Reiss:Angelo's view on misguided Pats plan

[Danger Zone]

Maybe this has been answered.. but who was out there that we could have brought in in June that would have put us over the top for the year?

Like Supafly, though perhaps not as intelligibly, I can see why people are criticizing Belichick for not shoring up the receiver position a bit more this year.

even I am doing it.

.. but in my mind, what puts me back on the IBIT side of the coin (other than just being a huge Belichick homer) is the question, what are we really criticizing him for?

He got us 11 points away from the Superbowl despite our star CB being intentionally taken out early in the game.

Yes, Talib is injury prone, but are we really going to criticize Belichick for not shoring up the secondary as well because he should have known Talib was injury prone?

 

[Deus Irae]

1. I understand what you are saying but injury histories are the rule rather than the exception in the NFL. None of the injuries to Gronk or Amendola was any more predictable than Mayo's, whose history was clean, or Vollmer's, whose bad back does not portend a broken leg.

People keep making this claim. The claim continues to be untrue. Players with injury histories are players with injury histories for a reason.

Also, BB's mistake was not the Amendola signing. It was the combination of moves.

Letting both Welker and Lloyd go meant no reliable slot WR and no (semi) reliable outside WR. It also meant that every veteran WR on the roster was an injury prone player, and meant that the team had to count on them staying healthy.

Counting on injury prone TEs and not getting a 3rd receiving TE when your planning to use the TEs as your focal point. By doing this, you're banking on unreliable players being reliable.

Counting on non-elite WRs to play like seasoned vets as rookies.

Counting on injury guy as the RB3.


He banked on a whole bunch of things not happening, when each one of them was likely to happen. That's bad planning.

 

[Deus Irae]

Remember that Donald Jones had to retire because of kidney problems. He may of been the veteran presence to ease in the rookies that BB wanted.

Donald Jones sucked in Buffalo as well as NE. He was never going to be the answer.

 

[Danger Zone]

And while I agree, that Deus has a tiny bit of meat on this particular bone.. criticizing Belichick and calling those that defend him sheep is something of a ritual (or a symptom) for him.

He does it every year. Year in and year out.

If we won the Superbowl, Deus would still be criticizing Belichick for not making the moves that would have made winning it easier.

You think I kid.

 

[patsinthesnow]

Donald Jones sucked in Buffalo as well as NE. He was never going to be the answer.

As a potential stop gap WR2/option 4, maybe. Who else was there?

WalterFootball.com: 2013 NFL Free Agents - Wide Receivers

The only other bargain WR that did anything was Avery, and he still cost close to 3 million a year.

Did BB show poor planning? Pretty much with the panic Amendola signing. But Angelo's argument is that BB didn't load the offense enough.

9 million a year TE1
8 million a year TE2
6 million a year WR/slot WR1
2nd round WR
4th round WR
Ballard/Jones/Jenkins bargain signings
Blount trade

We spent 15 million dollars on two TEs and tendered our TE3 at 1.3 million. Your complaining about not spending more $$$/draft capital on a TE3.....?

Did BB spend the resources correctly and did BB spend enough resources are two different arguments IMO.

 

[Observer]

Jerry Angelo has a good point. And I think that this comment from the comment section has a good point too:

"this exposes once again the fatal flaw of the belichick era: an inability to draft playmakers or even viable starters at wideout. he has been there 14 years and drafted exactly 1 receiver who made any kind of mark, deon branch. he is in love with a type of player and playmakers fall out of his field of vision. they have wasted so many draft pics and not taken advantage of the free agent market to get even modest acquisitions. this is why I say brady should make 50 million a year because he is being undermined by a poor drafting philosophy and lack of talent evaluation."

 

[Uncle Rico]

Reiss is on the mark in the last 2 paragraphs of his response.

Yup, saved me some typing. The "plan" could not foresee how the season turned out as far as the two tight ends were concerned. We got just a taste of how much different this offense was with Gronk; having him and the other guy simply would have made a world of difference. Heck even a healthy Dobson OR Thompkins could have helped make enough of a difference at the end.

 

[BritPat]

I hate reading the thoughts of failed players/coaches/GM's.

There are reasons guys like Angelo aren't employed any more - they were bad at their jobs. And what would Angelo know about elite quarterbacks? He failed to find any as DPP in Tampa, and failed miserably in Chicago as GM until McDaniels lost his **** and offered up Mr. Bottom Lip on a plate.

GTFO, and take your hindsight elsewhere.

 

[primetime]

Jerry Angelo has a good point. And I think that this comment from the comment section has a good point too:

"this exposes once again the fatal flaw of the belichick era: an inability to draft playmakers or even viable starters at wideout. he has been there 14 years and drafted exactly 1 receiver who made any kind of mark, deon branch. he is in love with a type of player and playmakers fall out of his field of vision. they have wasted so many draft pics and not taken advantage of the free agent market to get even modest acquisitions. this is why I say brady should make 50 million a year because he is being undermined by a poor drafting philosophy and lack of talent evaluation."

He also drafted David Givens and Julian Edelman.

He hasn't drafted that many wideouts, and there's a reason for that. Branch/Givens/Brown (the latter of whom was inherited) was the wideout grouping of choice for the first part of the decade, Moss/Welker the grouping for the second part, both of whom were acquired in trades (Welker was, for all intents and purposes, a free agent signing).

