Patriots inside the numbers: 14 key statistics that tell the team's story at the bye

3 December 2024Last Update :
Patriots inside the numbers: 14 key statistics that tell the team's story at the bye

The New England Patriots spent Monday picking up the pieces from another loss in a season that feels increasingly … well … lost. After watching the Indianapolis Colts march down the field over 19 plays to score and win Sunday’s game, the Patriots enter their bye week with a 3-10 record, hoping to see an improvement over the last four games (all of which are against good teams).

“Obviously, if you take away that last drive, we’re all feeling a little bit better about the game,” coach Jerod Mayo said.

Sure, technically, that might be true. But that’s a pretty important thing to take away.

Instead of nitpicking the minutia of why the Patriots lost Sunday, let’s look at the big picture. Thirteen games is a big enough sample to make some judgments about Mayo’s team and where things stand. Here are 14 statistics that tell the story of the 2024 Patriots (all stats below come from TruMedia):

21: That’s how many spots in the NFL rankings the Patriots have fallen in defensive expected points added per play. Last year the unit was a top-10 group, ranking eighth in this stat and seventh in success rate. This season, the defense ranks 29th in the league in EPA/play and 26th in success rate.

Some of this regression was expected. It makes sense that the defense would struggle without Bill Belichick running the show. Part of it has been the absences of key players like Christian Barmore, Jabrill Peppers and Ja’Whaun Bentley for long stretches.

But there’s no excuse for it getting this bad. The defense was supposed to be the strength of this team, and now it’s one of the five worst units in the league.

10.1: That’s the percentage of plays on which the Patriots defense is allowing explosive plays, which is pretty good. It ranks sixth best in the NFL.

But when you couple that with how poor the defense is in EPA/play and success rate, it means teams are slowly and easily carving through the New England defense without needing to rely on explosives. There are two reasons for that, which leads us to the next two stats.

11: This is the number of turnovers the Patriots defense has generated. That ranks 25th in the league and it’s padded by playing one game more than most teams (and by picking off the errant Anthony Richardson twice on Sunday).

29.8: That’s the rate at which the Patriots put pressure on the opposing quarterback. This was always going to be an area of concern after they traded Matthew Judon before the season and Josh Uche midseason, but the thought was they’d come up with creative ways to generate pressure — like they so often did under Belichick.

That hasn’t happened, and now the Pats head into the bye ranked 29th in this stat. That’s especially bad when considering …

35.8: The Patriots are blitzing a lot. They’re sending an extra rusher on more than one-third of opposing quarterbacks’ dropbacks. They have the fifth-highest blitz rate in the NFL.

Now let’s look at the offense.

7.4: That’s the difference in points scored by the Patriots in Weeks 1 through 5 with Jacoby Brissett starting (12.4 points per game) and the season since then with Drake Maye at the helm (19.8 points per game). The vast difference in the offense pre- and post-Maye can make it a bit difficult to look at the overall offensive numbers, which is why we started with this one to quickly outline the difference the rookie quarterback has made.

Before Maye was the starter, the Patriots ranked 31st in team scoring. Since he became the starter, they rank 21st. Essentially, Maye has made a touchdown-per-game difference.

This is still not a great offense, but he’s taken it from being arguably the worst in the NFL to merely a below-average group. That’s especially impressive considering the personnel he has to work with. Which leads us to …

39.7: That’s the Patriots’ pressure rate allowed, which ranks 31st in the league, only ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles. What makes this especially bad, though, is how rarely the Patriots are blitzed, facing an extra rusher only 25 percent of the time, the ninth-lowest rate in the league. The Eagles, by comparison, face blitzes at the 10th-highest rate.

34.7: There are two ways to look at the Patriots running game. Let’s start with the stat that doesn’t reflect well. This is the Patriots’ success rate running the ball, which ranks 28th in the league. The Patriots wanted to be a running team. Instead, they’re staying on schedule with their running game only about a third of the time. That’s not good.

On the other hand …

9.4: That’s the percentage of New England rushes that result in an explosive play (defined as rushes of 12 or more yards or passes of 16 or more). A year ago, the Patriots’ explosive rush percentage was 5.3, so this is a nice boost. Between this and the struggles in success rate, it shows the team’s running game has been pretty boom or bust.

9.2: This is the Patriots’ overall explosive play percentage. All offseason, the Patriots stressed getting better in this area. And if you’re grading on a curve, maybe you give them a little credit here. Last year, they ranked 31st in the league in this stat with an explosive rate of 7.7. This season, they rank 27th. So there’s marginal improvement.

Still, it should be noted that boost has only come in the running game. Last season, they ranked 30th in explosive pass rate. This season, they’re 31st. They are the only team in the NFL with a higher explosive rate running the ball than passing it. That’s mostly because …

94.6: The Patriots wide receivers are really bad. It’s hard to find one stat that encompasses just how bad the group has been, but this is their yards per game from receivers, which is easily the worst in the league. The next closest team is the Cardinals, who average 101.5 yards per game from their receivers. The Rams lead the league in this stat with 206 yards per game from their receivers.

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0.1: No stat is more damning for the offense than this one, which is the difference between last year’s yards per play (4.6) and this season’s (4.7). That ranked 29th last year and 29th this year.

The only big-picture difference for the Patriots is they’re breaking a few more explosive runs and they’re not allowing the same back-breaking turnovers and pick sixes they did a year ago.

7.1: This is the Patriots’ air yards per attempt, which ranks 26th in the league. That’s especially disappointing since Brissett and Maye have successful track records with deep throws. But the Patriots just can’t rely on their offensive line to block well enough and their receivers to get open enough to attempt more of these throws.

It still feels like Alex Van Pelt has to run the offense with training wheels on it until (or if?) the Patriots can get better players.

1.53: That’s the Patriots’ average points per drive. Here’s what’s wild about this stat: It’s much better than last season when their 1.08 points per drive was the worst in the NFL. Still, it ranks 30th in the league this year.

So it adequately sums up the offense: slightly better than last year’s trainwreck, but still near the bottom of the league.

(Photo of Rhamondre Stevenson: Winslow Townson / Getty Images)