letekro

It is his job to rein in McDaniels. Clearly, BB has an almost irrational fear of Manning at this point and I think that contributed to all the desperation we saw on offense. BB simply doesn't trust his D enough to just pound away with the run. Sanders made a few plays on run blitzes and instead of continuing to pound and mixing in liberal amounts of playaction, we panicked. I think Brady picked up some of this desperate attitude from his coach and that contributed to his poor play.

D-cleater

I don't see how you can put 5 turnovers on the coaching staff. This was the reason we lost the game, not the play calling, although I agree we didn't try to run the ball enough in the second half and I have no idea what the 'gimick' plays were suppossed to accomplish.

TomBrady'sGoat

The guy wins so many more than he loses that I can't really muster any blame here.

Besides, the coaching staff didn't turn the ball over 5 times. The coaching staff didn't commit inopportune penalties.

BelichickFan

If Sanders hadn't been playing I would agree. The Colts are much better against the run with him. We still ran effectively but this run defense isn't as bad as it's looked with Sanders in there. We simply left a lot of yards on the field with a bad passing game - whether they were Brady's fault or the WR not being in the right place, I don't know.

DarrylS

Coaches coach and players execute, do not know how you can blame McDaniels for that debacle.. FYI the game plan is developed by McDaniels and his staff, reviewed by BB and then tweaked by #12. There are a lot of checks and balances here, and when gametime comes it is time to execute. I got the feeling last night that the receivers are still not on the same page at Brady as the interceptions were away from them. The Faulk turnover should have been caught, and there were a couple of drops. Difficult to blame anyone except the whole team, they were outplayed and outcoached.

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BlueHen

I was yelling at the TV when they came out in the 2nd half passing first...it was obvious the colts were not gonna let brady throw deep and air it out...and we had lots of rushing game in the 1st half.

Bad strategy...

rtunstal

Let?s all face it they were out played and out coached. The better team won. I am a die-hard pats fan, but that was just bad playing on both sides of the ball. This team had a chance to make a statement with this game and they screwed it up with uncommon mistakes. This will only cement the saying that the pats are over hyped and that the only teams they can beat are bad teams.

Some people would like to blame the play calling (as bad as it was) with all the trickery, but if they had worked we would have all been ecstatic about how good they are and that no one can stop them now. But the hard fact is this team needs to get a whole lot better if they want to go far in the play offs, if they don?t they will be out of it very quickly.

As of right now the colts are the best in the league I know this is not saying much because they always lose in the play offs, but if they play everyone the way the played the pats the could win the SB. They came into this game with a chip on their shoulders about how they only won last year because our defense was all beat up. Well this time they weren?t and they beat the pats. Lets not give any accuses they just beat the pats.

The pats are a good team but they needed to play their type of game not the Colts type of game. They should?ve played Patriot football instead they played Manning football. The Colts have one of the best QB/WR tandems in the history of the NFL. Payton and Marvin have been together for at least 8-9 years now, so they will be good together. Brady needed to play his style instead of trying to compete with Manning. This has what made Brady one of the best QB in the game today. Throwing into 3-man coverage?s is asinine, especially when you have open wide receivers underneath. Brady has done that in the past, but remember he had been with Deion and DG for at least 2-3 seasons before he trusted them enough to do that. I can honestly say if he had played his style and not Manning?s, the game would of probably had a different outcome.

The Patriots lost so let us all be good fans and say congratulation to the Colts because they deserved the win and they were the better team that night.

chris_in_sunnyvale

I agree that coaching played a large role in this loss...

1. Way too many obvious passing formations, playing right into the Colts hands. The Colts have trouble against the run. There were too many empty backfield formations which let the Colts LBs and safeties off the hook for worrying about the run. Even if the Pats still passed as much as they did, I would have been more accepting of it if the plays were done out of more run-look sets.

2. No bump-and-run until late in the 2nd half. The Pats CBs were playing a mile off the line for the bulk of 3 quarters. It wasn't until really late in the game when they went to a bump on the line which was effective...just as it was in the 20-3 playoff win. I wonder if the playing scared crap was Pees' call and BB overturned him and told him to hit those receivers.

3. No Jarvis Green until late in the 2nd half. For whatever reason, Green is a handful for the Colts linemen. I expected him to see more action than he did, especially in the first half. Once he came in for regular usage in the 2nd half, the D started getting more pressure. Again, I wonder if this was an executive decision by BB over Pees.

These three items, especially the last two, disappointed me because they had worked so well in the playoff matchups. Why the Pats abandoned things that have worked in the past, I don't know.

All that being said, I must give props to Manning...he made some Brett Favre-in-his-prime-like throws while backpedalling away from pressure. I didn't think he had that kind of arm. I also must give props to Bob Sanders. He brings a Rodney-like presence to that secondary.

Regards,
Chris

PaulNEPats

I was expecting a gameplan similar to the Cincinnati game. On Offense, gash them with the run, and on D, run a lot of zone. It seemed like the opposite happened in this one, and it costed them. The failure of this game rests on everyone, I don't think you can single any one unit out.

Irish Hooligan

My two cents, please feel free to correct any mis-information I give because:

A. I drank 10 beers during the course of the game.
B. I am biased. Really biased. I love the Pats and I HATE the Colts.

I felt that New England beat themselves last night. I counted four penalties in the first half on NE on third down plays that the D held, giving the Colts first downs.

We committed 5 turnovers as a team.

The officals were shakey and inconsistant for both teams, BUT
the Pats blitzed A TON and the Colts (in my drunken biased opinion) Held A TON and to my recolection they were not flagged for holding one time. In an NFL game, not once. I hope I am wrong on this.

The taunting call on Brown and the Illegal hands call on Vrable made me absolutly sick. I always felt that even if we did come back the officals were waiting to impact the game pro Colts.

The Harrison TD catch in the 3rd Quarter might be the best catch I've seen. It also made me sick.

The Celtics absolutely suck.

The Colts proved to me last night that we are a better team than them. They were lucky, they minimized mistakes, they played well and we played very poorly and they only won by 7.

The kicking situation scares the living hell out me in relation to making a run in the playoffs.

The only reason I was able to even go to sleep after the game was seeing the post game press conf. on ESPN news with BB.

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