Offensive Playcalling was Average to Atrocious

[JoeSixPat]

"The use of Stallworth" argument is kind of mystifiying to me, perhaps you or someone else can explain it?

For one, I don't consider him to be a "proven" wide receiver in our offense at all. He's been here one year and - correct me if I'm wrong - speculation was he lost considerable amounts of playing time to Gaffney late in the year because Gaffney understood the offense better.

He also had, by and large, a similar season statistically this year to other seasons where he's been the primary threat on the outside.

All in all, I don't see the argument for his misuse in our offense. You can only send so many people deep on a given play, and Moss is probably a better deep target - and from the way he was spoken of and used, likely understood the offense much better than Stallworth.

To save you the trouble of reading swears and insults in this thread from Deus, let me recap:

Look at the course of the season - we start out and Moss is largely a monster, and the Patriots are blowing out opponents by 24 points with the offense on fire...

Then watch the evolution of the season as defenders realize that any concerns they had about Stallworth and Moss serving as joint deep threats - which would have limited their ability to double team Moss because they would have been burned deep by Stallworth - was unfounded.

As noted, Stallworth - who averaged 19 yards per catch the previous season in Philly - was used about as much as a deep threat as Reche Caldwell was in 2006, to give you the impression of how under utilized he was (and if the excuse is that it was his first year in our system, does that apply to Moss too?)

The trend of using Moss and only Moss as a deep WR contiued, with defenders often doing a pretty good job taking away our deep game, with McDaniels never adjusting - seemingly content to let defenders limit Moss, and thereby limit the deep game.

So WHY would an OC, who has two proven deep threats on the team, choose NOT to one of them when he needed to? As Deus pointed out there was no shortage of short yardage WRs.

Does allowing teams to take away our deep game somehow BENEFIT the team? Of course not. Does it hurt the team? I'd say yes, and the increasingly tight games as the season wore on, culminating in the loss in the Super Bowl, would generally back me up.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not blaming the Super Bowl loss solely on the season long refusal to use Stallworth as a deep threat... and I don't think anyone should look at just one game and draw conclusions about an OC's entire season. But it is, shall we say puzzling that we had TWO deep threat WRs but really only used one the entire season.

When you have the talent but choose not to call plays that best utilize that talent - and choose not to call plays that counter the moves of a defense - playcalling does indeed come into question.

Now Deus views Gaffney as a good deep threat - and apparently Reche Caldwell as a good deep threat as well, because he doesn't even bother trying to refute the similar stats in the deep game both players had. Deus also is fond of pointing out that teams that finished well behind the Patriots also had similar deep WR stats - not realizing apparently that the Bengals didn't exactly finish with the strongest record, thereby proving my point.

I'm sure McDaniels, if he's reading this, probably feels he can do without "friends" like Deus Irae supporting him... hopefully he'll refrain from offering his opinion on Spygate as well

 

[stcjones]

Maybe there is an answer that indeed we'll never know - it certainly is a head scratcher.

Stallworth was an excellent deep threat in 2006 - But in 2007 Stallworth was virtually non-existent in the deep game.

It's the full season of play calling that I base my criticsim... and the habits demonstrated for the entire season indeed did give teams the "blueprint" to largely neutralize the impact of Moss later in the season, knowing McDaniels was typicially not going to make them pay by using Stallworth as a deep threat.

Having TWO deep threats is the prime advantage we all saw in having Moss and Stallworth - but that was never really something that was implemented.

So if you do subscribe to the belief that the Patriots would have benefited from an alternative deep threat to Moss I guess you can either assume McDaniels has a lot to learn as OC - or perhaps Stallworth was secretly injured throughout the season and COULDN'T go deep... which isn't something that I can rule out.

But if he is injured then the Browns might have wasted a signing bonus not much less than what we gave to Moss.

You and I think alot alike here Joe,......My feeling is that McD has inadequacies in his coaching and has alot TO LEARN.....unfortuneatly at our expense. I do not believe that Stallworth was injured in any way....and hey, if he was slow to learn our offense (which seems to be another popular theory) it is as simple as saying "alright Donte....run as fast as you can down the sideline on a streak and Tom will hit you" Stallworth is one of the fastest WR in the league I believe, and should have been utilized alot more in deep passing situations.......Let's hope McD "learns more" before next season.............

