Danny Amendola improvised the route during his first touchdown of the season on Thursday night against the Jets, running the scramble drill Patriots receivers work on with the quarterbacks with a great result.
During a conference call on Monday, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels explained as best he could what receivers are supposed to do when a play has broken down.
“There’s no real robotic or systematic way to teach the scramble drill, because there’s so many different variations of where people could be on a given pass play,” McDaniels said. “It’s not necessarily simple to say, ‘Hey, you’re always going to be in this same spot, so when he scrambles, do this,’ because it could be any number of players on any number of plays.
Advertisement
“I think the big key for us is to try to always come back to the ball or come toward the quarterback, the direction that he’s scrambling, because throwing away from where the quarterback’s going is always a difficult proposition. So we try to teach them to be friendly to the quarterback in terms of trying to give him an opportunity to make a throw that he can make. The guys that are deep, certainly if you’re deep and you go deeper, you might get out of his range.
“So the deep guys end up coming a little bit shorter, and in this case, Danny was the short guy and you have two choices — he could either try to get away from your guy in the direction the quarterback is rolling, or in the case of what Danny did, he turned and went in the other direction because he was the short receiver and he turned his route into a deeper play.”
Amendola made a twisting catch at the goal line, turning a third-and-goal from the 19 play into what ended up being the winning touchdown.
Advertisement
“It’s not a perfect science but what we try to tell them is you can’t stand there and be covered and you don’t want to throw out of the quarterback’s potential window to throw you the ball so they want to stay active and they want to try to be in the view of the quarterback as best you can and try to create some separation from the defender that’s closest to you,” McDaniels continued. “I thought Danny did a terrific job. We had a couple of guys that did a terrific job on that play.”
Close calls
McDaniels, coach Bill Belichick and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia were asked about the Patriots’ record in close games since 2001, and what it is Belichick teaches both the coaching staff and the players that have led to New England’s success in nailbiters.
Including Thursday’s 27-25 win, the Patriots are 30-14 in the regular season in games decided by a field goal or less.
Belichick, as he generally does, gave credit to the players.
“In the end it just comes down to the players and playing good situational football and making the right decision at the right time,” he said, adding two things that help.
“If you want to go all the way back on it, we’ve had a quarterback [Tom Brady] who’s very good at that type of thing — clock management, game situations — and we’ve had a good kicker, whether it be Adam [Vinatieri] or Steve [Gostkowski],” he said. “We’ve had good guys in those spots. We won a bunch of games with [Matt] Cassel in 2008, but the quarterback play and the kicking are important. Defensively and special teams, we’ve had our share there, too . . . but if you had to pick two guys, those [the quarterback and kicker] are two pretty important guys.”
Advertisement
McDaniels said coaching plays a role, but it comes back to the men on the field. “The credit would go to the players and their ability to execute under pressure, because if you’re in a close game, there’s a lot of pressure — situations that you’re in, you need to execute and perform well in, so the players certainly deserve the credit there,” McDaniels said. “I think the best you can do in terms of as a coaching staff is to try to educate your players on potential situations, critical plays that may come up in a given game and try to give them a game plan for how we’re going to win those plays.
“But again, it would go back to the players’ ability to execute on those pressure situations and I think when you know what you’re trying to do in situations like that, it always takes a little pressure off.”
Patricia believes preparing players for any and every possible situation is a big part of the equation.
“We try to do a good job of putting the emphasis on enough situations that might come up and really to give the players the tools and the ability to make good decisions in those situations,” he said. “Certainly we try to do a good job of working on that, as far as understanding the different situations of a football game that can come up, whether it’s the end of the game or the beginning of the game or before the half, whatever the particular situation is that presents itself and to give the players the tools to go out and execute and recognize and understand.”
Advertisement
Peyton’s place
Belichick went the self-deprecating route when asked about Peyton Manning, who became the NFL’s all-time leader in touchdown passes Sunday, breaking Brett Favre’s record of 508.
“It’s a great career. It’s an unbelievable amount of consistent production,” Belichick said. “He’d probably be waiting a lot longer to pass that record if he hadn’t played against me so many times. He certainly threw a lot of them against defenses that I had.
“His durability, his longevity, his consistent production — that’s why the record is what it is. Favre did it for a long time and did it on a very consistent level. Peyton’s done the same thing, even a little more so. It’s a phenomenal accomplishment. Like I said, he’s certainly thrown plenty of them against me.”
Manning has thrown 33 regular-season TDs against Belichick’s Patriots.
Shalise Manza Young can be reached at syoung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shalisemyoung.