Bill Belichick and his coaches will spend this week convincing Patriots players that the Texans team headed to Gillette Stadium for Saturday night’s AFC divisional playoff game is a far cry from the Houston squad that New England shut out 27-0 back in Week 3.
That Thursday night affair saw rookie and third-string quarterback Jacoby Brissett lead the home team to an impressive, three-phase victory over Bill O’Brien’s overmatched visitor.
But with Houston having dispatched the Oakland Raiders 27-17 in an AFC wild-card game last Saturday, the Texans have earned a return trip to Foxborough with the season on the line.
The Patriots, a team once again led by Tom Brady, have already been installed as a 16-point favorite. But neither the point-spread nor the early-season shutout will be a focal point for New England’s preparations this week.
“I think we all evolve as the season goes on. Playing a game that early in the season, I mean, there are some things you learn from it, but honestly, they’ve improved in a lot of different areas,” Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said.
Houston finished the regular season with the NFL’s top-ranked defense based on yards. The group, led by first-time Pro Bowler Jadeveon Clowney and an impressive corps of linebackers in Benardrick McKinney, Brian Cushing and Whitney Mercilus, gave up the fewest first downs in the league, was 11th in third downs and points allowed and tied with the Patriots for eighth in red zone defense.
“This is a defense that doesn’t give you anything easy,” McDaniels continued. “You’re going to have to execute a lot of plays to drive the ball and get points. They make you earn everything you get — first down, second down, third down, red zone, short yardage, very few big plays allowed. They’re physical, they’re aggressive.”
“We’re going to need a great week of preparation. It’s going to be a big challenge for us. They’ve already won a playoff game. They should have a lot of confidence, deservingly so, based on the way they’ve played.”
Defensively New England will likely face Brock Osweiler, the once-again Texans quarterback, and a Houston attack that finished the regular season 29th in total offense and tied for 28th in points scored. But, coordinator Matt Patricia is clearly intent on taking nothing for granted.
“Coach (Bill) O’Brien and George Godsey, the offensive coordinator, are two guys that I have the most respect for in the entire league. These guys work extremely hard to get their team ready to go and prepare,” Patricia said. “I’ll say one of the other differences — there’s a little bit of tempo with the offense now. There’s going to be some at the line of scrimmage offense that they try to run and try to catch the defense in a particular look, which obviously gives you a lot of problems in pace and tempo and snap counts and all those different things too, so it’s a huge challenge.”
Clearly both teams are different heading into the second round of the postseason than the ones that did battle in September.
Unfortunately for Houston, New England is significantly better at this point. First and foremost, Brady is back under center. He’s developed maybe his deepest, most diverse corps of targets in years. And the Patriots’ stout, opportunistic defense has made huge strides over the second half of the season.
Whether you base it on a Week 3 beatdown or where the teams have come since that point, New England is a heavy favorite to open another potential Super Bowl run. But the guys drawing up the game plans on both sides of the ball will be taking nothing for granted, a message they’ll be instilling (brainwashing?) into their players all week.
“I think that really honestly with Houston because it was so long ago in the season and I think our team, their team is — I don’t want to say changed but it has changed. The situations have changed,” Patricia concluded. “They’re obviously coming in here coming off a big win this past weekend, a lot of energy, a lot of confidence so I would say we just try to attack it from the standpoint of, ‘Hey, this is this week’s game and it’s not the same as the last time we played them,’ if that makes any sense, and it’s just a situation where you try to attack them fresh.”
“We’re going to focus on today’s meetings, tomorrow’s practices, those types of things that will help us get better this week and try to go out there and play our best football of the season on Saturday night.”
Even if it may not take nearly that much to take care of business against a Texans squad that, at least on paper, doesn’t appear close to being ready to upset the Patriots at Gillette in January.
Based on what Brady has been saying, though, the players are already falling in line with the company line of thought this week.
“I think this is a day-to-day league,” Brady said in his weekly Monday morning radio interview on WEEI. “It really doesn’t matter last time we played them or last year because things change so much with the game and a game plan and players. … You put together the process and the winning formula and you need to go out and execute it. If you don’t execute it, you lose.”