PostGame Discussion Thread

libra957 said:

The pats play at Denver again next year, this team is not built to beat them in their house in this current state. Brady completion percentage was in the low 50s in the regular season, today it was in the 40s. Unless the philosophy changes, i'm marking this matchup as a loss next season.

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This is stupid as hell. You are probably one of the people who said that the Pats window to get number 4 was closed after we got killed by Denver in the 2013 AFCCG. The 2016 team will not be the 2015 team.

supafly said:

And even worse, 3-1 in AFCCGs.

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3 of those wins at home and people say home field advantage doesn't matter. This one bothers me alot more then 2013 because our offense couldn't do jack and block. Our defense left it all on the field. Gave us chances to get a drive going and nada

VectorPrime said:

This is stupid as hell. You are probably one of the people who said that the Pats window to get number 4 was closed after we got killed by Denver in the 2013 AFCCG. The 2016 team will not be the 2015 team.

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I would love to get them at home for once!!!! I wonder if the goober will retired if he wins the superbowl. Ughhhh

I have not seen one person who was trumpeting how awesome it was that we got to play in Denver owning up to his mistake.

PatriotsPimp136 said:

3 of those wins at home and people say home field advantage doesn't matter. This one bothers me alot more then 2013 because our offense couldn't do jack and block.

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I think the receivers were definitely improved this year, but the running game and OL weren't as good as 2013.

Either way you look at it, 2013 wasn't that much different. They put up 16 points that day, and 18 today.

VectorPrime said:

I have not seen one person who was trumpeting how awesome it was that we got to play in Denver owning up to his mistake.

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I don't remember anyone claiming that it would be "awesome" to go to Mile High stadium, only that they couldn't decide which was the lesser of the two evils since Pittsburgh's offense was much better than Manning and the Broncos' offense.

In the end it may not have mattered anyway as PIT's defense isn't 1/2 as bad as most here made it out to be, and even if it did matter--the Steelers blew the lead and lost.

Can anyone explain to me why Kevin Snyder, an undrafted rookie who's been on the team for a week, was active over Offensive Line depth in either Waddle or Jackson?

This to me was huge, especially when it became apparent Canon was useless against Miller and there was no one to sub him out for.....

supafly said:

And even worse, 3-1 in AFCCGs.

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At least Brady can say he's what, 9-3 in the regular season games?

PatriotsPimp136 said:

I would love to get them at home for once!!!! I wonder if the goober will retired if he wins the superbowl. Ughhhh

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First we need to get a coach that values home field..............sorry, I can't stop harping on this.

Joey007 said:

At least Brady can say he's what, 9-3 in the regular season games?

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Two weeks from today Peyton Manning will be 1-3 in the Big Game. Brady will be 4-2. That's all that matters.

VectorPrime said:

I have not seen one person who was trumpeting how awesome it was that we got to play in Denver owning up to his mistake.

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I don't see too many people who felt that way.

I certainly saw it as trying to avoid a Pyrrhic victory. They had a first-round bye, and had to decide if going for HFA was worth risking having to go through the playoffs without a key player or two because of injuries. They ultimately decided there was no advantage to a less-healthy 1 seed vs. a more-healthy 2 seed.

LightSkinSmurf said:

First we need to get a coach that values home field..............sorry, I can't stop harping on this.

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I think he values HFA a ton, or else he wouldn't have used Brady/Gronk.

The main issue were the injuries down the stretch, as well as miscues and blown opportunities in the DEN/PHI games. As if that wasn't bad enough, they just couldn't put together enough of an effort in the last 2 weeks under the injury scenario that we saw. Edelman/Amendola just couldn't go. Unfortunately, neither the running game nor the defense was strong enough to win just ONE game vs. opponents that we should've beaten, especially Miami.

All of that combined (plus some bad calls at DEN in Nov.) are why we lost HFA, but even so---we've got to accept the fact that DEN played very well and that it may not have been written in stone that we'd have moved on no matter what. Obviously, the odds would've increased dramatically, and we probably could've gotten another FG out of it at home, but today's loss was much more about poor play on the OL, the lack of a running game, Gost's first missed XP in 10 years, and "role players" like LaFell, Amendola, Martin, Chandler, and White not stepping up enough like we saw in last year's playoff run.

Keep in mind that our defense has given up 20+ in 8/10 past postseason games at Gillette, too.

Proud of our defense, battled back from adversity and didn't give an inch when it mattered most down the stretch.

Collins showed some great maturity coming back from getting burned on two TDs and played a hell of a second half. Hightower was awesome , Butler as well. The defense has bright bright days ahead.

The offense on the other hand was shockingly bad considering alot of these guys played in the bowl last year. The biggest losses were Lewis and Solder. Esp Solder, as the season progressed there was a trickle effect of the Injury. Guys shifted around to try and make up for the loss and eventually it caught up to us. I am not the biggest Solder fan but he's a top 10-15 LT and we just saw how important it is to have a franchise LT (if Solder is at LT and Vollmer is at RT this is a diff game).

