NFL: Patriots vs.

What a blast to Sunday night football! The New England Patriots receive the Atlanta Falcons in a new edition of the duel from the past Super Bowl. While the landlords switch between genius and madness, the Falcons don’t want to know anything (officially) about a revenge for the bitter bankruptcy of last February. SPOX looks at the game, which will be broadcast live on DAZN at 2.30 a. m. on Monday night!

Exactly 259 days ago, on Sunday, the patriots against the Falcons made their biggest comeback in the history of the Super Bowl. Shirts on Amazon, countless memes on the internet, mockery from the direct competition – the Falcons had to endure a lot of malice during this time. This continues to this day as soon as a tour of its own melts.

If Safety Ricardo Allen is going to play, the players don’t care anymore “Damn it, no,”Allen briefly asks if the football world’s teaser would still bother him, compared to ESPN.

Linebacker Vic Beasley looks deeper:”When you see all the social media sites, you’re already thinking,” Shit, we already had them! There were already rumours that head coach Dan Quinn would once again spur his players on with some nasty tricks to be prepared for the patriots. But Beasley beckons:”He won’t do that. We all know how it turned out.”

Atlanta’s start into the current season has actually been a great success: With a 3-0 record in their luggage, the men from Georgia received the Buffalo Bills in Week 4, an allegedly easy task. But a fumble that the Bills forced and carried into the Falcons’ final zone ultimately brought them a 23-17 home defeat. Buffalo’s strong defense revealed unusual weaknesses in Atlanta’s offense.

Two weeks later, Atlanta once again hosted an AFC East team as the Miami Dolphins were forced back into the cabin with a 17-0 draw at halftime. But as in February, the Falcons gave a clear lead as everything suddenly seemed to be running for the opponent: A missed field goal, a dirty punt and a fatal penalty call that reversed an exception were decisive for another incredible bankruptcy of this crazy season.

The sensitive defeat was, of course, untimely due to the task ahead, but the productivity of the offense was supposed to give the Falcons confidence. Against the Dolphins Matt Ryan and colleagues scored 50 yards more (339:289), against Buffalo the balance was even clearer with 389:281 yards. Now you have to go to the reigning champion, who has collected most yards of all teams so far and constantly reveals big mistakes in the secondary voting.

“We can’t repeat last week’s game, we can’t play the Super Bowl again,”coach Quinn doesn’t want to know anything about revenge. He refers to a credo that is regarded as a recipe for success in many sports:”The only battle that counts is the one you’re in right now,”Quinn puts it in a more martial way.

In the next fight, the Patriots are a team of extremes, a team with two completely different faces. While New England has produced the most yards of all teams in the offense so far, the defensive side of Bill Belichick’s team is the last to be defeated. They may be on a 4-2 record and have won their last two games, but the way in which these victories were won was frighteningly weak for a defending champion.

The pats scored a 24:17 victory against the jets thanks to a controversial referee’s decision, but Josh McCown poured 354 yards into the defence. It will be interesting to see how many yards they have to admit against the current MVP Ryan.

In the past two games, the patriots each managed to win more Rush-yards than their opponents, as Belichick let the ball circulate more and more on the ground. That’s where the Falcons had their last problems, many failed tackles let the Dolphins find their way back into the game. Nevertheless, Belichick warns of the strengths of the current NFC champion:”You are a high quality team, and that in every position. The game will be a big challenge for us, the Falcons are probably the fastest team we’re going to play this season.”

The man of the game also scores the same score against the jets, Rob Gronkowski:”Atlanta has incredibly physical players,” he speaks of a team that has not yet allowed a touchdown against tight ends this season. A key to success this time will be to keep Gronkowski in check.

Gronkowski himself was not involved in the Super Bowl triumph injured, but refrained from making statements about the final duel against the Falcons for a very different reason:”We got the clear message not to talk about this game” Full concentration on the present for the players from Foxborough.

In the present, the Falcons hope to forget the past and take advantage of the weakness of patriot defense. However, they are not allowed to make as many mistakes as they did in the last two games. There is no question that the offense can deliver from Georgia. According to football outsiders, they lead the league in yards per drive, so if the Falcons come into possession of the ball, they know how to do something about it.

Some of the ideas of the new offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian are already working, but Quinn believes that there is still room for development, especially in a specific human resources area: he wants to see more targets on Julio Jones. Jones has not yet scored a touchdown this season, and this should change against the patriots.

Since 2014, Jones has been the receiver with the most yards per game (104.8!), but only 0.4 touchdowns per game during this period. Thus, in this statistic it is on a par with an Allen Hurns or a Jordan Matthews, for example. Interestingly, however, these numbers seem to be intentional to a certain extent: While Ryan on average plays about every third of his passes on Jones, if Atlanta is at least 20 yards away from the end zone, this value suddenly drops to about 17 percent in the Red Zone.

At Sarkisian’s appointment last June, he was asked what could be improved on Atlanta’s offensive. His reaction:”Is there a way to feed Jones with more passports in the Red Zone?” A possible adaptation has been found, so Quinn is also aware of that:”He is our man. There are situations where he could even take on two defenders.”

So you can look forward to an offensive spectacle, because that’s where the strengths of both teams lie. Especially the floating Patriots-Defense may give hope to the Falcons to make a little bit of restitution – even if they don’t really want to know anything about it.

New England Patriots (4-2) – Atlanta Falcons (3-2) (Monday, 2.30 a. m. live on DAZN)

The SPOX NFL Predictor, Week 7:

Pascal

De Marco

50-41