New England Patriots must carry strong run game to Kansas City

The New England Patriots surprisingly handled the Los Angeles Chargers with ease, in a 42-28 route on the divisional round. Their strong run game is what stood out the most.

All of the talk about how much of an underdog the New England Patriots were going to be coming into their Divisional Round game can now be silenced.

Even with a talented defense, the Los Angeles Chargers were not able to handle what was a relentless offensive attack from the Patriots, spearheaded by phenomenal performances from Tom Brady and running back Sony Michel.

Michel particularly helped exploit a notably weaker rush defense in Los Angeles (24th in the regular season), finishing with 139 yards on the ground to go along with three touchdowns.

Not even Pro Bowl edge rushers Joey Bosa or Melvin Ingram had an answer for the explosive back. Once a team is able to establish its run game, it’s hard to recover from that as an opponent.

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Michel set the tone for the majority of the game, and allowed Brady to open up his confidence in the passing attack. The Hall-of-Fame quarterback finished with 343 yards passing and a touchdown. The poise Brady showed trickled down into the receiving corps as well, specifically with Julian Edelman. The wide receiver had arguably the best game of his rocky season, finishing with 151 receiving yards on nine receptions. He looked about as fresh as he’s been in quite some time

Sony Michel on the other hand has had a stellar year as a rookie with the New England Patriots, amassing 931 rushing yards in only 13 total games, according to Pro-Football-Reference. He averaged a solid 4.5 yards-per-carry throughout the regular season as well.

His rookie year unfortunately went under the radar because of magnificent production from New York Giants rookie running back Shaquon Barkely. Barkley averaged 5 yards-per-carry to go along with a little over 1300 rising yards.

A stout performance by New England’s defensive line also assisted in a blow out win, pressuring Philip Rivers on what seemed like every drop back that he took from the line of scrimmage. Rivers never gained footing in the pocket, and experienced a myriad of frustration because of it (and took it out on the referees multiple times).

The run game dominated

At the end of the day however, it’s the rush game that will help determine New England’s fate come Championship Sunday, and that starts with run blocking, specifically with the tight ends. Although Rob Gronkowski only finished with one reception for 25 yards, it ended up being his fantastic blocking for Sony Michel that carried the offense.

Gronkowski prided himself on pushing any Chargers defensive lineman back into the secondary, allowing Michel or James White to explode into the open field.

Gronk’s contributions will need to travel to Kansas City next Sunday, especially since the offense will most likely be a part of a shootout with star quarterback Patrick Mahomes III.

Spearheaded by Justin Houston, the Chiefs’ defensive line is much better against the rush (they finished sixth in the league during the regular season) than Los Angeles. Upping the pace, and establishing that same effective run game could lead to another New England Patriots win.

For at least one game in the playoffs, Rob Gronkowski answered those questions about whether or not he may perform at a high level, and he definitely needs to silence the critics again with more extraordinary blocking.

Next. Five observations from ‘lights out’ win over Chargers. dark

The last time the Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots met was in Week 6, where Sony Michel had over 100 yards rushing and two touchdowns.

Surely, Andy Reid has planned for the rookie this time around, but don’t doubt Bill Belichick’s tendencies to switch things up. He can easily throw in Rex Burkhead or White at any moment to throw their game plan off. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out next Sunday at 6:30 ET.

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