White and Patrick Chung In three days New England Patriots T-Shirt , the New England Patriots will open their 2018 regular season against the Houston Texans. Before the game and season gets started, the Patriots’ team captain will walk out for the first coin toss of the year (and likely call tails). Now, as first reported by the Boston Globe’s Jim McBride, we know who those captains will be:Four of the six players listed above have already served as team captains last season: Tom Brady has been a captain since 2002, while Devin McCourty and Matthew Slater were both promoted to the roles in 2011. David Andrews, on the other hand, received the honor for the first time in 2017.The two new additions have been with the Patriots for quite some time but never actually served as captains: Patrick Chung, a second-round pick in 2009, spent all but one season of his NFL career in New England and has repeatedly been among the team’s most emotional contributors. Meanwhile, James White joined the team in 2014 and has since grown into the leader of the team’s offensive backfield.While Chung and White have joined the captains, three players have been removed from the list: tight end Rob Gronkowski, linebacker Dont’a Hightower, and safety Duron Harmon are no longer serving as captains. Gronkowski and Hightower first received the honor in 2016, while Harmon was named a captain last year.What happened to the Patriots run defense against the Texans? The New England Patriots did not do a great job defending the run against the Houston Texans. The trio of running backs Lamar Miller and Alfred Blue and quarterback Deshaun Watson combined for 174 rushing yards on 33 carries for an impressive 5.3 yards per carry (YPC).The Texans were successful running the ball all day and their total rushing output wasn’t the result of a single run. They averaged 8.2 YPC in the first quarter, courtesy of the 31-yarder by Lamar Miller New England Patriots Hats , but they also averaged 3.8 YPC, 4.1 YPC, and 5.0 YPC in successive quarters, seemingly getting stronger as the game wore on.So what went wrong for New England? Did the run defense simply get tired?It’s important to give credit to the Texans that they never gave up on running the football and that is a crucial reason for their success. Even when the Patriots took a commanding 24-6 lead, Houston responded by running the ball on seven of their next 10 plays. The Patriots were expecting the Texans to start throwing the football in the face of that deficit and placed undersized defensive tackle Adam Butler on the field. Houston took that as an opportunity to pick up easier yardage and took the rushing yards the Patriots were conceding.This was a common theme all afternoon, although Butler wasn’t the only target. Houston averaged 7.30 YPC with Butler on the field, the second-most of any Patriots defender with more than 1 snap against the run. The biggest culprit was defensive end Keionta Davis, against whom the Texans averaged 7.94 YPC. The defensive line deserves the most scrutiny, too, because there wasn’t much differentiation among the linebackers. Dont’a Hightower and Kyle Van Noy had similar successes on the edge, seeing 5.04 YPC and 4.83 YPC against, respectively, while Elandon Roberts (4.17 YPC against) and Ja’Whaun Bentley (4.57 YPC against) had more success in the middle.It’s notable that DT Malcom Brown (5.71 YPC against) and DT Danny Shelton (5.33 YPC against) were not great, either, suggesting that the Patriots entire interior had a bad day. Brown’s and Shelton’s numbers are greatly skewed by Miller’s 31-yard gain- as are Van Noy’s New England Patriots Womens Hoodie , Bentley’s, and Hightower’s- and all five players had much stronger days outside of that play.Davis was on the field for that play, too, but even outside of that play the Texans averaged 6.50 YPC against Davis. No matter how you cut it, Butler and Davis were the two biggest targets.On the other side of the spectrum, the Texans averaged a mere 2.06 YPC when DT Lawrence Guy was on the field, 3.17 YPC when DE Deatrich Wise played, and 3.27 YPC when Trey Flowers was on the field. Perhaps this trio needs to be on the field more often during early downs.The Patriots run defense struggled in 2017, so any continued weakness in 2018 deserves to be highlighted. Adam Butler remains a valuable player on passing downs, but he needs to be protected when the other team runs the ball- and teams will certainly target him.And for all the value that Davis showed in the offseason, his trouble against the run should yield more playing time for Wise and Adrian Clayborn. New England did not do a great job defending the run against Houston, but I’m not yet ready to hit the panic button. The defensive front as a whole did a good job against the run outside of a couple lapses and missed tackles and should be able to get on track- so long as the coaching staff makes the necessary adjustments to hide Butler and Davis from the rushing game.