 

[JoeSixPat]

You and I think alot alike here Joe,......My feeling is that McD has inadequacies in his coaching and has alot TO LEARN.....unfortuneatly at our expense. I do not believe that Stallworth was injured in any way....and hey, if he was slow to learn our offense (which seems to be another popular theory) it is as simple as saying "alright Donte....run as fast as you can down the sideline on a streak and Tom will hit you" Stallworth is one of the fastest WR in the league I believe, and should have been utilized alot more in deep passing situations.......Let's hope McD "learns more" before next season.............

... and all that being said you won't find me calling for his head. BB likes him and wants him and that's good enough for me... but that doesn't mean we need to put our head in the sand and look back in hindsight (obviously its much easier to spot trends and second guess that way) and make believe such strategic mistakes never happened...

And again, I can't rule out that maybe, just maybe, Stallworth was healthy enough to be on the field, but not healthy enough to use his speed to burn guys deep... though some of his runs after the catch certainly would undermine any theories he wasn't healthy.

 

[BradyManny]

I didn't have an issue with play-calling. It's tough to question those when so many plays were cut short by Brady's head getting cut off. Moss was open a couple times downfield, Brady didn't have time to get it to him or was off the mark b/c of pressure.

The game ending bombs were the right calls - I put the odds on Moss making those plays most of the time, they just didn't happen.

My issue was more with personnel, and this goes right up to BB. The general philosophy or game plan might've been fine and probably would've worked 9/10 times, but I guess you could say my issue was with the contingency plan.

They needed to have Spach active and have the power-running formation as the contingency plan. Even with an injured K. Brady, they've used O'Cal as "3rd TE", and could've gone to that in the second half. It would've at least prevented the Giants from just tee-ing off, and would've opened up the possibility for play-action and the chance to run a deep pass to Moss.

And another complaint that goes to Belichick and not necessarily McD is the playcall on 3rd on 6 before the sack and ensuing 4th and 13. If they have any idea they were going to go for it on 4th, a draw or quick pass on 3rd and 6 is a better call than a dropback - and is standard operating procedure for Belichick "I'm going for it on 4th" mode. Give yourself a shorter 4th down.

Plus, they ran the ball effectively on the first drive, and mixed it up beautifully. Ouch, thinking back to that moment as Brady and Maroney came off the field up 7-3 and I thought our victory was a mere formality

WTF am I still talking about this game. Who re-upped these threads!!! The pain is back.

 

[Deus Irae]

To save you the trouble of reading swears and insults in this thread from Deus, let me recap:

You were being an ass. It's not as if posts like this prove me wrong about that.

Look at the course of the season - we start out and Moss is largely a monster, and the Patriots are blowing out opponents by 24 points with the offense on fire...

Then watch the evolution of the season as defenders realize that any concerns they had about Stallworth and Moss serving as joint deep threats - which would have limited their ability to double team Moss because they would have been burned deep by Stallworth - was unfounded.

This is where you're wrong, because you don't understand what teams started doing. Double teams on Moss weren't the problem per se, it was keeping the safety above Moss along with contact at the line that limited the deep ball in the AFCCG and the Super Bowl, along with Brady's injury and poor play by the O-line.

As noted, Stallworth - who averaged 19 yards per catch the previous season in Philly - was used about as much as a deep threat as Reche Caldwell was in 2006, to give you the impression of how under utilized he was (and if the excuse is that it was his first year in our system, does that apply to Moss too?)

Please tell me how many top tier teams sent their #2 wideout (not slot guy) deep more often than the Patriots did, keeping in mind that Gaffney was replacing Stallworth in that role as the season wore on.

The trend of using Moss and only Moss as a deep WR contiued, with defenders often doing a pretty good job taking away our deep game, with McDaniels never adjusting - seemingly content to let defenders limit Moss, and thereby limit the deep game.

So WHY would an OC, who has two proven deep threats on the team, choose NOT to one of them when he needed to? As Deus pointed out there was no shortage of short yardage WRs.

Again, you deliberately ignore the data. The 'other' receivers caught more than half the passes that you called 'deep'. But, because you're posting with an agenda, you keep ignoring that obvious truth.

Does allowing teams to take away our deep game somehow BENEFIT the team? Of course not. Does it hurt the team? I'd say yes, and the increasingly tight games as the season wore on, culminating in the loss in the Super Bowl, would generally back me up.

