Saying the Patriots won Sunday’s game against the Jets on a punt return is like saying the sinking of a few submarines clinched a World War for the good guys (even though punt returns are awesome and almost never happen anymore). Sure, there was a definitive moment—a crossing of the plane which triggered a technical end to the matchup—but crediting that moment without recognizing the breadth and scope of the battle plan misses so much.
There are good enough reasons to have slept on Bill Belichick this year. The Patriots are still a middle-of-the-road football team. He employs the Springfield Police Department to design and call his offensive plays. He had the chance to go full-on Zappe Mode and he balked, depriving us of the onomatopoeia quarterback we had always dreamed of.
But as we speak, the Patriots have overtaken the Broncos as the best defense in football. Take your pick of telling advanced statistics, which come from even before holding the Jets without a touchdown Sunday: Patriots opponents are averaging 0.116 points per snap below league average, the lowest mark in the league, per Ben Baldwin’s open-source website. A mere 39.6% of passing plays against the Patriots result in what we should determine a “successful” down, via that same site. They are No. 1 in Football Outsiders’s DVOA rankings. Matthew Judon leads the league in sacks and makes about $15 million less than the highest-paid edge rusher in the NFL.
