Through the first two weeks of the 2026 season, the Patriots have certainly opened themselves up to some questions about the state of their offense.
Their defense, however, has been simply dominant.
The Patriots have allowed the fewest points in the NFL while ranking in fourth in yards allowed per game. Some of that has surely had to do with the quality of competition, as Drew Lock replaced Sam Darnold early in the Patriots’ opener in Seattle and Aaron Rodgers looked every day of 42 years old on Sunday for the Steelers.
Still, those two teams both possess elite receivers, and they both performed better this year when they didn’t face the Patriots’ defense, a unit that has been excellent to start the season.
One contributor to that cause has been Kevin Byard, who joined the team in free agency for his 11th NFL season. The veteran safety explained how the Patriots’ defense has stifled opponents early this season. One place where Byard placed a lot of credit was defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr.
“I think he’s listening to the players, kind of asking us, ‘Hey, what do you like this week?’ and different things like that. But I think his aggressiveness. I think he wants to spin the dial,” Byard said on Early Edition. “When you talk about earlier in the week, the game plan, there’s a lot of stuff in there. It’s a lot of multiple, personnel groupings, blitzes, and all these different things. And when he gets on game day, he’s not scared to call them. And I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen from him is just his aggressiveness and he’s willing to trust his players to say, ‘Hey, I got Christian [Gonzalez] out there. I got KB. I got [Milton Williams]. I got all these guys out here. I’m gonna trust these guys to go bring this plan to life, and I think he’s just been doing an excellent job of that these first two weeks.”
Byard also explained how having Gonzalez on the field locking down No. 1 receivers — Jason Smith-Njigba in Week 1, DK Metcalf in Week 2 — makes the entire defensive operation run smoothly for New England.
“His ability to be able to match up against a team’s top receiver is very rare to have in this league. There’s not a lot of corners that can do that at a high level, and Christian is definitely one of them,” Byard explained. “When you go into a game plan and we know we have a guy like JSN or DK Metcalf or whoever’s the top receiver of the team, if you can say, ‘Hey, Christian, on crucial downs, we’re gonna just put you on him.’ And I’m back there in the post, and I look and see, survey all the matchups. I’ll say, ‘OK, Christian got his guy. I don’t have to worry about him, so I can just look over here.’
“When you have a talent like Christian Gonzalez out there on an island by itself, you can really just shift the entire coverage and everything else because you know this guy’s gonna handle his business.”
And of course, a football team always absorbs the identity of its head coach, and the Patriots’ defense certainly feeds off Mike Vrabel.
“I think we’re just trying to play true to our identity,” Byard said. “Vrabel preaches full effort to the tackle, making sure we’re going out there playing with speed, violence, aggressive nature. This past Sunday it was so fun to be able to go out there and dominate the Steelers, obviously a future Hall of Fame quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, so just very fun to see these guys get sacks, fumbles, and all that stuff, and obviously scoring on defense. That’s when you become a dominant defense, when you can actually put points on the board.”
Byard expressed confidence in the Patriots’ offense but said he and the defense nevertheless feel a responsibility to lead the team to wins.
“We all know Drake Maye is the MVP-level quarterback. He may not have had the start that he wanted this season, but we all know him, we trust him, we have his back that he and the offense, they’re gonna get it together,” Byard said. “But at the end of the day, us as a defense, we feel like we can win games on our own merit.”
