Wilfork: We made the Colts 1-dimensional

AP Photo/Darron Cummings

The Patriots were pretty good in the run game against the Indianapolis Colts. Jonas Gray ran the ball down the throat of the Colts defense while the Pats defense silenced the Colts running game. The leading Colts rusher was quarterback Andrew Luck, who ran for 15 yards. Yep, their leading rusher only managed 15 yards. The Colts running backs, Ahmad Bradshaw and Trent Richardson, managed a grand total of 4 yards on 14 carries (4 on 7 for Bradshaw, 0 on 7 for Richardson). To use the words of one Vince Wilfork, that made the Colts one-dimensional.

Per NESN:

“That was a key of ours,” Patriots defensive tackle Vince Wilfork said. “Every week, that’s been one of our main goals: coming in, being able to stop the run and making them one-dimensional. We know when we can do that, good things happen for us. (Sunday) was a good outing. We just executed well all across the board. Everything we practiced, everything we wanted to do, we did it well.”

Not that the Colts run game is anything to write home about (17th overall now at 101.3 YPG), but the Patriots run defense looked much improved on Sunday night and that's a good sign going forward for the Pats. Hopefully, the upward trend continues because they've got a test coming up against Green Bay and Eddie Lacy in a couple of weeks, who might be the best remaining back the Patriots will face during the regular season, except for possibly Knoshown Moreno (a known Patriot-killer) when the Miami Dolphins come to Foxboro in December. The run defense alone won't win games, but if the Patriots continue making teams one-dimensional on defense, they'll be successful. And if the offense keeps doing their thing, of course.