PatsFaninAZ

Some thoughts, in no particular order. Yesterday reminded me quite a bit of our championship teams. A very important game that we made closer than we should have. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of the Superbowl against the Eagles. At the end of the day, it was a huge win, with a healthy dose of angst along the way. The drive to make it 24 was a championship drive all the way. Incredibly impressive. Anyway, some thoughts.

1) Graham's false start was the play of the game, in my opinion. It took what would have been an easier win and made it a game. Third and one inside field goal range, there's simply no excuse. Gost could have fixed the problem by making a long kick, but no such luck. Gotta make that one next time Gost. "Rookie" perhaps, but there are no rookies any more. Those kicks are going to be the difference between winning and losing from here on out.

2) Replay should have overturned the fumble at the end of the game. It looked like a clear forward pass to me. I'm sure others will disagree, but if we had lost like that, I'd be furious at that call. Replay exists to get that right, and we got lucky. We got a few lame calls the other way, so I'm not prepared to say that the other guys go jobbed, and I think we would have stopped them anyway, but bad call.

3) Like many of you, I just don't know what to make about Tom Brady. He missed several plays that looked open that would have won the game. But then again, on other plays he looked like Dan Marino. Just getting used to a new receiver corps, I guess. That said, his most important stat by far was zero picks. You can always pick a "story of the game," but my story of the game is that Brady threw zero picks in a game where one pick probably would have lost the game.

4) Freaking glad to see Rodney back. Look out AFC, as they said on tv yesterday, the fox is back in the henhouse.

BelichickFan

Graham's twitch was huge. Cost us a first down and would have made the game not likely to be close. Oh well, it happened. Graham still isn't a big money player for me.

I disagree on the fumble. One angle I though you were right but the reverse angle it clearly looked to me like the ball moved out before the arm went forward. No way was it definitive between the various angles.

On Gostkowski, I hope he makes more than he misses in that situation but to say he's "got to" make a 49 yarder isn't being fair to him. That's a tough kick and is not a 50-50 proposition for any kicker in any situation, and it's certainly not a "got to".

JR4

Do you have the game recorded? Have you looked at it closely?
Are you saying the the defenders arm, that did make contact
with the passer's arm, was not the cause of initial movement of
the passers arm going forward?
Does your film clearly show that?

PatsFaninAZ

I do have the game recorded. I'm not sure the question you're asking is the relevant one, though. You can hit a player's hand before he starts a throwing motion and have it still be an incomplete pass, so long as the hit does not totally dislodge the ball.

But anyway, I thought rather clearly it was not an empty hand situation. I thought the passer was moving his arm forward of his own volition before the ball lost contact with his hand. Yes, his arm arguably was being helped by the hit as well, but it wasn't an empty hand coming forward.

One other interesting thing about that play -- I think you could arguably call it a tuck rule incompletion too. He started a forward motion, it appeared to me, about 5 seconds before the fumble and never tucked. But I don't think the officials were looking for that on replay -- just at the empty hand issue.

In any event, we got the call, so I'm not going to complain. Just saying I would have been apoplectic if we'd lost on that play.