Hey, what's up, everybody?

Welcome into Tom Curran's Patriots Talk podcast.

Phil Perry is alongside.

We're going to get eyeballs deep on the Patriots Chargers matchup. It's two

versus seven. It's 815 Sunday night, Sunday night football. The Patriots, if they win, we'll

play yet another game at Foxborough next week. Here's the matchups that we'll talk about to ensure

the Patriots are playing a game next week. We're going to have Kevin Cole on the back end of this. He's going to talk about, he's our guy from unexpected points. I've been using them all year. He'll talk about the matchup between May and Stafford for MVP, why the Patriots have jumped so much in his rankings through the year, so they finish the year at two overall. And he's great. The numbers are fascinating when you get into him.

But Phil, want to hear some numbers?

A few weeks ago, I did the Patriots on third down.

And what they had done, and Drake May had done throwing the football.

At that point, he was 75% completion rate.

Here's the Patriots and Drake May on third and 10 plus at the end of the year.

He was 28 for 43. That's a 65% completion rate for 449 yards.

Throw in fourth in one to three when he threw it, 10 for 10 for 95.

So the Patriots in third and 10 plus conversions were 15 for 37. That's 41%.

Now, Phil, I start with that to jump into the conversation that we need to have about

Drake May and the Patriots offense against the charges defense because I would contend it's the best defense that they have seen since they played the Cleveland Browns. Won that game 32 to 13, but there were six sacks suffered by Drake May, but he also went, I think, 18 for 24 in that game. How do you see this matchup developing? What advantage do the Patriots have? What's the big concern? I think the advantage for the Patriots is going to be with their run game, believe it or not, Tom.

What if I told you that the Patriots' chances of making it to the divisional round

rest not on the right shoulder of Drake May and instead rest in the arms of Ramandre Stevenson and Trevion Henderson.

I'd say I didn't think that was going to happen. The reason I say that is because this

Chargers defense is excellent and they are in particular very good at defending the explosive

pass play which the Patriots have lived off of, quite frankly, for the vast majority of this year. They're eighth in the NFL in terms of explosive pass rate allowed. And it's because they use a lot of defensive backs deep. And they show a lot of too high safety coverages, Tom. Quattas, I've been seeing. A lot of quarters coverage. That's right. So even, you know, quote unquote, four deep maybe at times.

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