With the divisional round in the rear view, we have just four teams left in the NFL’s tournament to see who gets to play in Super Bowl LX on Sunday, February 8. The NFC Championship game is a particularly interesting pier-sixer in that it has two teams that have already faced off twice this season, with the Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams splitting the series in the regular season — both times in thrilling fashion.
When we look at X-Factors for each team in these games, for the New England Patriots, we could choose any one of about 10 different such players on the defensive side of the ball — those underrated players whose efforts can decide everything. Like so many of these Patriots, edge-rusher K’Lavon Chaisson has seen his story go from first-round bust to first-team must. And he’s become an indispensable part of a defense that has seen an absolutely insane uptick in the postseason.
It’s the most interesting question of the NFL’s current postseason: What in the blue hell has gotten into the New England Patriots’ defense lately?
The same defense that ranked 23rd in DVOA in the regular season, and had to get a bump from 26th to 16th in the second half of the season to even get there, has become the NFL’s newest malevolent force. In their two postseason games against the Los Angeles Chargers and the Houston Texans, the Patriots saw their Defensive DVOA drop from +5.5% to -49.4%. As Defensive DVOA is better when it’s negative, this is a lot like going from a below-average squad to the 2000 Baltimore Ravens or the 2013 Seattle Seahawks overnight. New England’s run defense DVOA dropped from -8.1% to -40.0%, the pass defense DVOA dropped from -16.0% to -53.9%, and a red zone defense that had been the NFL’s worst in the regular season allowed one touchdown in two playoff games.
Yes, they were going up against the Chargers’ nonexistent offensive line, and a version of C.J. Stroud that nobody imagined possible when Stroud took the NFL by storm in his rookie season of 2023, but it would be unfortunate to assume that the Patriots defense didn’t have a lot to do with that.
Key among these defenders has been edge defender K’Lavon Chaisson, who has gone from first-round bust with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who selected him with the 20th overall pick in the 2020 draft out of LSU, to respectable role-player with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2024 with his six sacks and 29 total pressures, to his current place as the most prolific pass-rusher on this defense.
Chaisson was good enough in the regular season, with nine sacks and 54 total pressures. But in those two postseason appearances, he’s upped his game with three sacks and 14 pressures. That’s the most pressures for any defender in this postseason, and only Houston’s Will Anderson Jr. has more sacks with four.
”Probably did some work on him coming out, went through a process there in the offseason, and KC was one of those players that had been a couple different places, and was trying to make the best decision for him, his family and his career, which I can appreciate,“ Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said on January 12 of Chaisson and his journey. ”So, we went back and forth. There were talks and conversations, and I was glad that he was willing to join us and glad he’s had success. He has done a great job, and we’ll need all those efforts moving forward, but he’s into it. He’s here a lot and fought through the bumps and the bruises of an NFL season. So again, all the credit goes to him, but I think that that wasn’t something that was just cemented on one day. I mean, there were some conversations as we worked through free agency and what his plans were and what the vision that we had for him was.
“Everybody has a different journey to this career and in the NFL. I think he’s worked really hard. I think he plays hard. His motor runs hot. I think he has a good get-off and multiple moves. I think Smitty [Mike Smith] has worked hard with that entire group. I go back to training camp and KC’s willingness to play special teams, to play on the punt team for us and play a lot of snaps when guys were banged up. Then he kind of got banged up and he didn’t ask to be taken off the punt team. I’m glad that we found guys that can help him on that unit, but he’s in every one of the meetings. He’s taking reps in practice. He’s ready to go on that unit. So, I think that’s probably been the thing that’s impressed me the most was his willingness to be a part of the special teams and what we’re doing on fourth down and how important that is.”
Chaisson was one of a number of Patriots defensive signings in 2025 that didn’t blow anybody away at the time, but nearly all of them — Chaisson, fellow edge-rusher Harold Landry, linebacker Robert Spillane, cornerback Carlton Davis III — have exceeded expectations. One reason that defense has improved so much of late is that all of those underrated guys have come together at the right time.
Don’t be surprised if the Denver Broncos, with former Patriots backup Jarrett Stidham replacing the injured Bo Nix at quarterback, are the next opponent to feel the burn.
