Why We Lost Today

primetime said:

Yeah, Cassel and his mighty 4.2 yards per attempt.

Wipe out the 22 yard reception that was a Welker miracle play (and should have been an interception) and you're talking a smoking 3.6 yards per attempt.

Hall of fame numbers if ever I've seen them.

Pennington and his famous noodle-arm had a mere 11.3.

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Uh, in a thread about why we lost the game, you just named, yet blew by, a major reason while blaming a minor reason, Cassel's sub-par performance.

Fans should not have expected lots from a backup, but fans should have expected a far far better effort and performance from the D, on both run and pass. 85% completion is probably a record for Penny.

gpds69 said:

Did you watch the preseason? Cassel shouldn't be on this team. Gutierrez played better.

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Tell me, are you Gutierrez's father, brother, girlfriend, life partner? Let us know. And while you're at it call BB and let him know about his egregious mistake before the season is lost. Hurry!

The one problem I saw with Cassel at QB was he seemed not to know the down and distance. 3rd and long and he was throwing a short pass as his first option. Cassel seemed more focused on just completing the pass then moving the chains. That is what bothered me about his play.

To Cassel's credit, the O-line has been awful and Kazur has been the worst of the group.

Oline did not play great.

Cassel having trouble with pocket presence and Batted ball at line. I do not know if
he gets better with more playing time or just does not have it.

They should try to take advantage of his feet with rollouts or qb sneaks even.

At this point he does not look comfortable in pocket.

Hopefull, this will be a wake up call!!!

Remember if anyone can beat a belichick D it is parcells

PATS68 said:

Item #1The one problem I saw with Cassel at QB was he seemed not to know the down and distance. 3rd and long and he was throwing a short pass as his first option. Cassel seemed more focused on just completing the pass then moving the chains. That is what bothered me about his play.

Item #2To Cassel's credit, the O-line has been awful and Kazur has been the worst of the group.

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As to point #1, you should be critical of the offensive coordinator who tells Cassel what play to run. I'm certain that Matt knows the down & distance. However, your point #2 might explain why the OC called those short passes. The OL blocking has been inadequate. Neither TE seems able to block a pass rusher or seal the edge for a runner.

DaBruinz said:

I've got news for you, The subtraction of Seau (38) and the addition of Mayo and Guyton (who DOES PLAY) makes the team YOUNGER.

I understand you are clueless about football. Your posts have shown it. Please stop trying to spread that around to everyone else.

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Clueless about football? Really. I've been watching football for as long as i can remember. I've played football(high school, college DII) I think i know a little about football buddy. I know how teams work. I know if the O isn't backing your D...most of the time, the D wont do anything. Our O sucked today....Did you ever think that maybe the reason Cassel was being rushed all the time was do to his lack of understanding how the D was set up? I understand the O-line let some block go....but i'd put most of the blame on our QB...then D next...then O-line. The QB is the leader of the team...even if your the backup...you gotta step it up and play like a starter... that's all i have to say about this....

PatsWickedPissah said:

BONUS
11. Pink Hat fans. EARLY in the game no noise whatsoever for the D. Admitedly they didn't play well but EARLY in the game we need noise on D.

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Hey, don't go knocking the cute pink hats. Just because you're not man enough to own one...

Good to see Phil starting a thread like this.

I watched the game at a bar with more Dolphins fans than Pats fans and the reaction from both sides was "holy feces!" instead of the usual trash talking. It was the best I've ever felt after a loss because the beating was so thorough that I chalked most of it up to having an off day all around. Even the Dolphins fans walked out of there not knowing what to make of that game.

BB was thoroughly outcoached by Sparano yesterday. The RB option play routinely killed them and just when the Pats thought they had it defensed, Ronnie Brown throws for a TD; The Pats were set up beautifully by the Dolphins on that. Lost in the amazing game Ronnie Brown had was Pennington's sick performance, much of which the Pats deserve an assist. The book on Pennington is to clog the middle of the field and have CBs cheat on inside routes, daring Pennington to beat them with his noodle arm to the outside. Yet the Pats routinely let the TE get open or got beat on skinny posts. Horrible defense all around.

On the other side of the ball, the Dolphins let Cassel throw a bunch of junk underneath, daring him to look more than 5 yards downfield and guessed right he wasn't up to the task. One of the longest (if not the longest...I forget) completions was a deflection to Welker that should have been a pick. The replay that showed Dave Thomas get wide open for a TD, but Cassel didn't see him summed up the day the passing offense had. To top it all off, the pass protection looked like the garbage we saw in August.

