jeffbiologist

Its not news that our winning big last year took alot of teams out of their gameplans early and often abandoning the run. We play the AFC and NFC west, teams which emphasize the run. Our front 3 are very good and with hope big Sey is back in his all-pro form. But our ILBs have been suspect, and I hesitate to point to the 170+yds the Bucs ran on us. YES, mostly on our subs, but our depth at NT/DT is at least as suspect as our depth at QB.
Like with Brady, I hope we can change the game and open it up because I dont think this defense is built to play close games. And we have to find another 10 turnovers from somewhere after Asante left. I could be wrong, but the success and failure of this team lies with the health and productivity of BOTH #12 and #75.

LuRkeR1978

Have you seen our front 7? Other than those few times Bruschi gets run over by a guard, I think they will be just fine.

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BelichickFan

Our front seven is as good as anyone could hope for. The overeaction to a PRESEASON game is just plain stupid. If Vince gets hurt ? Well no team can replace someone like that just like we can't replace Brady. We would lose some quality and have to make some scheme adjustments. But our run defense is fairly low on the list of things to be concerned about.

jeffbiologist

I think that our run defense stats last year were misleading at best. We didnt really do anything to improve it(right now I am not going to say adding a ROOKIE in Seau's place is an improvement-YET)later in the year maybe... My point is that is I think we will be playing more close games, games that running teams can stay in their gameplan. I also think that teams got the idea that keeping Brady et al off the field keeps them in the game(slowing the games down--running). Limiting posessions works against us, look at the number of posessions in the close games vs the blowouts.....I am not a preseason chicken little here, I know that stuff doesnt count. But I dont know if this will be the big bad pats D we have gotten used to.

Phoenix111

As great as bruschi has been over the years, this seems to be the norm now

Ochmed Jones

A couple of things about our run defense.

1.) It looked to me like the Pats LBers struggled to get off blocks in the first half.

2.) The ILB's were horrible, especially Mayo. He blew up a FB in the hole on one play, while the RB went scampering on by untouched. On a long Dunn run in the first quarter, Mayo ran into the back of a Patriot, instead of filling his lane, which is exactly where Dunn ran. Guyton was completely overwhelmed all night.

3.) Woods could not set the edge all night. He stayed high and they blew him up on a egular basis.

4.) No fill from the safeties. Granted our top two safeties did not play and our 3rd safety got injured. But you have to figure in a normal regular season game, Rodney cleans up a lot of Mayo's mistakes for significantly less damage than we endured.

Nothing that happened out there to our defense is not fixable, unless you count Mayo's inexperience. BB will clean these things up and we should be much the same on defense as last year by the season opener.

PS: I look for the Pats to be in a lot of soft zone defense for the first half of the season, so get used to seeing Hobbs and Bryant playing off receivers and giving up a ton of 7 yard stop and sideline patterns.

signbabybrady

I am not concerned the front 7 will be a strenght of this team. Don't forget how vanilla the defensive schemes were.

I also think that while we don't have a clear cut back up at nose tackle we do have two solid back ups on our dline in Wright and Green. If Vince went down I think the Nose would be filled by Warren and Seymour and Wright and Green would fill in the ends. I know it is not ideal to have Warren and Sey on the nose but it isn't ideal to have Vince be hurt. That is a long term solution if it were a week or two they may just fill his spot by Wright and scheme a little different.

Just my opinion on how they back up the nose.

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cstjohn17

The run defense was damn good when it mattered most last year. In the playoffs they faced 3 of the top 5 rushing attacks (Jacksonsville, San Diego & New York). They held each one of them well below their seasonal average. The D Line was great.

The preseason has not been so great but the idea of the pre-season is to get players ready for the real thing. We should see the starters play a lot more on Friday, some of the hitting and tackling just can't be simulated. Plus Wilfork is playing for money which always helps.

The ILB had issues, Mayo will get better but as I watched the game I thought. Damn this defense would be a lot better with Seau / Bruschi / Mayo playing in a rotation. I don't think Bruschi or Mayo will hold up over the whole season especially against the run heavy team the Patriots will be facing.

bradmahn

Why weren't there posts about how great Our RUN defense was going to be in 2008 when they held Baltimore to 35 total yards?

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I don't like Dungy and that's because he [was] the head coach of the Colts. Period. End of question. The degree to which I like a player or coach is predicated solely on the color of the laundry they wear on Sunday. When fans admit this and stop bashing players and coaches for any other reason, the world of sports will be infinitely improved.

jeffbiologist

Not everyone makes knee-jerk threads about preseason. My point may be fortuitous, but it was not based on what happened Sunday nite. It was made because I havent seen Hobson do anything and I think there is some Mayo-flavored Kool-aid out there making the rounds. I would be ALOT more confident with either Seau in camp or a draft pick playing well in a backup role.