Callahan: Not holding my breath with Patriots offense

On Tuesday's Toucher & Hardy program, Andrew Callahan analyzed the New England Patriots' winning performance over the Cincinnati Bengals.

Parts of conversation abbreviated for clarity.

Fred Toucher: Can the New England Patriots duplicate this win? They took advantage of a banged-up Cincinnati Bengals team. We knew they’d be pretty good on defense. They didn't turn over the ball. They were superior on special teams. Could they duplicate this plan to win more games? 

Andrew Callahan: I think a couple more times. Let’s split this up into offense, defense, and special teams. And we’ll start backwards... 

With special teams, I'm not counting on the long snapper to force a fumble every single week. That’s probably not going to happen again this year. But the Patriots beat them in all the other phases too. They made all their field goals; Chad Ryland only did that once last year. Joey Slye did that this week. Chad Ryland did that once in 17 games last season. 

Defensively, it's a great game plan. This was a Bill Belichick game without Bill on the sideline. Joe Burrow was flummoxed. He looked like Mac Jones, in my opinion, circa 2022. They had him checking down a lot before he needed to.  

Offensively, Jerod Mayo gave a lot of praise to the offensive line, and it was deserved. They played especially well in the run-blocking game; we all watched it. But pass protection is a big issue. I don't think they'll have many games this year where they have zero turnovers and just three penalties on that side of the ball. That's the part where I go, “Good for them.” I'm just not holding my breath while the offense moves forward. 

Jon Wallach: How do you explain the offensive line run blocking because they were a mess in the preseason? Now, suddenly, they’re executing like they’ve been playing together for years. 

Callahan: So, Rhamondre Stevenson had 120 rushing yards, 118 of those were after contact, according to PFF. So, he was making a lot of magic in that backfield.  

But for the offensive line, the time that they did clear room, it was with six offensive linemen on the field. When they had six linemen on the field, they had a successful play on 75 percent of those snaps.  

They just had more guys on the field and the Bengals have a bad run defense that's missing a couple of players. So, they just bullied them. 

Ryan Beaton is a producer for 985thesportshub.com. You can follow Ryan at @ry_beaton on Twitter.

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