YAC. The importance of YAC to this team has been lost this season. Again mostly by injuries edelman missing a chunk, gronk playing hobbled, amendola hurt and the Lewis injury. Lewis injury especially, his ability to extend drives and make defenders miss was missed as the season progressed.

I'd like to see the brain trust start to pour some of its assets into the offense as they have in the defense. Brady used to be able to carry this team all the way , but tonight showed he could use a lil more help.

All in all seeing gronk laid out on the ground receiving the offering oxygen and getting massages , really made me angry for a bit. There was no need for us to be in Denver. We dropped the ball. No one to blame but us, and that's ok. Still proud

supafly said:

I think he values HFA a ton, or else he wouldn't have used Brady/Gronk.

The main issue were the injuries down the stretch, as well as miscues and blown opportunities in the DEN/PHI games. As if that wasn't bad enough, they just couldn't put together enough of an effort in the last 2 weeks under the injury scenario that we saw. Edelman/Amendola just couldn't go. Unfortunately, neither the running game nor the defense was strong enough to win just ONE game vs. opponents that we should've beaten, especially Miami.

All of that combined (plus some bad calls at DEN in Nov.) are why we lost HFA, but even so---we've got to accept the fact that DEN played very well and that it may not have been written in stone that we'd have moved on no matter what. Obviously, the odds would've increased dramatically, and we probably could've gotten another FG out of it at home, but today's loss was much more about poor play on the OL, the lack of a running game, Gost's first missed XP in 10 years, and "role players" like LaFell, Amendola, Martin, Chandler, and White not stepping up enough like we saw in last year's playoff run.

Keep in mind that our defense has given up 20+ in 8/10 past postseason games at Gillette, too.

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Disagree, he may value it some but not enough to not run the ball a million times instead of putting together a gameplan that might actually work. If he valued it enough, we would have gotten it, in all likely hood. Him playing gronk and brady with THAT gameplan just adds to the idiocy, IMO. Either go all out trying to win or sit the important starters. He tried to do both, and we got no home field and got brady and gronk dinged up going into the playoffs. So it was a total fail all around.

Most notable takeaway from a quick look at the game log: As far as hits and sacks go, Demarcus Ware didn't do much in the first 50 minutes, just the one split sack.

In those last 10 minutes, Ware had six of the Bronco's seven official QB hits.

I can't say exactly what that means, but my hunch is that he realized at a certain point that the Patriots weren't going to even attempt to run anymore and the interior DL was doing enough to prevent Brady from stepping up, so he might as well just fly off the edge on every single play. Whatever changed there, it worked.

As for the other guys, Miller had 2.5 sacks but just one other hit, Wolfe had 4 hits and a sack, Jackson had 3 hits, Barrett and Walker each had a hit. The interior guys had 8/16 hits (7 of the first 9) and 1 of the 4 sacks.

LightSkinSmurf said:

Disagree, he may value it some but not enough to not run the ball a million times instead of putting together a gameplan that might actually work. If he valued it enough, we would have gotten it, in all likely hood. Him playing gronk and brady with THAT gameplan just adds to the idiocy, IMO. Either go all out trying to win or sit the important starters. He tried to do both, and we got no home field and got brady and gronk dinged up going into the playoffs. So it was a total fail all around.

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Well, yes--I have a problem with the overall gameplan as well in those last 2 games and I agree with you that I'd have liked to see a better approach OR simply resting them, but I don't think that Belichick was necessarily conceding defeat, either.

I think the hope was that we could play tough defense, get the running game going a bit, and make a handful of plays through the air to win one of those games. The poor play of the OL, the lack of a running game, and a less than dominant performance from our defense certainly contributed to those losses a ton.

They need a legit outside receiver and a running back. It's a travesty to ask a 38 year old QB to drop back 50+ times to beat good teams (even though he is capable of doing it).

Brady2Moss said:

They need a legit outside receiver and a running back. It's a travesty to ask a 38 year old QB to drop back 50+ times to beat good teams (even though he is capable of doing it).

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That's the problem with so many assuming that we can throw the ball 50+ times with success in these Jan/Feb postseason games. Unless you're doing it with so much success that you can consistently put up 30 points a game, the other variables are going to catch up to you.

We may be able to do it much more than other teams, but that doesn't mean that it can be done without the help of a running game--especially 2 years in a row.

you know i feel like a broken record when i say this but those bunch formations were the key to winning against denver. We needed more of a tight formation look instead of the receiver spread that we showed today. I even heard it on the telecast how a tight formation confused the broncos. The Cheifs used it in their win earlier against the broncos. I'm very dissapointed in the game planning.

supafly said:

That's the problem with so many assuming that we can throw the ball 50+ times with success in these Jan/Feb postseason games. Unless you're doing it with so many success that you can consistently put up 30 points a game, the other variables are going to catch up to you.

We may be able to do it much more than other teams, but that doesn't mean that it can be done without the help of a running game--especially 2 years in a row.

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Yup, the fact that you as a team cannot even run the ball to secure a lead or get a single yard is completely baffling. Its not a hard thing to fix either, running backs are devalued now. Just put some resources into it instead of 0 (I consider blount and jackson as 0 sorry)