to Santa Clara may end with a Lombardi Trophy in part earned on the backs of the big boys in the middle.