Ditto for the Colts. Only gave up 15 passing td's all regular season. Surprising, but with a run D that porous, why pass?
They DID give up 3 doughnuts in a row to NE,BUFF,and Dallas! Also shut down Cincy and Palmer.
I wonder if they will miss Harper and David?
It is a good question. They run a well designed defense, it essentially double covers the outside recievers and protects the CBs. Also their defense can make it hard to throw against, on most plays 7 guys are in coverage. They also proved that if they stack the box it is difficult to run effectively (see KC playoff game). The trick is to make them pay for stacking the box or to pound it down their throat. It will be interesting to see what adjustments they make to their defense to slow down opponents running attack.
The weakness is with so many undersized players they give up a lot of yardage on the ground. Unfortunately the Patriots running game vanished. Many different items were in play including Maroney's injury, Faulk's injury, Dillion's age, onconsistent O Line play, lack of respect for the passing game.
In still bugs me that on that 3rd and 4 they didn't even have a threat of running the ball (personally I would have ran it to force Indy to use their final timeout, even if the Pats were stopped in would have setup a 4th and short to win the game).
Back to the topic, the Pats CBs are asked to do a lot more than other defenses. Some may rate Samuel at 5, others at 15 but there are other intangibles in play:
- he know the system
- he excels in the system
- he is getting better every year
- he is young (only 26)
- he is better than 90% of the CBs in the league
Would of, could of , should have.... teams like Philly and SD are good are proactively signing players before they hit free agency. The risk is an injury or trail off in production but the upside is relatively cheap cap hits for expensive positions. A couple years ago the Eagles locked up Shepperd and Brown years before their contarcts expired. When it happened I thought it was a smart move, they locked up 2 young staring CBs for cheap money (3-4 per year if I remember). I was hoping for a similar deal for Branch and Samuel, the two biggest pending FAs but it never happened.
I hope Samuel is locked up, or worst case plays the year under the tag. If he sits out or is traded corner becomes weakness of the defense.
