Why can't the O close things out?

[Tunescribe]

The offense did its job; 31 points should be enough to "close out" any team. Defending a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter is the defense's job, regardless of opponent.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Another of these if they just did the opposite it would have worked threads...why doesn't that surprise me, even after a huge win. Some of you seem to be convinced that if every series doesn't pan out it must mean BoB dropped the ball or Brady suddenly lost his touch... The Colts D came out loaded for bear after that score just before the half had them down just 7. That's why we got nothing out of our first posession of the second half. Lucky for us they didn't get anything out of theirs either. Sometimes that happens in these games. It's called playing defense...and making adjustments...

Edleman catches a ball that the replay showed went right through his mitts on the one (which is why Brady looked so miffed) or Branch gets the PI call on 3rd down which he should have and who knows what you'd all be grousing about today. BB is a conservative coach by nature who prefers to persue strategies that entail his QB not throwing 3 picks including down the stretch in a 3 point game. It's tough to move the chains against 8 in the box and a determined pass rush inching closer other than via the quick pass. You go wide to try and spread that D even though you know you won't have time to go deep. In those situations when the game is in the balance you want the ball in the hands of your best players...and on this team today that's Brady and Branch and Welker. The TE's remain rookies and were busy blocking. Although personally I'd trust Woodhead over BJGE if I had to make an alternate choice...because he gives you more options and he has a knack for making something out of nothing.

It's also tough to contain Peyton Manning down the stretch playing prevent...yet most coaches including ours persist in attempting to. We were disciplined (except maybe for Merriweather but what else is new) and conservative and stuck to our game plan yesterday and forced Manning to be the risk taker...and he fell into the trap and took a couple too many.

The thing that irks me about these nit picking second guessing whining threads is if we ran the damn ball three times against 8 in the box and failed to convert you'd all be killing Brady and the OC for not passing...

 

[SanAngeloState]

I think the problem is they want to run to take time off the clock. So it's predictable.

Then it's 3rd and 7 and they want to throw short, again predictable.

So it's 3 and out.

IN the first half, they'd go play action and get 15 yards at a time.

 

[patsfaninpa]

Hmm wasn't running on first down exactly what put them in the coffin on the next drive?

In order to have success, you need to keep the defense guessing, so an simplistic answer like "they should have run" is never going to be the correct answer.

Maybe they should have audibled after seeing the coverage, or maybe even taking a timeout to reconsider their options. But all in all they should just have executed their plays a bit better and they would have won.

We ran it on the first play of our last possession. Ripped off 14yds. Nothing wrong with trying to run some clock when you are up 10. There's no pressure to score. Just run some clock. It's different once they cut it to 3. You have to keep the ball away from Peyton at that point. But, up 10 I'll try to run. Especially, since we were running the ball down their throats all day when Alge and Crump were out there.

 

[ATippett56]

Hmm wasn't running on first down exactly what put them in the coffin on the next drive?

Nope!

1-10-NE 15 (4:40) 42-B.Green-Ellis right tackle to NE 29 for 14 yards (41-A.Bethea, 95-F.Moala).

 

[JoeSixPat]

Simple. They do not stick to the plays that got them the lead in the first place.

I agree with this... and part of that is natural... when you're protecting a lead the last thing you want to do is go pass happy and give them an opportunity for an INT (as we saw with Manning yesterday)

That can be a killer. The smart move generally is to play a safe game, run, take time off the clock.

My concern is less about conservative playcalling - I don't want them to be aggressive and high risk when they don't need to be - but more about execution of the short game.

It would seem that when Defenses are off balance not knowing if the playcalling will be aggressive or conservative, the team does well.

When Defenses know what's coming they prepare and the Pats are unable to execute. It's not ALL that surprising but the team should look at their execution on those plays and determine how to perform better

 

[reflexblue]

Simple. They do not stick to the plays that got them the lead in the first place.

Yes this.......dance with the girl that brung ya to the dance on both sides of the ball.

 

[upstater1]

Another of these if they just did the opposite it would have worked threads...why doesn't that surprise me, even after a huge win. Some of you seem to be convinced that if every series doesn't pan out it must mean BoB dropped the ball or Brady suddenly lost his touch... The Colts D came out loaded for bear after that score just before the half had them down just 7. That's why we got nothing out of our first posession of the second half. Lucky for us they didn't get anything out of theirs either. Sometimes that happens in these games. It's called playing defense...and making adjustments...

