New England Patriots
It’s going to be a shootout, perhaps even an instant classic, between teams that have special quarterbacks.
So much has happened during this remarkable Patriots season — a lot has been repaired, upgraded, and rapidly improved by the coach-quarterback partnership of Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye — that things that happened relatively recently suddenly feel like the distant past.
Consider: It was less than 15 months ago that Maye made his first start as Patriots quarterback, a 41-21 loss to the Texans in Week 6 of the 2024 season.
A familiar refrain then, one repeated often in the buildup to his eventual selection by the Patriots with the No. 3 overall pick, and intermittently here early in his career, was that if all went right and he developed as hoped, he could be another Justin Herbert.
It was high praise, the kind of comparison that led to wishful but irresistible hypotheticals before the draft, such as this one: What would it cost besides the No. 3 pick for the Patriots to acquire Herbert from the Chargers?
Remember that one? It’s always stuck with me during Maye’s extraordinary ascent, which finds him and his teammates facing off against Herbert and the Chargers Sunday night in a wild-card playoff matchup, the Patriots’ first postseason game since 2021. (Feels longer, though no one outside of New England wants to hear that.)
In his first full season as a starter, Maye — not Herbert, a superb quarterback who finished the regular season with 3,727 passing yards and 26 touchdowns — is a prime candidate for the Most Valuable Player Award.
Maye, who threw for 4,394 yards and 31 scores, with just 8 interceptions to Herbert’s 13, has been better than the young superstar to whom he was compared. More remarkably, with a win Sunday night, Maye will have led his team to a playoff victory before Herbert.
This turnaround has happened so fast that it’s almost difficult to fully process. Watching Maye and Herbert go pass-for-pass with their playoff lives at stake will be stressful, sure. But should the Patriots prevail, it will be the greatest confirmation yet of how quickly a football daydream has come true.
Kick it off, Borregales, and let’s get this thing started …
Three players worth watching other than the quarterbacks
Milton Williams: From a defensive standpoint, the Patriots’ approach might be as obvious as it has been in any game this season. Their pass rush must get after Herbert relentlessly while also making sure he doesn’t escape the pocket.
To do so, their defense will be required to thrive in an area where it has been mediocre, but against what is probably the Chargers’ greatest weakness, their offensive line.
Herbert has taken a pounding this season. He has been sacked 54 times and hit a staggering 129 times. The reasons are understandable. The Chargers lost both starting tackles, with left tackle Rashawn Slater going down for the season with a patellar tendon in August. Their other tackle, Joe Alt, missed three games earlier in the season with a high ankle sprain, then was lost for the season in Week 9 when he reinjured the ankle.
Herbert has suffered the physical consequence of being constantly under siege — in Week 13 against the Raiders, he suffered a fractured left hand when he was hit by safety Jeremy Chinn on the Chargers’ first possession. Herbert remained in the game, a 31-14 Chargers win, underwent surgery the next day, and did not miss a game.
Beyond being tougher than any quarterback wearing a powder blue and sunshine gold jersey would ever seem to be, Herbert is a force when he escapes the rush. Nine of his 26 touchdown passes this season came outside the pocket, and his 498 rushing yards — 48 more than Maye — ranked fourth in the league among quarterbacks.
So how do the Patriots — who finished tied for 21st in the NFL with 35 sacks — take advantage of the Chargers’ blocking issues and put Herbert under duress? Some of the rush must come from the outside, of course, with consistent pressure from Harold Landry (team-high 8½ sacks despite missing the last two games with a knee injury) and K’Lavon Chaisson (7½ sacks) a necessity.
But the real X-factor is Williams, the stalwart tackle who returned last week after missing five games with a high ankle sprain. Williams played 28 snaps in a tuneup against the Dolphins, finishing with two tackles, including one for loss in the first quarter.
When healthy, Williams — who was arguably the Eagles’ best player in their Super Bowl rout of the Chiefs last February — is the Patriots’ most disruptive defensive player. An early-season example: His fourth-down sack of Tua Tagovailoa to secure the Week 2 win over the Dolphins was one of the most impressive defensive plays of the season.
Williams says he isn’t at full health yet, but the Patriots need him to be as good as he possibly can Sunday night.
Rhamondre Stevenson: Considering that Maye and Herbert are two of the most productive and talented quarterbacks in the league, it might come as a mild surprise that a key to both the Patriots’ and Chargers’ success is ball control and time of possession.
