The New England Patriots' defense picked the perfect time to play its best football of the season - and it couldn’t have come in a more high-stakes setting than the Wild Card round against the Los Angeles Chargers. Allowing just three points and 207 total yards, this unit didn’t just show up - it dominated.
And the key? Relentless aggression.
From the opening whistle, the Patriots came out swinging. They blitzed Justin Herbert early and often, throwing a mix of pressure and disguise that kept the Chargers’ Pro Bowl quarterback guessing.
The offensive line in front of him, already a weak spot all season, simply couldn’t hold up. And at the center of it all was acting defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr, stepping in for Terrell Williams, who is currently undergoing cancer treatment.
Kuhr, just 37 years old, has had his share of ups and downs guiding this defense through the regular season. But against Los Angeles, he pushed all the right buttons.
The Patriots sent extra rushers on 20 of Herbert’s 44 dropbacks - a bold move against a quarterback who’s been one of the league’s best at punishing blitzes. But this time, the gamble paid off.
Still, don’t expect that same exact game plan to be a weekly staple.
“It’s always a balance,” Kuhr said Thursday. “It is game-to-game, and at some point, you have to kind of feel what is working best for you without being reckless.”
That’s the tightrope every defensive play-caller walks. Some weeks, the matchup screams for pressure.
Others, the smarter approach is to sit back and make the offense earn every yard. Kuhr emphasized that it’s not just about what the Patriots want to do - it’s about what the opponent allows them to do.
“There’s different times where, ‘Hey, we don’t really want to send it this week because this is what they have - X, Y, and Z,’ or, ‘This is the reason why we do want to send it this week - X, Y, and Z.’ But I would say it’s a good mix of our personnel and opponent-dependent.”
Looking ahead to the next challenge - a showdown with the Houston Texans - the question becomes: can lightning strike twice?
C.J. Stroud has been solid against the blitz this season, completing nearly 68% of his passes with over 1,200 yards.
But he’s also taken 13 sacks in those situations and thrown a couple of picks. That’s not exactly a green light for Kuhr to go full throttle, but it’s certainly a window worth exploring - especially with a Texans offensive line that’s been serviceable, but far from elite.
And while pressure is one part of the equation, disguise is another tool Kuhr is leaning on to tilt the field in the defense’s favor.
“Always balanced with everything we do, even the disguise part,” Kuhr said. “In this league, the game is so fast and these guys process quickly on both sides of the ball.”
That speed, that processing - it’s what makes quarterbacks like Stroud so dangerous. But it also opens the door for misdirection. If a defense can make a quarterback hesitate for even a split second, that’s often all it takes to disrupt the timing of a play.
“You have a lot of stuff on tape right now, especially this late in the year,” Kuhr continued. “To maybe just gain that one step back of the offense knowing the play and the defense having to play the play.
Maybe with our disguise and they’re thinking one thing - because they’re going to try to anticipate stuff - how can we gain that step back? And that’s maybe giving them something they weren’t thinking at the snap and now they have to process something new.”
That’s the chess match. And against a rookie quarterback - even one as poised and productive as Stroud - those disguised looks could be the difference between a clean pocket and a collapsed one.
Because as Kuhr put it, when Stroud has time to throw, he’s “deadly.”
So while the Patriots may not blitz on nearly half the dropbacks again, don’t expect them to play it safe either. This is a defense that just found its rhythm at the perfect time - and now it’s looking to keep the pressure on, in every sense of the word.