Their defensive gameplan was odd. Maye is the best deep ball thrower in the game and yet they played man a lot. He absolutely demolished them. The standard gameplan vs. Maye is to play with 2 deep safeties. Cover 2, Cover 6/ quarters. Make him throw short. That is what the teams who have beat him have done. The Raiders foolishly determined that they would buck that trend.
If he sees 1v1 on the outside, Maye is going to throw the ball deep every time. And he will make that throw perfectly nearly every time. Unless you have Deion Sanders, I would recomend that teams not play 1v1 on the outside. The Pats WR's are not that good. However, Maye is so good throwing deep, it won't matter. The Raiders gave up two long balls by playing 1 v 1 on Kyle Williams. Williams is a one trick pony. He can really run. It was inexplicable that Williams got that look twice. Leonard called a very poor game IMO.
I will be interested to see how the Jets decide to play defense this week. It seems like some version of 2 deep safeties is warrented. The Pats are not all that good running the ball so it makes sense to play 2 safeties back.
Defensively, the Pats are a solid team. They are solid at all 3 levels. Their D-backs are their strength. Even with up to 5 CB's out, they were able to keep the Raiders to 17 points. Cousins is no Peyton Manning but they really bottled up everyone but Bowers (a beast). The Raiders can't run and they were behind. Nice to see.
If the Pats can continue to improve their ball security and get some luck turning over the opposition, they could make a bit of a run here.