 

[Deus Irae]

Yup, saved me some typing. The "plan" could not foresee how the season turned out as far as the two tight ends were concerned. We got just a taste of how much different this offense was with Gronk; having him and the other guy simply would have made a world of difference. Heck even a healthy Dobson OR Thompkins could have helped make enough of a difference at the end.

Why was it impossible for BB to see what everyone on this board spent much of the offseason talking about? Was it unforeseeable that AHern would go Sopranos? Sure, let's give that as a yes since, even with warning signs, that's not something you expect from an NFL player. But it wasn't unforeseeable that AHern would miss time (14,14,10 games in his firest 3 years). It certainly wasn't unforeseeable that Amendola and/or Vereen would get hurt. It certainly wasn't unforeseeable that Gronk would be slow getting back from his injury and/or would get hurt again. It certainly wasn't unforeseeable that rookie WRs would struggle in the NFL. It certainly wasn't unforeseeable that Vollmer would get hurt again, either, or that Wendell would struggle at center.


So, other than the extreme nature of Hernandez' absence, what was unforeseeable? If you changed Hernandez' situation from murder suspect to blown ACL, the most unforeseeable thing about the Patriots offense this year would have been Edelman playing all 16 games.

 

[fnordcircle]

And if we had spent more cap $$ on the offense he would have written an article about how the team can't keep trying to fix its playoff woes by ignoring the defense.

 

[Sciz]

So, other than the extreme nature of Hernandez' absence, what was unforeseeable? If you changed Hernandez' situation from murder suspect to blown ACL, the most unforeseeable thing about the Patriots offense this year would have been Edelman playing all 16 games.

None of those alone were necessarily unforeseeable. Essentially all of them happening in the same season was.

If you're rolling 10 dice, it's not surprising if any one die is a 6. It is surprising if eight of them are.

 

[Mack Herron]

People keep making this claim. The claim continues to be untrue. Players with injury histories are players with injury histories for a reason.

Your claim may or may not be true. The term "injury prone" seems to lie largely in the eye of the beholder. Edelman was injury prone but healthy, while Mayo was not injury prone and injured. So it is not obvious to me that past injuries are good predictors of future injuries. Perhaps you are better able to foresee injuries and which players the team can and cannot count on. But did you in fact predict any of the injuries you claim were predictable? Did you point out before the fact that BB should not rely on the TEs or DA because of injuries? I am simply asking for evidence that we can predict who will be injured. Surely you will appreciate the value of such evidence. It would be a rather interesting exercise, I suggest, if you (or others) would list the players who we can and cannot count on in 2014.

http://nesn.com/2014/01/jerry-angel...ck-built-patriots-offense-wrong-is-laughable/

 

[fnordcircle]

Still waiting for people to give any reasonable explanation of the term 'injury prone' because unless you can give me some sort of rationale on how a groin injury relates to a collarbone injury relates to a dislocated elbow I'm going to assume that you're one of those people who sees Jesus' face in a potato chip.

 

[manxman2601]

Still waiting for people to give any reasonable explanation of the term 'injury prone' because unless you can give me some sort of rationale on how a groin injury relates to a collarbone injury relates to a dislocated elbow I'm going to assume that you're one of those people who sees Jesus' face in a potato chip.

Excuse me but:

The groin bone is connected to the collarbone
The collarbone is connected to the elbow bone
The elbow bone is connected to the...

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

The problem with any end season critical analysis in hindsight is that you have tremendous fodder for all of the 31 teams not winning the SB. Look at any team's last defeat and you can highlight the weaknesses, OL protection up the middle, lack of defense against the long ball, anemic pass rush, no deep threat, whatever.

I'm not attempting to excuse the Patriots' deficiencies that have been well exposed here but every losing team had a couple to several areas where in the end it cost them the trophy. Even the winner always has deficiencies as well, but it gets glossed over in euphoria.

 

[Nehalem]

So his "misguided" plan produced the 3rd highest scoring offense in the league despite having pretty much everything that could possibly go wrong, go wrong...

 

[primetime]

Still waiting for people to give any reasonable explanation of the term 'injury prone' because unless you can give me some sort of rationale on how a groin injury relates to a collarbone injury relates to a dislocated elbow I'm going to assume that you're one of those people who sees Jesus' face in a potato chip.

It's like clutchness and pornography - you know it when you see it.

Or when ESPN tells you you're seeing it.

 

[Deus Irae]

Still waiting for people to give any reasonable explanation of the term 'injury prone' because unless you can give me some sort of rationale on how a groin injury relates to a collarbone injury relates to a dislocated elbow I'm going to assume that you're one of those people who sees Jesus' face in a potato chip.

The dictionary supplies quite an easy explanation for you.

 

[Deus Irae]

Your claim may or may not be true. The term "injury prone" seems to lie largely in the eye of the beholder. Edelman was injury prone but healthy, while Mayo was not injury prone and injured. So it is not obvious to me that past injuries are good predictors of future injuries...

But they are, and history shows this. It shows it in sport after sport, and it shows it in regular life. Some people, for whatever reason(s), are more likely to suffer injury than others, just as some people are more likely to become ill than others. There's a study showing that girls are much more prone to concussions than boys, for example.