The jersey numbers from the New England Patriots come in waves as Joe Barry, Washington’s defensive coordinator, considers the challenge of preparing his players for Sunday’s game at unbeaten New England.

There is no end, it seems, to the playmakers demanding special attention. Quarterback Tom Brady has spread his 199 completions among 13 receivers, whether wide receivers, tight ends or running backs. And the Patriots lead the NFL in scoring, averaging 35.6 points per game compared to Washington’s 21.1.

“You take 87 (Rob Gronkowski) away, then you’ve got to deal with 11 (Julian Edelman),” Barry said, launching into the list. “You take 87 and 11 away, you’ve got to deal with 33 (Dion Lewis). Take all three of ’em away, you’ve got to deal with 80 (Danny Amendola) and 19 (Brandon LaFell), who are really good players in their own right. Then they bring No. 29 (LeGarrette Blount) in and hand him the ball.

“Every offense that you play in this league possesses problems, possesses issues. But obviously the guy that wags the dog is No. 12 (Brady). He’s the guy. He is phenomenal, he really is, in what he’s able to do, what he’s able to dictate.”

So what’s the solution, particularly for a Washington team whose best pass-rusher has a broken right hand and whose top three cornerbacks have leg injuries?

According to Barry, it’s to obsess less over the Patriots’ many offensive threats and focus more on executing his own defensive scheme as close to perfect as possible.

Specifically, that means shoring up the tackling that has been so poor the last three weeks.

Lamenting the decline in tackling skills league-wide, Barry said roughly 85 percent of the big plays the Washington defense has surrendered this season were the result of missed tackles.

“When you play games like this,” Barry said, “you’ve got to do what you do really, really well. We haven’t tackled well the last three weeks. We have to tackle.”

NO DETAIL of a football game escapes the attention of New England Coach Bill Belichick, who has managed to apply an element of control to what seems like the chanciest of moments at a football game: the coin flip.

Belichick prefers to say little in his classic press conferences, but when he does speak, he always has something interesting to say about strategy and the micro level on which he approaches the game.

“It’s one of the things we discuss prior to the game,” he said of the coin flip. “We try to do what’s best for that particular game, for that particular situation. Sometimes we actually withhold that decision until we see what the actual field conditions are for that particular game – like last Thursday night (when the Dolphins won the toss and deferred). Games that are weather games, that could affect our decision, too.”

So far, pretty pedestrian, right? But there are other factors, too, and Belichick considers them all. Which may be why his teams have won 19 of the last 25 coin tosses, “an impossible clip.”

“Assuming the coin toss is a 50/50 proposition,” writes Ryan Wilson of CBS Sports. “The probability of winning it at least 19 times in 25 tries is 0.0073. That’s less than three-quarters of 1 percent.”

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