This is what's known as complete nonsense. All it takes is a look at Brady's game logs to see it. Why do you refuse to acknowledge the data? Starting from week 11, the longest completions of each game:

43, 42, 43, 63, 46, 48, 65. From week 11 all the way through the end of the regular season, the team had at least one completion of 40+ yards. In fact, including week 9 (55 yards), every game in the second half of the season had at least one completion of 40+ yards. In the first half of the season? Not so much.... 51, 34, 45, 23, 35, 69, 50, 35. In other words, the truly 'deep' ball was there more in the second half of the season than the first. There was also a 53 yard completion against the Jaguars.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not blaming the Super Bowl loss solely on the season long refusal to use Stallworth as a deep threat... and I don't think anyone should look at just one game and draw conclusions about an OC's entire season. But it is, shall we say puzzling that we had TWO deep threat WRs but really only used one the entire season.

When you have the talent but choose not to call plays that best utilize that talent - and choose not to call plays that counter the moves of a defense - playcalling does indeed come into question.

Again, the weight of the evidence proves you wrong.

Now Deus views Gaffney as a good deep threat - and apparently Reche Caldwell as a good deep threat as well, because he doesn't even bother trying to refute the similar stats in the deep game both players had. Deus also is fond of pointing out that teams that finished well behind the Patriots also had similar deep WR stats - not realizing apparently that the Bengals didn't exactly finish with the strongest record, thereby proving my point.

You're deliberately mischaracterizing my comments about Gaffney. I noted that he caught long passes. That's not the same as saying he's a 'good deep threat'. As we saw in Pittsburgh with the Brady-Moss-Brady-Gaffney play, the threat of Moss even as a decoy opens up the field for others..

Also, last season, Caldwell was the team's #1 receiver, which is why he got more long passes. This year, that role was Moss', which is why he had 11 catches of this nature. The role of the team's #1 deep threat is to...... catch deep passes!

I'm sure McDaniels, if he's reading this, probably feels he can do without "friends" like Deus Irae supporting him... hopefully he'll refrain from offering his opinion on Spygate as well

I'm sure that McDaniels has read your argument and realized that you don't know what you're talking about. I doubt he feels he needs anyone supporting him against your obviously incorrect assertions.

The problem is that you're choosing to ignore some very simple realities:

1.) Weather and circumstances impacted the Jets and Ravens games

2.) Brady was bombing away in the second half of the Dolphins game trying to get the record, because the game was already over.

3.) The team scored in the 30's in the first 5 weeks, before getting into the 40's and above for 4 of the next 5 games and then going back down after that.

Oh, one more thing.... Moss' longest receptions in the first half of the season, per game:

51,24,45,20,20,14,50,35 (20 yards or fewer 3 times, 30 or fewer 4 times)

And in the second half of the season, per game:

55,43,11,19,63,46,16,65 (20 yards or fewer 3 times, 30 or fewer 3 times)

 

[Rob0729]

This is EXACTLY THE POINT. They just kept stubbornly running the same stuff they have done all season, even though the Giants D had figured them out.
How can you say it wasn't the play calling, and then admit they just stuck with what worked without adjusting?

This stubborn thinking is why Brady was sacked 5 times with EIGHTEEN knockdowns. Even a horrible O-Line won't have numbers like that if you aren't as stubborn as McDaniels was with all the 7-step drop plays.

Stop it with the seven step drops crap. Brady rarely does 7 step drops ever especially since McDaniels has him operating out of the shotgun so much. At least three of the five sacks Brady had was from out of the shotgun. The Pats did a lot of screen passes in that game and there is no time for seven step drops.

I don't get how you criticize McDaniels so much and don't seem to know the guy's tendencies. The Pats hasn't over-relied on the seven step drop since Bledsoe was QB.

 

[maverick4]

To back up JoeSixPat, all this focus on the Stallworth deep threat helps explain two points about McDaniels:

- Not properly using your resources for max benefit
- Not adjusting once defenses figured you out.

Our offensive was a superpower when we started, however once defenses started breaking down film and realizing our tendencies, our offense slowed down big time after week 10, and we were stopped in the Superbowl. ONE example of this, is how teams focused on Moss as the deep threat when they realized Stallworth wasn't a threat, and how we never adjusted to this.

 

[Rob0729]

You and I think alot alike here Joe,......My feeling is that McD has inadequacies in his coaching and has alot TO LEARN.....unfortuneatly at our expense. I do not believe that Stallworth was injured in any way....and hey, if he was slow to learn our offense (which seems to be another popular theory) it is as simple as saying "alright Donte....run as fast as you can down the sideline on a streak and Tom will hit you" Stallworth is one of the fastest WR in the league I believe, and should have been utilized alot more in deep passing situations.......Let's hope McD "learns more" before next season.............

