Clearly, one area the defense will have to address before the Patriots host the winless Titans Sunday is third-down efficiency. The Patriots entered the game ranked 23d in the league on third-down defense, then allowed the Broncos to convert 43 percent of their attempts (6 of 14).
It was little wonder Denver managed to cobble together touchdown drives of 90 and 98 yards, both of which ended with 11-yard passes from Kyle Orton to Brandon Marshall, the second tying the game, 17-17, with 5:21 left.
“We’ve got to get off the field a little better on third down,’’ Pees said. “We’ve been doing OK on that, but we didn’t do well enough.
“We had some opportunities on a couple of tipped balls that we’ve got to come up with in those situations, and we certainly can’t let people drive the length of the field on us. Both [touchdown drives] were aided by some penalties which, again, was something we were doing better earlier in the year and we’ve got to get back to that.’’
Orton, who completed 35 of a career-high 48 attempts for 330 yards, orchestrated the scoring marches with a short, controlled passing game that seemed to keep the Patriots on their heels.
“We needed to change up the coverage and stuff on them, even maybe the front sometimes,’’ Pees said. “You’ve just got to keep changing things up and you can’t sit in the same things. I’m not saying that we did, it’s just that we came up short on a couple of those plays that we’ve got to make. It doesn’t matter if we’re in man coverage or zone coverage.
“Every coverage can be a good coverage or every coverage can be a bad coverage. There’s certain strengths and certain weaknesses to every coverage, and you hope you don’t stay in anything long enough so that anybody kind of figures that out.
“At the same time, we’ve just got to do a better job of playing the plays and I’ve got to do a better job maybe of changing it up even more than what I did to keep them more off balance.’’
