New England coach Mike Vrabel had a player commit a penalty on purpose late in Thursday's loss at Chicago. Per Pats Pulpit, the Patriots trailed the Bears by six in the late fourth quarter and needed a stop and time. A stop looked unlikely, so they went after the time. Defensive tackle Cory Durden jumped offside on a 3rd-and-1 coming out of the two-minute warning. Bernd Buchmasser wrote that the plan was to prioritize time over the stop.
Pro Football Talk's Michael David Smith, whose item Yahoo Sports also ran, said Vrabel "has a long history of having his players commit penalties intentionally to manage the clock to his team's advantage." Yahoo's other item called the plan unconventional and said it did not give New England the result it wanted. The feed summaries we have don't say how many seconds the penalty saved. They also don't say whether Vrabel or any player commented on it, so we can't say what the sequence was meant to gain beyond what Pats Pulpit described.
The final was 30-24 at Soldier Field. The last play in our data is a 58-yard field goal by Chicago's C. Santos, so the Bears were still able to score at the end. New England's offense moved the ball well. Drake Maye threw for 321 yards and two touchdowns with one interception and ran for another score. The Patriots averaged 7.6 yards a play to Chicago's 6.1. The gap was elsewhere. Chicago ran 66 plays to New England's 50 and held the ball for 32:24 to 27:36. The Bears were 4-of-12 on third down and 2-of-2 on fourth. New England was 2-of-7 on third down and 0-of-1 on fourth. Both teams were flagged often: the Patriots had 10 penalties for 71 yards and the Bears nine for 69.
Durden has played six games this season. He has 11 tackles, three of them solo, and no sacks or forced fumbles. He had three tackles in this game. He is a rotation-level contributor, and the penalty was a deliberate choice, so it tells us nothing about his play.
The loss leaves New England at 4-3, second in the AFC East, with its winning streak ended after wins over the Jets (26-19) and the Raiders (45-17). Chicago is 5-2 and has won two in a row. Vrabel is 77-54 as a head coach, and his Titans and Patriots teams are the ones the piece's history claim covers. Our archive doesn't track his penalty history, so we can't confirm it.
The Patriots have a short turnaround before they visit Miami on Sunday, Nov. 1. Chicago travels to Seattle on Monday, Nov. 2.
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