I remember the start of 2002 where the Pats pummeled the Steelers and Jets defensively, then got a rude awakening by the Chiefs. Even the killer plays were similar: The Chiefs faking the end-around while giving the ball up the gut to Holmes was eerily similar to Brown faking the inside handoff to Ricky Williams, then taking it up the gut. That Pats D went on to look poor in several games the rest of the way. I don't think this is a repeat since the DL is much better now than then, but I'm keeping my eyes open.

I'm keeping my eyes open because the D yesterday looked a lot like it did in the preseason: Giving up a high percentage of passes and getting pushed around in the trenches. Now in the preseason one can argue that the Pats were playing "vanilla" defense, were not gameplanning against the opposing team, etc. We all thought this could be a great defense. Still, don't "great" defenses dictate the action, being proactive instead of reactive? Great defenses force the offense to adjust and still tend to hold strong. Great defenses aren't the ones forced to be reactive. The Pats seem to fall under the category of "well coached defense", one that reacts surperbly to what the offense does. Unfortunately, when they aren't well coached, the results are much like what we saw yesterday and in the preseason.

Regards,
Chris

Well, I think a lot went wrong yesterday that contributed to the loss.

Having said that, my doubts about Cassel have only been strengthened. When is he going to have a good game? Even the crappiest QBs ever to play have a good game once in a while. Cassel seems to have 2 settings, the highest of which is Mediocre.

That may be good enough to get us to the playoffs if the rest of the team plays well. However, if they play like they did yesterday, we will not be making the playoffs.

While I think the chicken littles have definitely kicked it up a notch around here, I also don't care for the "Your not a real fan" accusations being thrown about at every turn. Not everyone who is unhappy is a bandwagon fan.

We lost yesterday because we have a kicker who scored more than our QB did in 3 games.

As long as we continue scoring less than 20 pts per game, we are going to loose. To all Casse's fans and believers, how many games are you going to loose before realizing that Cassel really sucks?

I haven't been impressed with our O in this season.

chris_in_sunnyvale said:

BB was thoroughly outcoached by Sparano yesterday. The RB option play routinely killed them and just when the Pats thought they had it defensed, Ronnie Brown throws for a TD; The Pats were set up beautifully by the Dolphins on that. Lost in the amazing game Ronnie Brown had was Pennington's sick performance, much of which the Pats deserve an assist. The book on Pennington is to clog the middle of the field and have CBs cheat on inside routes, daring Pennington to beat them with his noodle arm to the outside. Yet the Pats routinely let the TE get open or got beat on skinny posts. Horrible defense all around.

On the other side of the ball, the Dolphins let Cassel throw a bunch of junk underneath, daring him to look more than 5 yards downfield and guessed right he wasn't up to the task. One of the longest (if not the longest...I forget) completions was a deflection to Welker that should have been a pick. The replay that showed Dave Thomas get wide open for a TD, but Cassel didn't see him summed up the day the passing offense had. To top it all off, the pass protection looked like the garbage we saw in August.

I'm keeping my eyes open because the D yesterday looked a lot like it did in the preseason: Giving up a high percentage of passes and getting pushed around in the trenches. Now in the preseason one can argue that the Pats were playing "vanilla" defense, were not gameplanning against the opposing team, etc. We all thought this could be a great defense. Still, don't "great" defenses dictate the action, being proactive instead of reactive? Great defenses force the offense to adjust and still tend to hold strong. Great defenses aren't the ones forced to be reactive. The Pats seem to fall under the category of "well coached defense", one that reacts surperbly to what the offense does. Unfortunately, when they aren't well coached, the results are much like what we saw yesterday and in the preseason.

Regards,
Chris

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Spot on Chris. Cassel is what he is, a backup, not a starter. I do not expect us to make the playoffs with him. He is what he is and he's as good a backup option as there is realisticly available, excepting if we coulda signed Penny (who most here degrade) when he was cut in some alternate universe.

A concern is the coaching. Like with that awful game in Feb, I saw little sign of 2nd half adjustments. Not good. And I cannot explain why the supposedly talented Front Seven got tooled time and again.

With Brady out, our playoff hopes rode on Cassel playing like a lower middle tier starter plus an outstanding defense. Prospects aren't good but perhaps yesterday was an abberation; certainly we are not as bad as we played Sunday. I hope that the OL picks up when the PUPs come home in the 7th game.

Oh, and in a thread "why we lost" it's deficient not to mention that Miami was well coached and the players executed well and with enthusiasm. Kudos to the Steenkin' Phins and their fans. Well done.