Where was this argument when our biggest free agent acquisition of the 2002 season (Donald Hayes) was slow to pick up the playbook and our offense struggled late in the year? I mean Brady only passed for over 200 yards 3 of the last 7 games that year. Why wasn't Weis criticized when the offense was clearly struggling and their biggest acquisition was a bust because he would run the wrong routes? I mean if it fair to criticize McDaniels for this with the best single season offense of all time, why isn't it fair to criticize Weis when the 2002 offense was grounded. In two of the last three games, Brady didn't get 140 passing yards that season.

I swear nearly every for argument people have made for trashing McDaniels, you can go back and find a situation where Weis had the same problem. Except Weis is still a genius and McDaniels sucks.

The fact of the matter is McDaniels is an above average OC and getting better. He going into his third year as an OC and will only get better with experience. You look around the league at all the OCs that are considered the best and you can find that they have made as many mistakes as McDaniels have, some a lot more.

People forget that other than 2004, our offense was never more than above average and many times very average during Weis' rein at OC. Weis was only asked to not turnover the ball and play ball control offense most of the time and let the defense do the rest. Since Crennel and Weis has left, the offense has been asked to carry a lot more of the load. Truth is we do not know how Weis would have handled this role because even in 2004 he was never in this situation with this team. In 2004, it was the most balanced we ever had with offense and defense, but the defense was still dominant. We haven't had a dominant defense since.

Without the offense being like it was this year, there was no way we would have won nearly as many games as we did. The offense carried this team this year and significant part of the credit goes to McDaniels whether you like it or not.

 

[JoeSixPat]

You were being an ass. It's not as if posts like this prove me wrong about that.



This is where you're wrong, because you don't understand what teams started doing. Double teams on Moss weren't the problem per se, it was keeping the safety above Moss along with contact at the line that limited the deep ball in the AFCCG and the Super Bowl, along with Brady's injury and poor play by the O-line.




Please tell me how many top tier teams sent their #2 wideout (not slot guy) deep more often than the Patriots did, keeping in mind that Gaffney was replacing Stallworth in that role as the season wore on.




Again, you deliberately ignore the data. The 'other' receivers caught more than half the passes that you called 'deep'. But, because you're posting with an agenda, you keep ignoring that obvious truth.



This is what's known as complete nonsense. All it takes is a look at Brady's game logs to see it. Why do you refuse to acknowledge the data? Starting from week 11, the longest completions of each game:

43, 42, 43, 63, 46, 48, 65. From week 11 all the way through the end of the regular season, the team had at least one completion of 40+ yards. In fact, including week 9 (55 yards), every game in the second half of the season had at least one completion of 40+ yards. In the first half of the season? Not so much.... 51, 34, 45, 23, 35, 69, 50, 35. In other words, the truly 'deep' ball was there more in the second half of the season than the first. There was also a 53 yard completion against the Jaguars.




Again, the weight of the evidence proves you wrong.



You're deliberately mischaracterizing my comments about Gaffney. I noted that he caught long passes. That's not the same as saying he's a 'good deep threat'. As we saw in Pittsburgh with the Brady-Moss-Brady-Gaffney play, the threat of Moss even as a decoy opens up the field for others..

Also, last season, Caldwell was the team's #1 receiver, which is why he got more long passes. This year, that role was Moss', which is why he had 11 catches of this nature. The role of the team's #1 deep threat is to...... catch deep passes!



I'm sure that McDaniels has read your argument and realized that you don't know what you're talking about. I doubt he feels he needs anyone supporting him against your obviously incorrect assertions.

The problem is that you're choosing to ignore some very simple realities:

1.) Weather and circumstances impacted the Jets and Ravens games

2.) Brady was bombing away in the second half of the Dolphins game trying to get the record, because the game was already over.

3.) The team scored in the 30's in the first 5 weeks, before getting into the 40's and above for 4 of the next 5 games and then going back down after that.

Oh, one more thing.... Moss' longest receptions in the first half of the season, per game:

51,24,45,20,20,14,50,35 (20 yards or fewer 3 times, 30 or fewer 4 times)

And in the second half of the season, per game:

55,43,11,19,63,46,16,65 (20 yards or fewer 3 times, 30 or fewer 3 times)

As my Jewish friends say, oy vey... where to start...

But its late... you're back to your apples and oranges.

