The best day of the football season, Championship Sunday, is here!
Again, I’ve provided some additional metrics and info along with our normal head-to-head comparisons based on team stats below.
Remember: Green = Good, Red = Bad.
Patriots vs. Broncos
Broncos Offense vs. Patriots Defense
It’s hard to predict exactly how the Broncos will approach this game on offense with a back-up quarterback (Jarrett Stidham) making his first start in 2 years. You would think Sean Payton would try to take some pressure off of him by running the ball. But…
The Broncos run game has been middle-of-the-pack this year (16th in yards per game, 15th in yards per attempt). They also only ran the ball 41.8% of the time during the regular season (22nd in the NFL).
Last week against the Bills’ bottom-5 run defense, they ran the ball just 10 times for 41 yards with their running backs (Bo Nix was the leading rusher with 29 yards on 12 carries).
On top of that, the Patriots have a very good run defense, ranking 6th in yards per game allowed this season.
In the playoffs, New England has held their opponents to just 135 rushing yards on 44 carries (just 3.07 yards per carry) across 2 games. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Mike Vrabel load up to stop the run and put everything on the right arm of Stidham.
The Patriots weren’t among the top teams in the league in terms of pass rush this season (24th in pressure % and 22nd in sacks). However, they’ve generated a ton of pressure in their two postseason games against the Chargers and Texans (Over 52% according to Pro Football Focus).
The Broncos’ offensive line is much better than the Texans’ or Chargers’, however. They allowed the fewest sacks in the NFL and were 8th in pressure % allowed according to Pro-Football-Reference (A part of that success was Bo Nix’s ability to scramble, however).
They’ll need to be ready for stunts in a way that the Texans and Chargers were not. Stunts are a huge part of what the Patriots like to do as a defense. In fact, they ranked 2nd in the NFL in stunt frequency this season according to Cody Alexander of MatchQuarters.
The Patriots relied on the blitz to some extent this season (10th in blitz frequency according to Pro-Football-Reference). But they’ve upped that frequency substantially in the playoffs so far, blitzing on over 45% of dropbacks in each game.
They’ve had success when blitzing too. Justin Herbert and C.J. Stroud combined to complete just 15 of 39 attempts vs. the blitz (38.5%), for 158 yards (4.05 yards per attempt), with 1 TD, 2 INTs, and a passer rating of 38.2. They were also pressured on 54.5% of blitzes for 3 sacks. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Patriots come after Stidham.
One way the Broncos could counter this pressure is with their screen game, where Sean Payton always has a few tricks up his sleeve. Denver was 3rd in screen frequency this season.