Not sure MIN w/o Adrian Peterson helps NE this week

It helps us and it hurts us. It helps us because we don't have to worry about stopping him, and it hurts us because we have no idea what type of game plan Minn will have now. Before it was pretty simple - feed the ball to Peterson given that the pats gave up almost 200 yards rushing last week. Now I'm not so sure. The GB comparison to 2010 is an apt one.

goheels22002 said:

They'll mix it up, for sure, but I agree. As important, is whether the Patriots settle in with a fewer number of unique defensive lineups. Against the Dolphins, there were 47 unique defensive lineups which wreaked havoc on the Patriots. That may have been by design in the heat and humidity, but it sure was chaotic in the 2nd half.

In Patterson and Jennings, Matt Cassell has two good receivers. Revis can take away Jennings at the line of scrimmage more easily than Patterson, who could see a double team when Revis is not on him.

Without Peterson, the Pats should be able to stuff the run, and make Matt beat them with his arm. I completely disagree with Jim McBride's forecast of the Vikings getting 30+ against the Pats. I think the Vikings will struggle to get 1st downs, and we'll see the Patriots secondary have a superb game against a competent journeyman.

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Patterson can be dangerous in that he can run the ball and pick up big yards (hard to tell how he will do without Peterson because he usually runs a sweep off a fake hand off to Peterson), but he is a mediocre receiver. In the last five games played he has had 12 catches for 100 yards combined (a 3 catch for 25 yard average). He has only had three games so far in his career when he had 35 yards receiving and only one over 54 yards. He is not a good receiver. He has other parts of his game that makes him a threat, but not catching the ball.

Jennings appears to be declining too. He had 68 catches for 804 yards last year. He had 6 catches for 68 yards last week.

Maybe it is Cassel holding them back, but I don't fear the passing game. I can't see the Vikes getting anywhere close to 30 points unless they get two or three TDs on defense. Even though they ran up the score on the Rams last week, they had only 170 yards in the air. They got most of their offense on the ground and Peterson is gone and it could hurt the ability to run the fake sweep with Patterson.

TommyBrady12 said:

It helps us and it hurts us. It helps us because we don't have to worry about stopping him, and it hurts us because we have no idea what type of game plan Minn will have now. Before it was pretty simple - feed the ball to Peterson given that the pats gave up almost 200 yards rushing last week. Now I'm not so sure. The GB comparison to 2010 is an apt one.

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I would agree with the unpredictability if the Vikes had a passing offense, but they have a bad one. You can be unpredictable on offense in situations like this if you have enough weapons to compensate.

I actually think they may become more predictable because it takes away one of their X factors. As I said in my last post, the Vikes have been able to be unpredictable because on running downs teams would load up to stop Peterson on the run which gave Patterson tons of room to run a fake sweep. Are teams going to respect Matt Asiata on running downs to give Patterson as much room or are teams going to not respect him and leave someone out to account for a potential Patterson sweep?

The Vikes could end up winning this game (although I think the Pats will win by two scores), but I am not worried that the Vikes will do something the Pats aren't ready for other than starting Teddy Bridgewater.

Considering defense always starts with stopping the run, I would say not going against the best RB of the past 20 years is a good thing.

I agree with the OP -- deactivating your best player is a good strategy against Belichick. It may be why the Pats have been so successful over the last 14 years: their opponents have failed to deactivate their best player just before the game.

After all, we tried it in 2008, albeit involuntarily, and still won 11 games. Most NFL teams would be delighted to average 11-win seasons.

One thing we know: if the Pats still lose this game, even with Peterson missing, there will be lots of talk about the decline of the Patriots. And if they win, it will be because Peterson wasn't playing.

Well if they are 10 on offense we will be 10 vs 10 finally. You can't count that #75 of the Patriots as a player right now, is more like a trainning dummy. Well, I'm lying, a dummy has more awareness and quickness than current Wilfork.

I think this logic applies to backup QBs more than backup RBs. If a team has a mediocre QB and that guy gets injured and the team switches to their mediocre backup, it can catch the other team unprepared.

But in the case of Peterson, it is a different position. The talent dropoff for Minnesota is too large that this can do anything but benefit New England.

I also can't help but wonder when the Vikes knew this indictment was coming down. Did they gameplan all week (until Friday) for having Peterson? Or did they know, say, on Tuesday that they might have to go in another direction.

...which leads to the obvious next question.

Why don't we sit Brady? Think about it. The Vikes have game planned for Brady and they have NO film on JimmyG. That will in turn give us an advantage!

pdangle said:

BB is ohope you didnt f the best. Everyone knows it. But his strength is taking away your strength. And for that he needs tape. And without tape and tendencies we see sometimes stinkers like MIA last week, rookie QBs lighting us up, the Wildcat, underwhelming Superbowl performances vs opponents with 2 full weeks to prepare/rest/gameplan new wrinkles, etc.

So basically it comes down to, is MIN+Peterson+EstablishedTendencies better or worse for NE than MIN-Peterson+The...Unknown? I'm really not sure.

And "The...Unknown" is not just tendencies. How is MIN gonna react? Are they upset? Who knows? Overall I think NE would rather face a nice established opponent without any hoopla.

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WOW.....Well this prediction went right down the toilet....GO PATS!

Dingleberry said:

...which leads to the obvious next question.

Why don't we sit Brady? Think about it. The Vikes have game planned for Brady and they have NO film on JimmyG. That will in turn give us an advantage!

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I know you're joking because Brady is such a great QB, but I always wondered why teams with sub-par QBs didn't mess around a bit to throw the other team off. Imagine you spend all week preparing for Matt Cassel and then you look up and there's Teddy Bridgewater under center.

Do not want to start a separate thread, but Peterson has been reinstated by the Vikings.. now Goodell will have to be the "bad guy"...

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...ner-says-adrian-peterson-will-play-this-week/

strictly a business decision, Darryl. They have to think about their season. Huge monetary difference between being IN the division race and out of it by week 3. They are smart to throw this in Goodell's lap.