But tell me since you're fond of spouting off yardage stats rather than acknowledging how deep balls are thrown and to whom...

Let's say Maroney catches a pass 5 yards off the line of scrimmage, and then has a great run of say 40 yards.

You'd count that as a 45 yard pass play, wouldn't you. And in fact, many of the "deep passes" you're counting are in fact, total yards - and you're not looking at whether Brady was throwing deep, just the overall yards.

So you can cite all the great yards after catch plays you like - that doesn't make Maroney a deep threat, doesn't make Faulk a deep threat, doesn't make Gaffney a deep threat etc. etc... it doesn't even make Reche Caldwell a deep threat even though he had a few good runs after the catch as well.

So you're back to your apples and oranges comparisons because you can;t deny the splits that show that while Stallworth had some great runs, he wasn't used as a deep WR.

Go back to when we signed Moss. Everyone remarked about what a GREAT and UNSTOPPABLE offense we would have by using Moss and Stallworth both as deep threats.

Well everyone got the memo but McDaniels apparently, because that sure wasn't how he was utilized.

Unlike you or everyone else, I'm not looking at just the Super Bowl or any one Jets or Ravens game - I'm looking at the whole season and it can't be denied that the Patriots, for whatever the reason, did not use Stallworth as a deep threat WR as they should have, especially when Moss was seeing increasing coverage.

I'm too tired to get into the rest of your stats - of course I'm not particularly concerned about how you choose to compare the failings of other teams to the failings of the Patriots when it comes to utilizing WRs... but then again, you can't just compare a 1a and 1b WR either.

Welker by many - and probably your - definitions is a 1b WR with 100 plus catches. That doesn't make him a deep WR threat of course - not every team has two talented deep WR threats either. That's just an idiotic comparison.

Heck - if we had Jerry Rice in his prime along side Moss and McDaniels chose not to use him as a deep threat in an effort to draw some coverage off Moss, you'd be citing your same statistics to prove any suggestion that it's a mistake not to use Rice that way as "untenable".

 

[Deus Irae]

As my Jewish friends say, oy vey... where to start...

But its late... you're back to your apples and oranges.

But tell me since you're fond of spouting off yardage stats rather than acknowledging how deep balls are thrown and to whom...

And this is the final time I'll be posting in response to you because you're ignoring the facts again. I put in multiple posts regarding how deep the balls were thrown and to whom: in fact, I cited comparisons to multiple teams. They, like the other stats I've pointed to, showed that your argument was wrong, which is why you've just kept on ignoring them. This makes further discussion on this pointless.

Good luck in Fantasy Land.

 

[unoriginal]

To save you the trouble of reading swears and insults in this thread from Deus, let me recap:

Look at the course of the season - we start out and Moss is largely a monster, and the Patriots are blowing out opponents by 24 points with the offense on fire...

Then watch the evolution of the season as defenders realize that any concerns they had about Stallworth and Moss serving as joint deep threats - which would have limited their ability to double team Moss because they would have been burned deep by Stallworth - was unfounded.

I've been following this thread from the beginning, have read the whole thread and have commented briefly at intervals. I am swayed by Deus' stats. He demonstrated that the way we utilized our receivers is the norm - or rather beyond the norm.

You rightly point out that Stallworth is a big YAC guy (this year, at least) and some of the stats are skewed as per the deep ball. That's a fair point. But what you or anyone else haven't/hasn't done is demonstrate if those stats are out of whack on a league-wide basis - i.e. eliminate other YAC skewed deep balls stats and tell us how the Pats show up there. That's a lot of work so I'll forgive that point.

I take it your guiding principle in all this is that having Moss and Stallworth as our two outside receivers is a rare combination of talent that was misused, and therefore whatever the rest of the league did throwing deep is beside the point?

I'm not sure I agree with that. For me it all comes down to the Pats effectively benching Stallworth in the late-season - I grant he may have had an injury, as previously mentioned here, but that's an improbable assumption - and letting him go in free agency. I think any argument that relies on comparing the superiority of Stallworth's skills to the inferiority of McDaniels' traits as a playcaller is betting on the wrong horse.

It seems to me Stallworth is a wide receiver that has gotten by on sheer physical talent and is not a good route runner or coverage diagnoser, at least in this offense. I don't want to suggest Stallworth washed out of here a la Doug Gabriel, but people are tossing about comparisons to Jerry Rice here.