PatsWickedPissah said:

Spot on Chris. Cassel is what he is, a backup, not a starter. I do not expect us to make the playoffs with him. He is what he is and he's as good a backup option as there is realisticly available, excepting if we coulda signed Penny (who most here degrade) when he was cut in some alternate universe.

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I do expect the Pats to make the playoffs despite completely missing the call on yesterday's game. Obviously repeat performances by the D like yesterday will end that thought, but 8 more wins in the next 13 games is very doable.

A concern is the coaching. Like with that awful game in Feb, I saw little sign of 2nd half adjustments. Not good. And I cannot explain why the supposedly talented Front Seven got tooled time and again.

With Brady out, our playoff hopes rode on Cassel playing like a lower middle tier starter plus an outstanding defense. Prospects aren't good but perhaps yesterday was an abberation; certainly we are not as bad as we played Sunday. I hope that the OL picks up when the PUPs come home in the 7th game.

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The bolded is how they played in week 2. I suspect they'll have a lot more week 2-like games than week 3. The Pats played very well against the Jets defensively and got decent offensive production in the running game and conservative passing game to win the field position battle and score enough points (hey, 4 FGs isn't chopped liver) to win. There are plenty of teams on the schedule where that formula should work (yes, even against Miami again).

I'll be curious if going forward the Pats see lots of offensive formations teams have never used, cooked up solely for the Pats. It seems that the Pats are so focused on game film that they get caught off guard when teams go against the grain. I say "seems" because it just might be a bias of mine instead of supported by real data, but I've been putting some thought into this for a long while...years, well before yesterday. Maybe I'll blog about it.

Regards,
Chris

chris_in_sunnyvale said:

I'm keeping my eyes open because the D yesterday looked a lot like it did in the preseason: Giving up a high percentage of passes and getting pushed around in the trenches.

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I wonder how much of yesterday's failure comes down to Wilfork's injury - he seemed to be getting pushed around quite a bit. And as he does, so goes the defense.

BradyManny2344 said:

I wonder how much of yesterday's failure comes down to Wilfork's injury - he seemed to be getting pushed around quite a bit. And as he does, so goes the defense.

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The whole DL got abused. Jake Long manhandled Seymour on a number of running plays. The whole Pats D in general looked off, at least definitely not as sharp as vs. NY. The LBs overpursued on the Ronnie Brown option plays.

Regards,
Chris

PatsFaninME said:

The answer is simple. Cassell stinks! And until the Patriots brass realize this, this team will have a 50-50 shot at winning every week.

O'Connell is young and inexperienced but he should has already shown more than Cassell has in 4 years. Cassell should have been cut in pre-season.

O'Connell will make mistakes along the way, but he is already a better QB than Cassell will ever be. Hopefully, Pats will expedite his training and he will start in 2 weeks.

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uh-oh.....now you've done it.....Here come the bricks from the rose colored glass wearing Cassel apologists.....DUCK!!!!
In all seriousness....Cassel and OL sucked...but the defense.....coaching......entire team to blame for that cow pie yesterday.........

NEPatriot said:

Cassuck is the answer. He couldn't run the O in the preseason games and 3 games. D played horribly today.

If the O did the job, D didn't suck too bad. When you have bad O and D, we lost the game.

Cassuck has been here long enough to run the O with 2 best WRs and he couldn't do that. It's time to fire him because he slows the team down. You can't win any game by scoring 1TD and 2 or 3 field goals and this is something we have seen Cassuck doing in all the games.

The fact that we dumb down our O plan for him doesn't help much because we didn't score.

My Cassuck TRIAL membership is OVER. As long as we still let him play, we go no where.

Furthermore, we need to take a hard look at our D at this point.

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Cassuck....... You crack me up.....

pheenix11 said:

Its difficult to throw the ball when you spend half the day on your ass. Our OL sucks, the only reason they made the pro bowl last year was because they had a HOF QB behind them who made them look good. With an average QB they are exposed. Don't blame Cassel, you can't throw the ball with people in your face all day. The kid got pummeled several times.

Light and Kaczur are horrible.

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and this was why we lost the super bowl.......

OL guys.
God could not win behind this line the way they are playing.
Terrible. They lost us the SB when they couldn't protect Brady.

carolinatony said:

OL guys.
God could not win behind this line the way they are playing.
Terrible. They lost us the SB when they couldn't protect Brady.

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If it was not good enough, we lost TB in the first game in 7 mins.