Edleman catches a ball that the replay showed went right through his mitts on the one (which is why Brady looked so miffed) or Branch gets the PI call on 3rd down which he should have and who knows what you'd all be grousing about today. BB is a conservative coach by nature who prefers to persue strategies that entail his QB not throwing 3 picks including down the stretch in a 3 point game. It's tough to move the chains against 8 in the box and a determined pass rush inching closer other than via the quick pass. You go wide to try and spread that D even though you know you won't have time to go deep. In those situations when the game is in the balance you want the ball in the hands of your best players...and on this team today that's Brady and Branch and Welker. The TE's remain rookies and were busy blocking. Although personally I'd trust Woodhead over BJGE if I had to make an alternate choice...because he gives you more options and he has a knack for making something out of nothing.

It's also tough to contain Peyton Manning down the stretch playing prevent...yet most coaches including ours persist in attempting to. We were disciplined (except maybe for Merriweather but what else is new) and conservative and stuck to our game plan yesterday and forced Manning to be the risk taker...and he fell into the trap and took a couple too many.

The thing that irks me about these nit picking second guessing whining threads is if we ran the damn ball three times against 8 in the box and failed to convert you'd all be killing Brady and the OC for not passing...

How about play-action?

8 in the box?

Play-action.

The real answer to the debate here is simple: MIX IT UP!

As for the OP, totally disagree with him that it's on Brady. Brady had Freeney come in on him untouched, he threw it at Welker's feet for a reason.

 

[borg]

Brady locks onto Welker or Woodhead, throws underneath and hopes the receiver can get to the marker. He needs to trust his TEs in crunch time. If Taylor ever returns, there is the big back they can lean on for the power running game. BJGE has been nice, be he doesn't break tackles. And can I add, Sammy Morris looks slooooowww.

 

[PromisedLand]

Simple. They do not stick to the plays that got them the lead in the first place.

Exactly. It's called sitting on the lead, and it comes down to coaching strategy, and in this case it almost backfired.

 

[D-Money]

This has to do with the damn coaching staff.They get very conservative with the playcalling!We got away with one yesterday.They almost blew it again!Play 4 quarters!They still havent played all 4th quarters in a game!

 

[WhiZa]

Brady locks onto Welker or Woodhead, throws underneath and hopes the receiver can get to the marker. He needs to trust his TEs in crunch time. If Taylor ever returns, there is the big back they can lean on for the power running game. BJGE has been nice, be he doesn't break tackles. And can I add, Sammy Morris looks slooooowww.

Even Branch has been successful on that slant route, but Brady does seem to be locking in between the hashes.

 

[RayClay]

Already a thread on this, wasn't worth it the first time.

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...699893-thoughts-patriots-prevent-offense.html

Brady - 76% completion...19 of 25 for 186 yards and a pair touchdowns for a quarterback rating of 123.1.

No interceptions, 1 sack

B. Green-Ellis 21.... 96.... 4.6....1....16
D. Woodhead 7.......69.....9.9....1....36

That's all we have. if you are expecting a team that can pass all day without being intercepted, or sacked more than once, sorry.

Do you think we should play Mannings game and throw it up for grabs for sixty minutes? I guess if we want to give them a shot at three interceptions.

There is another team on the field. Quite an impressive offensive team and a pretty damned opportunistic and fast defense in terms of sacks and turnovers if we're silly enough to give them those shots. Our coach prefers not to.

We'll never know how many ways we could have lost due to turnovers and sacks, because our coach won't let us.

We don't have an unstoppable grinding back like a Dillon, few teams do. it's time for a little reality check on this board. these are the players we have, we need them all to beat top teams, which we have.

We can slightly improve our clock killing offense. I doubt a mortal Brady can get much better. If you consider games like this so awful you can hardly watch, you might turn to the housewives of new jersey or something, because it's just not easy to beat top teams

 

[RayClay]

This has to do with the damn coaching staff.They get very conservative with the playcalling!We got away with one yesterday.They almost blew it again!Play 4 quarters!They still havent played all 4th quarters in a game!

Well, that strategy has failed to bring us a Super Bowl trophy 7 out of 10 years, so maybe we should just throw it up for grabs in the 4th quarter and see what happens.

 

[DaBruinz]

I said it in the post game thread that I didn't understand why Matt Patricia moved them to the prevent. Especially after last year's debacle in Indy when they did the same thing.

The only time a lead is safe with Payme A Ton Manning at the helm is when there is more than 2 scores on the board and less than 10 seconds left in the game. Otherwise, you have to keep the pedal down on defense..

 

[DaBruinz]

Already a thread on this, wasn't worth it the first time.

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...699893-thoughts-patriots-prevent-offense.html

Brady - 76% completion...19 of 25 for 186 yards and a pair touchdowns for a quarterback rating of 123.1.

No interceptions, 1 sack

B. Green-Ellis 21.... 96.... 4.6....1....16
D. Woodhead 7.......69.....9.9....1....36

That's all we have. if you are expecting a team that can pass all day without being intercepted, or sacked more than once, sorry.

