In the latest episode of The Bill Simmons podcast, former Patriots assistant to the coaching staff Michael Lombardi opened up about his time in New England, touching on a variety of topics.
One of them: The extreme importance of balance in the Patriots' offense this year.
"The key for the Patriots season is simply this: they've got to get teams to respect the running game enough to where they can't just play nickel the whole game," Lombardi told Simmons. "When we walked off the field in Denver, that was the goal of the offseason. We cannot play a team that just basically says to us, or say to them, 'look, we're just going to line up in dime, if you want to run the ball, you'll get two yards.