The Patriots are playing Cover-0 here; man coverage with no deep safety for reinforcement. Cornerbacks have to trail their receivers throughout the route in Cover-0 for obvious reasons — if they let the receiver off the hook at all, bad things can happen. And bad things happened. Here, Gilmore appears to be playing bail coverage, in which he keeps his eye on the backfield and then turns his focus to the receiver. Bail is more effective in single-high zone coverages where scheme and safety help factor in; it’s generally not a good idea against a quick receiver, no matter how good the cornerback is. It also could be that Gilmore was looking to crash down on the quick out run by slot receiver Albert Wilson.
Either way, not a good result.
As I pointed out when comparing the games of Gilmore and Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White a couple weeks back, Gilmore is at his best when he’s playing aggressive, face-up man coverage. Not that he can’t play bail or off coverage; he wouldn’t be as good as he generally is if he couldn’t. But the extent to which Gilmore was playing off and more passively against Parker grants a level of deference to Miami’s best receiver that I really didn’t expect. Parker is a very good player, no doubt, but one does not expect this particular pass defense to get dictated to, and that’s happening at an alarming rate over the last two games.
More disconcerting is that Parker was able to beat Gilmore in pure physical matchups when Gilmore had outside position down the boundary. Usually, this is the kind of stuff Gilmore eats up. But not on this 24-yard catch by Parker with two minutes left in the game — this was the play that helped set up Fitzpatrick’s five-yard game-winning touchdown pass to tight end Mike Gesicki with 29 seconds remaining. Gilmore has help up top from Harmon, but that doesn’t matter, because Parker jumps to catch the ball while Gilmore is still in trail mode.
“He made some plays,” Gilmore said of Parker. “It is what it is and I can handle it. I know what type of player I am and just need to go back to the practice field and practice hard to get ready for the next game.”
It’s a very bad time for New England’s pass defense to be under repair. Since turning from Marcus Mariota to Ryan Tannehill as their starting quarterback in Week 7, the Titans, New England’s wild-card opponent, ranks second in completion percentage (69.6%) behind only the Saints (72.7%). Tennessee ranks first over that time in yards per pass (9.6), second to the Ravens (10.5%) in touchdown percentage (8.1%), first in quarterback rating (119.5), and second to the Ravens (53.4) in Positive Play Rate (53.0). Gilmore will most likely shadow receiver A.J. Brown, who became the fourth rookie receiver since 1970 after Isaac Curtis, Willie Gault, and Randy Moss with four touchdown passes of 50 or more yards.
And if this secondary plays as it has over the last two weeks, the Patriots could easily find themselves in a position they haven’t seen since 2010 — a one-and-done in the postseason.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”