Bullying the Chargers, Patriots find new, vital way to win in the playoffs

FOXBORO — Christian Elliss walked out of the Patriots‘ locker room in a light-colored sweatsuit with a worn football tucked under his right arm.

The ball was bound for a wall inside his house, where Elliss keeps others on display as mementos from games gone by. This one he recovered with 8:08 left Sunday night, a moment that epitomized how the Pats had brutalized the Chargers to the point they might soon display a white helmet with an arcing lightning bolt on a wall inside their facility.

Not as a memento, but a pelt.

Trailing by 13 at midfield, Justin Herbert took a second-down snap and faced knifing pressure up the middle. He escaped first by lurching left. Then, hunched over at the waist, Herbert regained his balance and began to stand up with the ball in his right hand. But in that time, Patriots pass rusher K’Lavon Chaisson closed on Herbert from behind, and knocked the ball out upon arrival, causing the fumble.

Before Herbert could reach to recover it, Pats rookie Elijah Ponder launched his helmet into the quarterback’s chest, knocking him backward. Then Elliss sprinted to fall on the ball, got up and ran toward the nearest end zone in celebration, all while Herbert laid flat on his back and clutched his chest plate with both hands.

Gillette Stadium shook.

Chaisson had sacked Herbert. Ponder had blasted him. Ellis had stolen the ball and ripped all hope from him and his offense on that play. But it was the Patriots’ defense, their entire defense, that had put the Chargers in a headlock for three-plus quarters and finally choked them out.

“I am just so proud of this defense,” said captain Robert Spillane. “We have really come together, and to hold an offense like that to three points in a playoff game is huge for us.”

Huge, and new.

Sunday was the first time all season the Patriots held an opponent under 10 points; a year in which they ranked among the NFL’s worst defenses against the run and pass during separate stretches. This performance, much like the team’s season, was impossible to foresee.

That is unless you ask Elliss, who told his family all week how much he liked this matchup with the Chargers while studying their tape.

“Just watching the film, I think we had them,” Ellis said. “We had them.”

Elliss liked his front seven versus their offensive line. His cornerbacks against their receivers. And the game plan that Zak Kuhr, still the Patriots’ interim defensive coordinator, had laid out versus Jim Harbaugh, indisputably one of the best coaches in the league.

But even to the cockeyed optimist, did six sacks feel plausible Sunday night? Or the Patriots posting something close to a shutout on third down? Or an actual shutout inside the red zone, which has been more like a red carpet for opponents facing the league’s worst defense inside its own 20-yard line?

Not a chance.

“I’m glad we were able to go out there and have our offense’s back,” Pats captain Harold Landry said of forcing a turnover and field goal inside the red zone. “When we’re able to show up the way we did as a defense, and when we play great team defense, stuff like that can happen.”

And yet, for all that was unforeseen, there were shades of franchise history if you knew where to look.