PATRIOTS NOTEBOOK: Flowers drawing plenty of attention

Defensive end Trey Flowers is coping with the increased double teams he's been seeing in his third season with the Patriots. With Dont'a Hightower out, Flowers' importance as an edge rusher will only rise.

Glen Farley The Enterprise @GFarley_ent

A year ago, Trey Flowers may have caught opposing of fensive lineman off guard

Not anymore.

Now he’s caught their attention.

“I’ve just got to continue to work, continue to work hard, keep preparing in practice,” the Patriots’ 24-year-old defensive end answered when asked how he plans to combat the double teams he’s seeing more often these days. “Obviously, when you have a lit tle success that’s what’s going to come so you’ve just got to continue to be productive through that and you’ve got to find a way.”

The Patriots’ first of three fourth- round picks (guard Tre’ Jackson and Shaq Mason were the others) in the 2015 NFL Draft, Flowers appeared in just one game and didn’t register any stats in a rookie year he finished on the injured reserve list.

Last season, he burst upon the scene, totaling 45 tackles and a team- leading seven sacks, with two fumble recoveries and one pass defensed while appearing in all 16 of the Patriots’ regular-season games and capping off a productive post season (16 tackles in three games) with a team-high six tackles and 2 sacks in their 34-28 overtime win over Atlanta in Super Bowl LI.

The 6-foot-2, 265-pounder enters Sunday afternoon’s game with the Los Angeles Chargers at Gillette Stadium with 33 tackles (third on the team), 3 sacks (tied with linebacker Kyle Van Noy for the team lead), 12 quarterbacks hits (tied with end Deatrich Wise Jr. for the team lead), one forced fumble and one pass defensed this season.

In last Sunday night’s 23-7 victory over Atlanta, Flowers was front and center again, recording six tackles, one quarterback hit and aiding the fourth-quarter, fourth-down stop on wide receiver Taylor Gabriel with the Falcons perched on the Patriots 1. Penetrating in to the Atlanta backfield, Flowers forced Gabriel into the grasp of Van Noy, who was holding down the edge and took him down for a 5- yard loss.

“I saw there wasn’t a running back in the backfield,” Flowers explained, “so it was just Matt Ryan under center and once I felt the motion kind of coming up I just kind of stepped out and continued to get penetration and Kyle made a tremendous awareness play in setting the edge and making the tackle.”

The way Van Noy described it, he was merely finishing a job Flowers had started.

“Luckily, Trey slowed him down a little bit for me,” he said, “and I took the glory for it.”

In the wake of the season-ending pectoral injury linebacker Dont’a High tower suffered in that game, the importance of Flowers’ play on the edge will only increase going forward.

Pats at the half: An NFL-best 96-38 (.716) in the first half of the season since Bill Belichick took over as head coach in the year 2000, the Patriots will be looking to close out the first half of the 2017 campaign and head into their bye with a record of 6-2.

Denver (85-49, .634), Indianapolis (81-49, .623), Green Bay (80-50, .615) and Pittsburgh (78-51, .605) round out the top five in the league in the first half of the season during that time.

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