As noted, Stallworth - who averaged 19 yards per catch the previous season in Philly - was used about as much as a deep threat as Reche Caldwell was in 2006, to give you the impression of how under utilized he was (and if the excuse is that it was his first year in our system, does that apply to Moss too?)

Yes yes, but Stallworth has also averaged 13 yards for two seasons and 14 yards for another. In fact, this last season his YPC was equivalent to his career YPC average, so I don't see the obvious misuse.

The trend of using Moss and only Moss as a deep WR contiued, with defenders often doing a pretty good job taking away our deep game, with McDaniels never adjusting - seemingly content to let defenders limit Moss, and thereby limit the deep game.

So WHY would an OC, who has two proven deep threats on the team, choose NOT to one of them when he needed to? As Deus pointed out there was no shortage of short yardage WRs.

Does allowing teams to take away our deep game somehow BENEFIT the team? Of course not. Does it hurt the team? I'd say yes, and the increasingly tight games as the season wore on, culminating in the loss in the Super Bowl, would generally back me up.

I think the offensive scheme - and Brady's game - has always been to take what the defense gives us. As the season went along and defenses began playing conservative coverage, the Pats realigned the passing game to take the short stuff more. The best players are the ones that play, so I see Gaffney gaining time over Stallworth as being the Pats evaluation that Stallworth wasn't good at using his mind in real time on the field, or at least not as good as Moss, Welker, and Gaffney et al.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not blaming the Super Bowl loss solely on the season long refusal to use Stallworth as a deep threat... and I don't think anyone should look at just one game and draw conclusions about an OC's entire season. But it is, shall we say puzzling that we had TWO deep threat WRs but really only used one the entire season.

When you have the talent but choose not to call plays that best utilize that talent - and choose not to call plays that counter the moves of a defense - playcalling does indeed come into question.

Now Deus views Gaffney as a good deep threat - and apparently Reche Caldwell as a good deep threat as well, because he doesn't even bother trying to refute the similar stats in the deep game both players had. Deus also is fond of pointing out that teams that finished well behind the Patriots also had similar deep WR stats - not realizing apparently that the Bengals didn't exactly finish with the strongest record, thereby proving my point.

I'm sure McDaniels, if he's reading this, probably feels he can do without "friends" like Deus Irae supporting him... hopefully he'll refrain from offering his opinion on Spygate as well

I think Deus has a pretty good handle on the situation so far. He's tried to make comparisons to others teams and tried to look at what our offense does and expects from our players. On the other hand, I think the pro-Stallworth/anti-coaching staff argument sees only the physical talent of the receiver, and regards the coaching staff as being the ones responsible for his performance (what they/you call lackluster, what I call par-for-the-course) in this offense. But you know, sometimes players don't fit.

We've seen receivers come in after success elsewhere and look lost in this offense, both Weis' and McDaniels'. And we've seen receivers make it here and then not do so well elsewhere. Given that, by and large, our offense has been successful, I'm willing to conclude that, in Stallworth's case, the problem was that the player didn't fit, not that the scheme hampers players with unnecessary responsibilities or fails to put them in position to succeed from play to play.

Doug Gabriel, when he was here, also disappeared as the year went along, despite him being probably our most gifted receiver at the time, who only got the ball on plays designed especially for him, a la screens and outs... and so on. I think the Pats have a difficult route tree to master, and the ability to go deep is as much predicated on speed as it is on making your reads "up the tree," which evidently Moss mastered much sooner/better than Stallworth, hence why he was our primary deep threat, to Stallworth's exclusion.

I think an interesting parallel to Donté Stallworth's case may be Andre Davis, who was used as you advocate, primarily (almost exclusively) as a deep threat in 2005, for the straight-forward reason we had no one else who could run as fast. He went on to have a good deal of success in the Texans' offense this year, performing the role that Stallworth has often performed, that as the #2 receiver who's the #1 deep threat.

Crenel didn't have a use for him when he got to Cleveland, and we let him go to Buffalo for $1.3 million in 2006. From this I take it that the personnel department in Foxboro doesn't value deep speed for its own sake as much as some here do. I'll side with Foxboro until Stallworth proves he can either out-Moss Moss or out-Welker Welker. Or if Gaffney takes the field Week 1 next year with his shoelaces untied and his pants on backwards.

As an aside, Crenel and Co. up in Cleveland seemed to have opened up his offense since 2005 for his young studly wide receiver and tight end, so maybe with a year of experience in a related system Stallworth will significantly out-do the year he had with us. At least that's what I think Crenel is thinking.

