A common criticism for the New England Patriots defense is that they didn’t play enough man coverage to start the season. That a lot of the miscommunications in the secondary stemmed from zone coverage and the team’s inability to do their jobs and cover the correct players.
The Patriots zone defense was certainly poorly executed. New England was also just really bad in man coverage, too.
Pro Football Focus has mapped every coverage decision during the 2017 season to see which teams utilize man coverage more than zone coverage, and the Patriots are towards the top of the list.