patfanken

... Its late at night and something Rod Woodson said got me thinking. He made the comment that although Brady wasn't sacked much this year, he got hit more than had in recent years, so there may be a need to add OL help in the draft.

Somehow that didn't compute. While not a probowl LT, Light DID make it to Hawaii as an injury replacement, so he doesn't suck. Mankins should have made the Probowl, and you could make a case for Koppen as well, They just extended Neal, so we know they think highly of them, and we have THREE excellent RTs in waiting.(Britt, OCallahan, & Kaczur) One will win and the other 2 plus Russ Hockstein will back up, with Billy Yates doing post grad work at Scharnecchia U for no name Linemen. I don't think we need help there this year...at all. But still Woodson's words rang true. Brady DID seem to get hit more this year, and it got to making me think WHY, and here is what I came up with.

I have defended the WRs all season. Remember we had the 7th best scoring offense in the league, and they racked up a lot of yds during the playoffs. Pretty good for no name WRs, BUT they are what they are. As the season wore on, more and more teams came at Brady with complex Blitz packages than ever before. WHY?? It was a combination of things. Because the WRs weren't quick enough to get separation off the line in blitz control. Because of a lack of familiarity that extended all year (it got better, and I believe we still would have seen a big difference THIS year, even if nothing changed in the personel) AND because Troy Brown had lost too many steps and wasn't as effective in the slot.

Now, again, it wasn't that it was TERRIBLE, just not good enough to make teams pay a big enough price for blitzing, so that they'd stop or slow down. Hence, more blitzing, Brady takes more hits....again not many more sacks, just more hits.

NOW we can see WHY the Pats put such a premium on Welker. Here is guy who will EXCELL against blitzing teams that have to cover him one one one in the slot. Clearly the Pats feel he has the quickness to get off the LOS, he has the smarts to read the defenses, and the toughness to play in the middle. Evidently, they determined that he was the one guy in FA who could improve this critical part of the game and make teams PAY for blitzing.

If he does his job well, then teams will have to blitz less in order to get more men in coverage and Brady doesn't get hit as much as he did last season. It wasn't that the OL sucked, it was they were just facing many more blitzes...and when you blitz, you have less time, and when you have less time, your QB WILL get hit.

Add the RIGHT player, within the RIGHT system, and he not only affects the passing game, but aids in the pass blocking as well. If you think of it this way, getting Welker and paying the price we did to acquire him, makes more sense. We needed a certain kind of WR who could make teams pay for blitzing to much.

Now Im sure that Welker in the slot isn't the only way the Pats can make defenses not want to blitz. You could see it later in the year, when BOTH Gaffney and Caldwell beat their men deep on 9 routes only to have Brady miss them. With another year of preparation, I believe that they will make that connection more often.

You can say the same thing about AD on Defense. Its not just that he will bring his obvious physical skills to the game, by having HIM and a lot of our DB depth back, we will be able to show defensive packages that were thrown out the last 2 years because of all the injuries, The Defense finally has a big 3 in the DL, LBs, and Secondary (Seymour, AD, Samuel) that forces an offense to find each of these elite players on each level of the defense. Sort of like the same kind of problems a great offense who has a great QB, RB, & WR Big Three, would present to a defense. EVERYTHING SEEMS TO INTERCONNECT.

I also think its interesting how the game is evolving so that having a blazing fast safety can impact the game more than the traditional impact positions of CB, OLB, and DE. In other words the great athletes are now playing or being converted to S. Back when I was a SS, that was where you put the guys who were good but not great athletes. The "great" athletes you put a CB. Not any more. More and more you take your CBs and turn them into Safeties. But that's a topic for another thread.

Jeess its March and I'm already getting excited to see how this team will evolve. Good night

RayClay

Of course it was the wide outs. We wanted to retain Givens, then Branch flat out screwed us with a year left on his contract.

We had to cut the guy we traded for and Gaffney didn't put it together until the very end of the season.

Sometimes circumstances cause problems. We weren't horrible on offense, in fact we were third in the AFC.

If we picked up Paul Warfield in the middle of the year, we still would have had hesitation and mis-communication problems.

Sure the Pats like Welker. Just like they'll like the guy that had 21 catches in the playoffs after barely playing in the season. There's no substitute for time.

Also, it's funny how you come to study guys that just kick your butts.

Like Vrabel's sack of Bledsoe, Welker's tap dances through our defense were well noted and the brain trust has a well thumbed book on Mr. Welker.

This should really give him a jump start.

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DarrylS

For all those who think the glass is half empty should read this post, while Light and crew are often criticized they are more than adequate and under contract which insures stability. If an architect were to look at this team from objectively, they would notice that most of our interior guys will be here at least 2 more years. With the exception of Brady, everything is built around them. While many of the other parts are interchangeable based on market and talent, our interior crew remains solid and intact.

What this team has done so far this year is to continue this tradition, continuing to build in the trenches and add complimentary players. Their draft will continue this system. What happened last year, the Deion Branch fiasco, will never happen again. If Samuels decides to sit out, he will be the ultimate looser as he will be labeled a malcontent and loose value on the open market. Is he a 1 year wonder??

It is interconnected, and seems quite purposeful, last year was an exception. Someday they will be studying this model, if they are not already, in Harvard Business school. It works and will continue.

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"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

shmessy

Are you Tim Fox?

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"They (Patriots) may be the greatest team ever" - Chris Mortenson, January 18, 2005 on espn.com

Seneschal2

Ken, three factors for Brady receiving fewer hits:

Welker -- will excel in the short zone like Troy of old.

TE -- specifically - Thomas. Folks don't realize YET how valuable he was in the short area for his QB at Texas. I'm expecting him to be one of Brady's security blankets.

WR -- deep threat missing. DCs won't risk blitzing their Safeties when their CB is getting beat deep. It's a missing ingredient in the offense as a threat.

Quick strikes to Welker and Thomas, a downfield passing game, and a balanced running attack will take some heat off of Brady. I'm not too concerned about the OL as a unit.

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"What we want to try to do is maximize each spot on the roster; we want to be stronger at No. 1 than the opponent, stronger at No. 25 than they are, and stronger at No. 53 than they are, we're always looking to upgrade the talent level on the team, and play together to be functional."
- Bill Belichick -

PatriotsRiot93

First off- GREAT article.

Secondly- if anyone criticizes our OL they should look back at the bunch of misfits we had back when Drew Bledsoe was seeing more grass in his face than TD passes. These guys are such an improvement that it's not even funny.

Thrid- I think you nailed it with the WR's. I think adding to your post- now that we last Danny Graham and Corey Dillon we lose some more of that protection for Tommy Boy. We lost some of that "chipping" ability the offset TE or RB woud be able to provide. Free agency really sucks sometimes. We really have to salute the guys who want to be here....

SamBam39

Yeah, I just think the more hits on brady stemmed from the passing game not being as good without branch and givens - they were so familiar with brady and our system that tom could always hit one of them quickly, and also dillon was a better runner in the past and after maroney got hurt, their running game wasn't as much of a threat either. it's no coincidence that corey's gone now, and welker has been brought in and an offer made to stallworth.

sometimes, even though our system is great, our staff is great, and the roster's been built well, things can go wrong and cause problems. you hope that you can quickly solve them, but sometimes it takes a while and maybe even some re-tooling of the roster. I think that's why brady was discouraged early in the season - it wasn't JUST because branch had left, but he knew it would take a long time before he'd be able to develop that same comfort level with someone else.

Mainefan

It's posts like this that bring me to Patsfans, Patfranken. Great analysis. It also shows what a deep threat could do for us, even if he isn't the most consistent guy around (Stallworth, for instance, or CJ).

SeanBruschi54

Great post Ken as usual.

The thing that really stood out to me though when watching Woodson on NFL network was when he showed us how badly our safety play was last year in the postseason to be exact. Sanders and Hawkins played so deep at points that teams just ripped through our defensive backfield.

Box_O_Rocks

Interconnected or not, there is only one proven way to rattle Tommy, knock him down until he has to squint past the stars to see the receivers.

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