The Chargers finished second to the Bills in time of possession, at an average of 32 minutes, 32 seconds per game. That is despite not having a running back reach 700 yards (Kimani Vidal finished with 643) or a single offensive player surpass 800 total yards from scrimmage (Ladd McConkey had 789, all as a receiver).
The Patriots weren’t far behind, finishing fifth in time of possession (31:20 on average). That makes sense if you’ve followed how their running game has evolved and improved over the second half of the season.
TreVeyon Henderson — the Patriots’ leader in yards from scrimmage (1,132, with 10 total touchdowns) — became a game-breaker just before the approximate midpoint of his rookie season.
Beginning with the Week 8 rout of the Browns and excluding the Week 17 thumping of the Jets, which he missed while in concussion protocol, Henderson has run 137 times for 758 yards — a 5.5-yard average — and eight touchdowns.
Yet he hasn’t even been the Patriots’ most explosive back in recent weeks. That designation goes to the veteran Stevenson, who upon shaking off some rust after missing three games with a toe injury, has run with an explosiveness and elusiveness that has been mostly absent since his breakthrough 2022 season.
In the past four games, Stevenson has carried the ball 29 times for 279 yards and three touchdowns, while adding 12 catches for 121 yards and two scores.
– Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
The Patriots’ “jumbo package” — which usually includes Thayer Munford as the extra lineman — has been highly effective in recent weeks. It will need to be again to win that time of possession battle vs. the Chargers’ eighth-ranked run defense (105.4 yards per game).
Derwin James: Maye already is familiar with the Chargers’ five-time Pro Bowl safety. He noted during media availability this past week that he liked to use James when playing “Madden,” a smart move given that the eight-year veteran can do just about anything a defense requires.
In 98 career games, James has 36 quarterback hits, 19 sacks, 12 interceptions, and 6 forced fumbles. That’s Rodney Harrison-level versatility.
Maye’s harsher familiarity with James came in the Chargers’ 40-7 throttling of the Patriots in Week 17 last season. James sacked Maye twice in that game, both in the second half and both times on fourth down, and he also had a fumble recovery in the first half on a botched pitch to DeMario Douglas.
Maye will have to be highly aware of James’s whereabouts Sunday, and he knows it. The Chargers, who play a zone-heavy scheme, finished with 19 interceptions, the second-most in the NFL (and 19 more than the Jets). James had three of those for a Chargers pass defense that ranked fifth (180.9 yards per game).
The flashback
The Patriots are 3-0 against the Chargers in the postseason this century and 3-1 overall, the loss being a 51-10 thumping in the 1963 AFL Championship game.
The most famous of the Patriots’ three recent postseason wins over the Chargers occurred in the 2006 divisional round, when Troy Brown punched what could have been a game-clinching interception away from Chargers safety Marlon McCree with the Patriots down, 21-13, with approximately six minutes left. Reche Caldwell recovered the fumble, and the Patriots rallied for a 24-21 win.
McCree’s blunder is the most memorable play from that game. The most amusing, at least in retrospect? That might be Mike Vrabel’s sack of Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers. Rivers, of course, made a brief return to the NFL this season to sling some changeups around to Colts receivers, 15 years after Vrabel retired as a player.
Grievance of the week
Maye led the Patriots to 10 more wins than they had last season. He led the NFL in completion percentage (72) and passer rating on throws of 20 yards or more (129.2), an almost unheard-of combination. He did it while elevating the talent around him (he was the Patriots’ lone Pro Bowl selection on offense). And against common opponents against the other quarterback in consideration, he threw 14 touchdowns to 3 interceptions and his team was 6-0. That other quarterback — the Rams’ Matthew Stafford, obviously — went 4-2, with the same number of touchdowns and three more picks. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that Maye is the MVP simply has not paid enough attention to what he has done.
Prediction, or it’s not right that Stan Humphries led the Chargers to a Super Bowl and Dan Fouts did not …
It’s going to be a shootout, perhaps even an instant classic, between teams that have special quarterbacks, savvy coaches (Jim Harbaugh got the Chargers job over Vrabel), and quite a bit more in common. The home crowd, the chilly New England air, and Maye’s preternatural poise tilt it in the Patriots’ favor. Patriots 31, Chargers 27.
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