Probably also that Joe Jurevicius is no Jabar Gaffney.

(At least in terms of age.)

 

[unoriginal]

and hey, if he was slow to learn our offense (which seems to be another popular theory) it is as simple as saying "alright Donte....run as fast as you can down the sideline on a streak and Tom will hit you" Stallworth is one of the fastest WR in the league I believe, and should have been utilized alot more in deep passing situations

I quote this as what I think is a mistaken belief arising from giving a first-year Pats player the benefit of doubt over that of a 3rd year OC.

I'll also quote Rob here because it's a better response:

Where was this argument when our biggest free agent acquisition of the 2002 season (Donald Hayes) was slow to pick up the playbook and our offense struggled late in the year? I mean Brady only passed for over 200 yards 3 of the last 7 games that year. Why wasn't Weis criticized when the offense was clearly struggling and their biggest acquisition was a bust because he would run the wrong routes? I mean if it fair to criticize McDaniels for this with the best single season offense of all time, why isn't it fair to criticize Weis when the 2002 offense was grounded. In two of the last three games, Brady didn't get 140 passing yards that season.

I swear nearly every for argument people have made for trashing McDaniels, you can go back and find a situation where Weis had the same problem. Except Weis is still a genius and McDaniels sucks.

 

[JoeSixPat]

And this is the final time I'll be posting in response to you because you're ignoring the facts again. I put in multiple posts regarding how deep the balls were thrown and to whom: in fact, I cited comparisons to multiple teams. They, like the other stats I've pointed to, showed that your argument was wrong, which is why you've just kept on ignoring them. This makes further discussion on this pointless.

Good luck in Fantasy Land.

As I thought, since you didn't respond... so when you throw out the "fact" that there was a 45 yard pass play in a game, you don't think, in terms of talking about play calling, whether this was a 5 yard pass and 40 yard run, or a 30 yard pass and 10 yard run.

That makes a BIG difference in terms of how teams defend. Do you really need me to explain that to you further?

And of course, as you well know, the personnel of other teams is vastly different from what the Patriots had to offer.

The Bottom line is that the Patriots had two guys on the team capable of lining up on either side and driving teams crazy with both stretching the defense and forcing defenses to choose which one to double cover deep.

The problem with the Patriots playcalling is that while nearly every fan on this board was smacking their lips about running such plays, McDaniels hardly ever chose to involve Stallworth that way.

Telling me that other teams who might or might not have had similar skill sets in their WR corps doesn't really justify McDaniels failure to use what HE had at his disposal.

 

[Deus Irae]

As I thought, since you didn't respond... so when you throw out the "fact" that there was a 45 yard pass play in a game, you don't think, in terms of talking about play calling, whether this was a 5 yard pass and 40 yard run, or a 30 yard pass and 10 yard run.

That makes a BIG difference in terms of how teams defend. Do you really need me to explain that to you further?

And of course, as you well know, the personnel of other teams is vastly different from what the Patriots had to offer.

The Bottom line is that the Patriots had two guys on the team capable of lining up on either side and driving teams crazy with both stretching the defense and forcing defenses to choose which one to double cover deep.

The problem with the Patriots playcalling is that while nearly every fan on this board was smacking their lips about running such plays, McDaniels hardly ever chose to involve Stallworth that way.

Telling me that other teams who might or might not have had similar skill sets in their WR corps doesn't really justify McDaniels failure to use what HE had at his disposal.

I'll re-quote an earlier post for clarification:

Gaffney had 5 catches which fit your standard, Welker had 2 and Watson had 2 to go along with the 4 by Stallworth and Moss' 11. Brady was 13-35 from 21-30 yards, 6-9 from 31-40 yards and 7-16 from 41+ yards. Total completions from those distances: 26-60 (Moss made up fewer than half of the 'deep' completions)

You have no valid argument. Have a nice day.

 

[Real World]

McDaniels is incredibly overrated. The offensive play calling was the difference in the SB. It didn't cost us the game by itself, but it certainly contributed to our losing.

 

[goz421]

Another dumb post. A team goes 18-1 and just shows one of the most prolific offenses in history. The team loses in the superbowl when they have the lead late and the other team makes perhaps the greatest catch in nfl history. Now we got yahoos criticizing. Stick to your day job and let the proffesionals do what they do, please.

 

[Rob0729]

Another dumb post. A team goes 18-1 and just shows one of the most prolific offenses in history. The team loses in the superbowl when they have the lead late and the other team makes perhaps the greatest catch in nfl history. Now we got yahoos criticizing. Stick to your day job and let the proffesionals do what they do, please.