Do you think we should play Mannings game and throw it up for grabs for sixty minutes? I guess if we want to give them a shot at three interceptions.

There is another team on the field. Quite an impressive offensive team and a pretty damned opportunistic and fast defense in terms of sacks and turnovers if we're silly enough to give them those shots. Our coach prefers not to.

We'll never know how many ways we could have lost due to turnovers and sacks, because our coach won't let us.

We don't have an unstoppable grinding back like a Dillon, few teams do. it's time for a little reality check on this board. these are the players we have, we need them all to beat top teams, which we have.

We can slightly improve our clock killing offense. I doubt a mortal Brady can get much better. If you consider games like this so awful you can hardly watch, you might turn to the housewives of new jersey or something, because it's just not easy to beat top teams

While the Pats don't have a Corey Dillon, they do have 2 very capable backs in LawFirm and Woodhead. The issue is execution. I was disappointed that we didn't see more sweeps to the wide side of the field with Woodhead. He has the speed to get out there, around the TEs and get up field. There used to be an addage in football "We run the same play until they stop it". Yet, the Pats never seem to do that. They have success once or twice with a play and then they never use it for the rest of the game..

I was disappointed that they didn't use more Play-Action in the 2nd half and didn't get Tate more involved with it. If thee was a team who's DB that could have been done on, it was the Colts.

 

[RayClay]

I said it in the post game thread that I didn't understand why Matt Patricia moved them to the prevent. Especially after last year's debacle in Indy when they did the same thing.

The only time a lead is safe with Payme A Ton Manning at the helm is when there is more than 2 scores on the board and less than 10 seconds left in the game. Otherwise, you have to keep the pedal down on defense..

The pedal being what? Manning is pretty hard to sack and we did get three interceptions. Are you suggesting our secondary is so good we don't need to play deep?

 

[JFK]

We need to get a RB that can carry the team. BJGE is a good straight forward RB but when he has to take it outside, his speed kills it. Sometimes he really has no choice but to run the ball outside but when he does, he gets tackled before he can gain any substantial yard. We need to get another RB. It would seem unfair because BJGE gives his all and has helped this team but he doesn't have breakaway speed. Getting an Ingram would mean Brady passing less or BJGE goes from about 15 runs a game to five. Idk what message it would send to BJGE...Maybe we trade him.

 

[RayClay]

While the Pats don't have a Corey Dillon, they do have 2 very capable backs in LawFirm and Woodhead. The issue is execution. I was disappointed that we didn't see more sweeps to the wide side of the field with Woodhead. He has the speed to get out there, around the TEs and get up field. There used to be an addage in football "We run the same play until they stop it". Yet, the Pats never seem to do that. They have success once or twice with a play and then they never use it for the rest of the game..

I was disappointed that they didn't use more Play-Action in the 2nd half and didn't get Tate more involved with it. If thee was a team who's DB that could have been done on, it was the Colts.

I agree we need to continue every game working on executing our ball control defense. I wouldn't mind seeing Sammy in more and our play calling and execution in those areas needs to sharpen. Obviously, more inventive quick, safe passes/screens too.

Others think we should just keep flinging it, which I disagree with. If you pile up points against Peyton, you've done well. Trying to outgun him for 4 quarters is just playing the other mans game.

We made him gamble, and it paid off, even if it was nerve wracking.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Already a thread on this, wasn't worth it the first time.

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...699893-thoughts-patriots-prevent-offense.html

Brady - 76% completion...19 of 25 for 186 yards and a pair touchdowns for a quarterback rating of 123.1.

No interceptions, 1 sack

B. Green-Ellis 21.... 96.... 4.6....1....16
D. Woodhead 7.......69.....9.9....1....36

That's all we have. if you are expecting a team that can pass all day without being intercepted, or sacked more than once, sorry.

Do you think we should play Mannings game and throw it up for grabs for sixty minutes? I guess if we want to give them a shot at three interceptions.

There is another team on the field. Quite an impressive offensive team and a pretty damned opportunistic and fast defense in terms of sacks and turnovers if we're silly enough to give them those shots. Our coach prefers not to.

We'll never know how many ways we could have lost due to turnovers and sacks, because our coach won't let us.

We don't have an unstoppable grinding back like a Dillon, few teams do. it's time for a little reality check on this board. these are the players we have, we need them all to beat top teams, which we have.

We can slightly improve our clock killing offense. I doubt a mortal Brady can get much better. If you consider games like this so awful you can hardly watch, you might turn to the housewives of new jersey or something, because it's just not easy to beat top teams

Post of the year candidate Ray...:rocker: