Oswlek

I want to take a moment and throw a big compliment Cincy's way. Despite being undermanned at the LB position and beat up at CB, they fought very hard and likely would have beaten 20 or so of the teams in this league. Despite NE having decent rushing success, Cincy made it a lot harder than most predicted and they got good pressure on Brady. Their OL was excellent, stifling NE's pass rush for nearly the entire game after their first series. NE had to work very hard to put their points on the board.

On to the thoughts:

* Did anyone see Parcells go after Steve Young when Young tried to get preachy about cameragate? He talked about how two straight years, SF's coach to QB communication went down during their scripted first 15 plays. Since this mandated that neither team use that system, Parcells was insinuating that SF was intentionally leveraging their lack of playcalling need to hinder the other team's ability to call plays. I would say that is pretty nefarious. And considering that Young just sat there with a stupid smile on his face I would say it is likely true.

All that said, ESPN's discussions of cameragate were reminiscent of a conversation where one person thinks he has something witty to say, but the opportunity doesn't arrive until well after the comment is still relevent. And yet he says it anyway. Akward and uncomfortable.

* Does anyone else think that Emmitt Smith feels that Morris' "eyes lead his feet"?

* Brady's int was terrible. Not only was it a bad throw, it was a horrendous decision. Welker was blanketed, but what makes it such a strange throw is that the coverage seemed pretty basic. Leon Hall was running underneath Welker with help over the top. Brady could have thrown that ball 100 times and it probably wouldn't have been caught once. Frankly, for most of the game, Brady looked like he wasn't feeling well. If this were last year, we might have to suffer through hoards of people talking about his body language because he really looked phbysically like he did at the beginning of last season.

* How in hell did Moss catch that first TD? He is a complete freak. I love how, not only does he get the ball tucked away immediately, but he is excellent at twisting his body away from the DB to ensure that the ball cannot be stripped.

* More on Moss, this was a game that nobody expected from him going into this season. Someone on the postgame show talked about how "Moss gets so open" but that wasn't the case. Unlike the first couple games, Cincy did an outstanding job of taking away the deep ball, so Moss had to run a lot of comeback routes and slants to get his catches. Not that we really needed to see any evidence, but we got it. Teams can't do much better at covering Moss than Cincy did and he still went for 100 and 2TDs.

* Some notable blocks. On Morris' 4th down TD, what looked like a defender filling the gap ended up being a guy getting dominated by Ben Watson. The defender did an OK job of bakcing into the hole, but Watson held his block the entire time and threw the guy to the ground so Morris could just step right over him. That might have been the best block of Watson's career.

Also, I didn't see who the RT was on the opening drive, but he did a nice job of peeling back and taking out a guy who looked like he had an open shot at Tommy. That was the play were Brady slid up in the pocket and hit Faulk who ran for about 20 yards up the middle of the field. It is pretty amazing how close it was to being a strip sack.

* Hey, Brandon come over here. Listen Meriweather, you are winning by three scores late in the game. Settle the **** down. Don't act like the punk that people accused you of being.

* Meriweather still hasn't shown the "instincts" in coverage that so many people described, but he certainly can tackle. And it isn't as if he is totally out of position, he just isn't making big plays.

* I was a firm believer that Stallworth would prove worthy of his contract, but I have to say that he has yet to help me out any. Sure he looks quick out there, but with all the attention that Moss and Welker got yesterday, he should have done a little more, IMHO. And he definitely should have caught that ball that went right through his arms. It was tough, but does anyone belive that Moss misses it?

I'm sure that I am forgetting something, but I have to run. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

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amazinPats

Great comments! I was drinking too much beer during the game to notice anything special.

thomas144

you're posting this both here and on Patriots planet? that's 2x too long to read!

ArmyPatsFan

Yup...that Brady to Stallworth ball that was dropped was an INCREDIBLE throw. At first prior to seeing the replay I though it was a poor throw and likely to be intercepted....but Brady put that ball right in the basket for Stallworth....he flubbed it.

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"An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of bull****."
- General George Patton Jr (...hmm maybe BB)

Ethan 55

I don't know about that...it hit Stallworth in the breadbasket, but he was crumpled on the ground at that point, meaning he had to do a lot of contorting to get to that ball. It's not as if he was hit in the numbers on a curl or hit in the hands on a fly pattern. That would have been an amazing catch if he had held onto it.

Robdude

See now i had a different take. I left the game thinking that the Pats are finally starting to find ways to use Stallworth. He was not really needed in the first 3 games but Cinci's D played better then anyone else has so far. Stallworth looked quick when he had the ball and seemed to be where he was needed. He is pretty much our third option (or fourth) so he is not going to see a lot of balls but I thought he did well with what was thrown his way. Along with this it was nice to see more balls thrown to him in this game.

patsox23

FANTASTIC post, as usual.

I'm not sure I agree so vociferously with you on Meriweather. I don't mind the fire, I have no doubt TJ was being a tool, and I like the fact that Meriweather has the confidence to not back down. That said, he does need to dial it down a notch, and as I said last night, the end-result is a harmless (and penalty-less) teaching opportunity.

Couldn't agree more on the props to the Bengals. I thought they played quite well, especially so undermanned. That was a tougher game than the scoreboard indicates - in the same way that the first three games were EASIER than even those lopsided scores appeared to suggest.

The ESPN after-the-fact camera-gate wrap-up - right on the nose. It was so bizarre and even MORE disingenous, if that's even possible. God bless the Tuna.

Nothing will make me laugh harder today than your deadpan question about Emmitt Smith. That guy is so F-ing dumb, he said it the first time (a good observation) and some producer tried to encourage him (because he is otherwise so F-ing dumb) and he just kept flogging that point, wild-eyed, excited to be right for once. HILARIOUS.

Great work on the post, thanks.

patsox23

Agree with some of the others re: Stallworth. I think that was a tougher catch than it may appear ('though probably still should've caught it), but I think he had a really good game, and I love the fact that his lack of touches doesn't seem to bother him, as long as we keep winning.

PatsFan37

Great post, Owslek. Agree completely on Cincy's effort and toughness in the first half (before the game got out of control). They made a game of it. ESPN must have been delighted about that.

Parcells was great. Just great. He can vacation in Nantucket this summer, now that Eric is banned from the island.

I disagree a bit on Stallworth, not so much on the one catch, I'll have to look at that, but on his other catches. He showed effort and grit making the catches and running for hard extra hards. I think a bit of Welker is rubbing off on him. He's a handful for the DBs to tackle. It almost seems as if the WRs are working as a team, much like the RBs, helping each other play as tough as possible and celebrating their wins together. Stallworth was first down the field to congratulate Moss.

This morning, I thought I heard Holley saying on WEEI that Kaczur had a tremendous play where he pulled across the LOS and executed a devastaing block. So it looks like Kaczur had a great game. Overall, the OLine did nicely, again. I'll have to watch again, but it seems that Watson had another good game and K.Brady was in there for most of the snaps, so the TEs are looking great. Unfortunately, Thomas went out early with a leg injury. Hope he didn't re-injure his foot. If he did, they'll be thin on TEs and we'll see O'C back out there again as a blocking TE.

Love that BB puts Vrabel in for TDs. Vrabel does anything and everything BB asks, playing ILB, playing hurt, playing deep in the 4th qtr even in pre-season. I'm guessing this is a bit of candy BB likes to toss his way. Of course he wouldn't do it if Vrabel wasn't such a great goal-line TE.

ctpatsfan77

I fixed your post for you.

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"Momentum was quickly snatched away by New England, who once again proved that any Patriot, at any moment, can make a play." —Inside the NFL, Packers v. Patriots

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