You see the McDaniels haters will argue that anyone could have done what he did with this offense and this offense was the best ever dispite McDaniels. Last year when there was no talent on offense, it was his fault that the offense struggled at times and not the talent. I'm sure even if Brady had a great game and the Pats won the Super Bowl by 20 points, people would have criticized McDaniels for something.

There are just certain people on this team that people will find something to biatch about no matter what they do. My personal opinion is that the two worst things McDaniels has done is not be Charlie Weis and be successful too young.

I still don't get the legend of Charlie Weis. He was a very good OC with quite a few flaws. Many of these same flaws are the same ones that people biatch about McDaniels. I also still don't get the hatred of McDaniels because I can't think of three other OCs currently in the league I would rather have over McDaniels.

 

[maverick4]

Rob why the blind man love for McDaniels?
You guys keep making excuses for him, for YEARS.
First it was that he was brand new, then it was we didn't have enough talent on offense, and now it's 'the Giants D was unstoppable, no one could do better'. We were completely stacked on offense this year and held to our season low, Brady was sacked 5 times with 18 knockdowns, and our last Superbowl drive with all 3 timeouts was pathetic.

Which scenario is more likely, that McDaniels is a top-5 OC, OR:
- that he is blessed with ridiculously stacked offensive talent, especially with Tom Brady, who makes a lot of his average playcalls look good.
- that while we had a dynamite offense the first 10 weeks of the season, defenses adjusted after that, while we didn't adjust and stubbornly stuck with what we had.

And I don't think there's a coincidence that ever since 2004, Brady has absolutely taken beatings in our losses to Denver, Indy, and NY. First after Denver and Indy it was 'we have no offensive talent' to explain why Brady was getting destroyed so often, now after NY it's 'the Giants D-Line was composed of God and Satan, no one could stop them'.

Stop apologizing for every little thing like a 90's Bledsoe apologist.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

This crap is getting even weaker and more pathetic than when it was NEM bashing Charlie when we lost or didn't win pretty enough or employ enough slants and crossing routes...

Anybody want to volunteer time and money to set up a new website for disciples Joe and Mav??

Logic and facts aren't going to carry the day with either of these two any more than it did with their predecessor. And when you shower attention on someone who has to bump his own threads or spam the same message into multiple threads he bumped on the same topic, you're just feeding an ego that can't be reasoned with.

 

[Deus Irae]

Rob why the blind man love for McDaniels?
You guys keep making excuses for him, for YEARS.
First it was that he was brand new, then it was we didn't have enough talent on offense, and now it's 'the Giants D was unstoppable, no one could do better'. We were completely stacked on offense this year and held to our season low, Brady was sacked 5 times with 18 knockdowns, and our last Superbowl drive with all 3 timeouts was pathetic.

Which scenario is more likely, that McDaniels is a top-5 OC, OR:
- that he is blessed with ridiculously stacked offensive talent, especially with Tom Brady, who makes a lot of his average playcalls look good.
- that while we had a dynamite offense the first 10 weeks of the season, defenses adjusted after that, while we didn't adjust and stubbornly stuck with what we had.

And I don't think there's a coincidence that ever since 2004, Brady has absolutely taken beatings in our losses to Denver, Indy, and NY. First after Denver and Indy it was 'we have no offensive talent' to explain why Brady was getting destroyed so often, now after NY it's 'the Giants D-Line was composed of God and Satan, no one could stop them'.

Stop apologizing for every little thing like a 90's Bledsoe apologist.

1.) Using your dates, and ignoring weather and other legitimate reasons for lower scores, the Patriots were #1 in the league in scoring in weeks 1-11 (game 10), and their scoring average of 29.7 ppg in the last 6 games of the season was STILL better than the Cowboys #2 scoring offense of 28.4 ppg

2.) Even factoring in the playoffs and Super Bowl (and again ignoring things like Brady's injury), the Patriots results after game 10 yielded a 27.1 ppg average, which would have been right behind Green Bay's 27.2 season average, which was good enough for 4th highest in the league.

3.) #1 scoring offense in NFL history

4.) Teams wanted to interview him for the head coaching job based upon his performance as an O.C.

While I'm sure every team in the NFL is waiting for your application to be their O.C. with breathless anticipation, it seems that some teams there are willing to allow McDaniels to stick around even without your sage advice.