Pats - Colts Divisional Round Discussion Thread

supafly said:

Still not seeing the big concern from CIN, who was 3-5 on the road and had their past 4-5 away games in a row where they never topped 20 points. They are a complete joke on the road. All we would've had to do was stop the run a bit and have AJ Green taken care of.

Luck poses much more of a threat than Dalton ever did, not to mention the fact that IND went 5-3 on the road and 9-3 in the AFC overall (now 10-3).

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coolguy said:

Can someone pull up bill belichicks and the patriots record/stats against mobile quarterbacks.

I think bill struggles not defeating mobile qbs, containing them in the pocket and stopping them from running.

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Banjo said:

I am not ashamed to admit... I'm kinda terrified. Andrew Luck is the truth. There's every possibility he'll become a Hall of Famer like people say he will be. And beating Tom Brady in the playoffs will add to that resume.

d%#*!@t... why couldn't Andy Dalton have his meltdown next week???

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dales804 said:

Some good discussion in this thread so far. I'm just excited for the game. Hoping to see a useful Dobson on the field Saturday. Luck can get going and clearly doesn't let up and always has his team believing they can win no matter the situation (sound familiar?). As for Hilton and how Talib did on Smith (4 catches, 62 yards, 0 TD), I am expecting to see Talib start as a matchup against him. Smith did have one long catch, 42 yards, and got under Talib's skin a bit but I think the man is up for the challenge and hopefully has learned from losing his temper that game.

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TommyBrady12 said:

people here are acting like Luck is going to walk all over our defense. um, but what about brady against their defense? Luck has never won a playoff game on the road and patriots are tough to beat at Gillette.

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supafly said:

Still not seeing the big concern from CIN, who was 3-5 on the road and had their past 4-5 away games in a row where they never topped 20 points. They are a complete joke on the road. All we would've had to do was stop the run a bit and have AJ Green taken care of.

Luck poses much more of a threat than Dalton ever did, not to mention the fact that IND went 5-3 on the road and 9-3 in the AFC overall (now 10-3).

If you're talking about the defensive matchups, then I agree that IND is a weaker defense, but they also have much more of a capacity to score a lot more points. They absolutely lit up KC 2x recently, and I think that KC has a capable enough defense compared to ours.

As I said in the other thread, Mike Reiss certainly doesn't agree with the thought that IND is a better matchup for us, he had them as our least effective matchup out of any of the 3 teams.

Hope you're right though. If we can shut down Fleener with Talib and take care of Hilton (a huge 'if'), then we should be able to limit the very explosive QB that is Andrew Luck. I'd just much rather play a team with a good defense, much like all of the tougher defensive fronts that we've been preparing for lately just fine. My concern is our defense.

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• Reiss isn't the be all, end all in analysis. In fact, many here thinks he sucks at it. In fact Matt Chatham (who I respect far more as an analyst) says that the Bengals are a worse match up for the Pats than the Colts.
• As I said several times, the Chiefs gave Luck and the Colts far too many opportunities to get back into the game because of stupid offensive play calling with a 28 point lead. If the Chiefs actually tried to run the ball in the second half, the Colts probably never come back.
• I don't know if the Chiefs' defense is better than the Pats. Their defense in the second half of the year wasn't very good. They gave up 41 points to San Deigo, 31 points to Oakland, and lost 23-7 to Indy only a few weeks ago. their secondary was banged up going into the game and they lost Brandon Flowers and Justin Houston in the second half.

goheels22002 said:

Luck: Playoff wins: 1

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TommyBrady12 said:

Luck has never won a playoff game on the road and patriots are tough to beat at Gillette.

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supafly said:

I think Talib is better used against more physical receivers, as opposed to quicker types.

Likely just one of the reasons why Talib wasn't covering Wallace a few wks ago, and he didn't exactly shut S.Smith down either.

I would not expect Talib to cover TY Hilton at all. Not in the least. We saw Josh Gordon smoke him pretty good when he got away from him in space. Talib's strength is not against the faster receivers of the league, but more of the taller/physical ones.

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TommyBrady12 said:

people here are acting like Luck is going to walk all over our defense. um, but what about brady against their defense? Luck has never won a playoff game on the road and patriots are tough to beat at Gillette.

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dales804 said:

I understand and Gordon did have a big game. Was Talib still nursing his hip injury that game or am I wrong in thinking that? With Talib at full health I think he can go 1-on-1 against almost anyone and be successful.

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Rob0729 said:

Yeah, Luck looks to be heading on an elite QB trajectory, BUT he is not an elite QB yet.

This is starting remind me of the Ravens game a few weeks ago where many people were almost advocating the team not even flying down to Maryland because the Super Bowl bound Ravens were going to inflict so much mental harm as they crushed the Pats.

I think Andrew Luck's ability on this board has become more perception than reality based on a second half of football just like people's perception of the Ravens was based on barely beating a bunch of .500 or less teams.

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shmessy said:

Ya know, everyone is high on Blount lately (pardon the phrasing), but really the Pats have 3 violent RB's who can ground and pound 100 yards on a good day (yes, I'm including Bolden in that if he's fed the ball 15-20 times). I LOVE the depth at RB.

This truly makes Brady's play action fake more deadly.

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supafly said:

A little context would be nice, considering that Luck has only been in the league 2 yrs prior to these playoffs, and is coming off of a playoff home game yesterday.

How many road playoff games has Luck lost then? Jeez...

I agree that no one should be "scared" or "terrified" or whatever word was used, but I also think Luck poses a pretty nice threat compared to Dalton (our other option before the game today).

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Rob0729 said:

Yeah, Luck looks to be heading on an elite QB trajectory, BUT he is not an elite QB yet.

This is starting remind me of the Ravens game a few weeks ago where many people were almost advocating the team not even flying down to Maryland because the Super Bowl bound Ravens were going to inflict so much mental harm as they crushed the Pats.

I think Andrew Luck's ability on this board has become more perception than reality based on a second half of football just like people's perception of the Ravens was based on barely beating a bunch of .500 or less teams.

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supafly said:

C'mon, Rob...as great of a poster as you are, you surely recognize the fact that BAL was leading (or top 5) in a ton of defensive categories.

On top of that, the game was 20-7 with BAL driving with about 10 min left, so it's not there wasn't any point where they were out of it until we took the final 27-7 drive for a TD where Ridley was used very effectively late in the game.

BAL had just won 5/6 and was looking like a pretty hot team.

You can't blame people who were concerned about BAL. They normally play us very tough, not to mention in their house. I don't think anyone should have been advocating not showing up. My prediction in the weekly scoring thread made by alamo was that NE would win by 9, and I was very concerned about going down there. It's not exactly news that we hadn't shown much ability to win on the road up to that point.

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• The Ravens were not a hot team, they barely beat average to bad teams (Detriot, Steelers, and Minnesota). They were just lucky to have these teams during a stretch in the schedule. They were exactly what they were - a middle of the pack team who were good enough to beat teams at their level or worse.
• The Ravens were near the top in a few defensive categories, but also near the bottom in most offensive categories. They have an above average defense and arguably the worst offense in the NFL (at least in the discussion).
• The score may have been 20-7, but the game was never as close as the score indicated. The Pats controlled that game from start to finish.
• Yes, the Pats usually have a tough game against Baltimore, but people were trying to convince everyone on this board that the Ravens were clearly the better team (which clearly isn't the case) and the Pats had no shot. The whole not showing up was hyperbole for effect.