New England went from 4-13 in 2024 to 14-3 in 2025, and the offense climbed to 5th in the NFL in EPA/play. But the defense went from 29th in EPA/play allowed to 5th, a 24-spot rank jump. Only Jacksonville (31st → 6th, a 25-spot jump) moved further.

It's almost entirely a coverage story on throws in front of the sticks — the exact kind of throws that torched them a year ago.

Where the improvement actually happened

Grouping every pass thrown against New England by target depth, this is what the year-over-year swing looks like:

The short-throw column is the loudest number on the page: 31st to 4th, and an EPA/play allowed that collapsed from 0.287 (worst-tier) to 0.013 (elite). For context, the league average on short throws in 2025 was 0.121 EPA/play, so New England isn't just above water there — they allowed a full standard-deviation-plus less than a typical defense.

Behind the line of scrimmage, the swing is even better. On 118 behind-LOS targets in 2025, opposing offenses generated -48.7 total EPA against New England. That's not a defense that tolerates screens and check-downs; that's a defense that actively wins the play when a QB tries them. Only Indianapolis (-0.597 EPA/play) and Buffalo (-0.560) were stingier per snap on behind-LOS throws — and both faced fewer of them.

Against the deep ball

Buried in that same table: the Patriots lead the NFL in EPA/play allowed on deep throws (20+ air yards), at 0.017. The next-closest defense, Carolina, is at 0.047; the Chargers are third at 0.049. And the completion rate on deep balls against New England (28.4%) is barely different from what it was in 2024 (28.8%) — the improvement is that when deep balls did connect, they're doing less damage, and interceptions on those throws went from 3 to 4 on almost the same volume of attempts. New England was already 7th in this bucket last year, so this is less of a fix and more of a "quietly the best in the league" development.

The one bucket that didn't get fixed

Intermediate throws (10–19 air yards) are the exception. New England was actually a middle-of-the-pack 12th here in 2024 (0.354 EPA/play allowed) and slipped to 20th in 2025 (0.399), essentially league-average (the NFL average was 0.386). Minnesota led the league on intermediate throws at -0.012; Seattle was second at 0.061; Jacksonville third at 0.069. So if you're scouting for a way to move the ball against this defense, the answer is 10-to-19-yard in-breakers and comebacks — not screens, not deep shots.

Why this matters

New England finished 2025 ranked 5th in offensive EPA/play (0.090) and 5th in defensive EPA/play (-0.091). Being top-5 on both sides of the ball is rare, and in this case it took two very different kinds of leaps to get there. The offense's leap has an obvious main character in Maye. The defense's leap has a subtler one — whatever combination of scheme, personnel, and coordination turned the worst short-pass defense in football into the fourth-best. That's the shift that made a 4-win team a 14-win team as much as anything the rookie QB did.