CLEVELAND — The New England Patriots have grown to love matchups against first and second-year National Football League quarterbacks, as the AFC East stalwart have feasted on the young signal-callers to staggering results.
The Patriots lead the AFC East with an unblemished 7-0 record, and they are coming into Sunday’s game after a 33-0 victory over the New York Jets, which extended New England’s winning streak over first and second-year quarterbacks to 20 straight games.
“They are not afraid to bring one more than you can protect,” Browns offensive coordinator Todd Monken said. “Whenever you put a quarterback under duress, it is going to put some stress on. They are going to get stressed in terms of where to go with the ball.”
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In order to counter the Patriots’ dogged pursuit of young quarterbacks, the Browns know they have to be on point with their protections and give Baker Mayfield time to go through his progressions and get the ball out quickly.
“It really forces you to be, from a structure standpoint and all your formations and all your protections, sound and do the best you can to protect it and do the best you can to get it out of your hands,” Monken said. “If you do not do that and make them pay when they bring it, then like you saw the other night, they will continue to bring it and put your offense at risk and your team at risk.
“We have to do a really good job schematically, and again, it is not as if it is something that comes up half of the time. It is just going to come up in some critical situations.”
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One of the reasons why Monken believes the Patriots have been so successful in defeating young quarterbacks is because of their ability “to turn it into a one-on-one game.”
“I would not say they are complicated in terms of alignment and assignment, but they do a nice job of scheming your run game, your pass game and who you like to target and try to make you play left-handed,” Monken said.
“I think that is probably the best thing that they do, and because of the way that they structure things, I think it is easy to fix it quickly because it is not rolling through so many calls. That is one observation. I am not saying I am right there. They do a nice job of seeing what you do week to week, try to take advantage of your weaknesses and make you play left-handed.”
Although Mayfield threw three interceptions in the Browns’ 32-28 loss to the Seattle Seahawks at FirstEnergy Stadium on October 13, Monken felt ‘his eyes were in the right spots,” and wants the offense to take what the Patriots’ defense gives them.
“You will get some matchups in your favor,” Monken said. “You just have to take advantage of them and make the plays down the field. I know we are talking throwing the football here. Obviously, you have to be able to run the football and being able to scheme that up, but we are just talking about in the pass game.”