The Patriots have spent all season plugging holes on their injury-riddled offensive line, and Sunday they lastly discovered a workable mixture after bumping fourth-year lineman Mike Onwenu from proper guard to proper deal with.
Will that show a long-term transfer or a short lived shift? The Patriots teaching workers isn’t certain, and it’ll rely largely on the unit’s harm scenario.
“We’ll have to see how it goes,” mentioned offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien. “We practice tomorrow so we’ll see where everyone is relative to health and all those things as we move forward.”
Onwenu allowed a single strain in 37 pass-blocking snaps in opposition to Buffalo and earned his highest single-game grade this season from Pro Football Focus. As an offensive line, the Patriots recorded a 50% success fee on working performs and allowed strain on simply 21.2% of their dropbacks.
The concept of Onwenu taking part in deal with isn’t new. The former sixth-round decide began 11 video games at proper deal with as a rookie in 2020, when he transformed from profession school guard, however he hadn’t take snaps on the place since 2021. Bill Belichick beforehand dismissed the concept of a shift again to deal with final season, when the Patriots expertise comparable offensive line points and began 4 totally different gamers at proper deal with.
“I think he’s built to play guard, he’s comfortable playing guard. He has a really good skill set in there,” Belichick mentioned in Nov. 2022. “That’s where we’d like to play him, for sure.”
As accidents mounted this 12 months that calculus started to alter. Belichick mentioned he approached Onwenu about shifting from proper guard early final week, and offensive line coach Adrian Klemm mentioned it was one thing the coaches have had on their radar for a short time.
“It’s not like it just came out of the blue,” Klemm mentioned. “As things developed, that developed.”
The fundamental concern with bumping Onwenu to deal with wasn’t his skill to play the place, Klemm mentioned, however his consolation stage working again from an ankle harm. He nonetheless has work do to and progress to make, however the coaches felt he was as much as the duty and are open to taking part in him at deal with once more.
“If it gives us an advantage, which it definitely did the last game, we’ll continue to do that,” Klemm mentioned. “So there are a lot of different factors that factor into that and we’ll continue moving forward with whatever is best for the team.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com