Coming up small in big situations
 

Since 2007 the Patriots have consistently played small in big games. Their offense has been cautious, TB12 has been ordinary. I thought that maybe they had gotten past that tendency this year, but when it counted they failed to live up to the moment, but they showed that they are close against the Jets.

Against the Jets, in the second game, they were HUGE! They played flawless football, beat the hell out of the Jets on both sides of the ball and generally played like Champions, making us forget that they played small the game before against the Giants. Against the Ravens they played well, but still allowed them to drive the length of the field to miss a game tying field goal. Brady played well between the 20's, but in the money zone on the field he stank, and the bomb was a horrible decision on his part, as bad as any I have seen him make throughout his career. Against the Giants in the SB, the Pats played well at points, their defense played very well for 55 minutes, but when the money was on the line they choaked up a chicken bone.

I bring this pain up to point out how badly Belichick has managed the roster and how flawed this team has become. On offense they have two tight ends who are All Pro quality, Wes Welker, despite his drop, is the real deal and the rest of the skill players are Jags. On defense their front four are pretty good, their libebacking core is solid but slow and their secondary is the worst in the league. Their pass rush disappears for long periods of the game. If not for the coaching genius of Belichick this would be a 4 and 12 team, maybe 6 and 10.

Welker dropped a ball that would have won the Super Bowl, but Brach dropped one right after that would have given the Pats a first down. Bardy launches a bomb to Gonk, and he lets the LB intercept it instead of making sure he couldn't. Hernandez drops a pass across the middle on the last drive wasting 5 seconds. Belichick challenges a catch that all replays show was a catch. Mankins gives up a sack in the last minute of the game. All of those are examples people playing small in big situations.

I am really high on the Pats future, but this team was so flawed that even making the playoffs was a miracle. The defense needs to be rebuilt and the offense needs a deep threat, and maybe a running back who can, you know, actually run the ball. Josh McDanials came up small in the last Super Bowl, so here hoping that he learned from that failure. When the Pats won the first time, the play calling came up big, and the bit players on the team delivered under pressure. The next two had a defense that allowed the offense to play conservatively when it had to and rely on field goals at the end. This team has a bad defense and the play calling was pretty timid.

We are at a fork between really good and just ok. The choice is for GM Bill to make. Two firsts and two seconds are a lot of ammo, if Bill decides to use them. This is a year to use them all, and maybe trade next years for the missing link.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

The part I disagree with is calling skill players beyond Gronk, Hernandez, and Welker JAGS. I wish we had JAGS. If Ochocinco, Edelman, Price, Tate, Underwood, or anyone else we've tried to put on the field was at least an average receiver, we'd be a much better team. Gronk's injury showed just how close we teetered from being a very unformidable offense all season. You just can't consistently win when you only have three options in the passing game. The Packers and Saints had like seven deep each. It's a miracle that we got to the SB, although both strong defenses (NYG, Baltimore) made our offense look pretty pitiful.

Edit: I forgot about Branch. Well, it should say something that I forgot he was on the team. I'd say he is probably below average overall. Wouldn't call him a liability, but frankly our offense would be more effective with either a burner or a tall guy on the other side. Branch is Welker without the quickness or YAC ability. I think he is done.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

If I did I will edit. What I meand was that they were very fgood, and the rest of the skill players are Jags.

Here is what I wrote:

"On offense they have two tight ends who are All Pro quality, Wes Welker, despite his drop, is the real deal and the rest of the skill players are Jags."

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

... all that written...

and yet they're now considered the best team in football.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

It's just a scary mentality that is lodged somewhere in the locker room. In truly huge situations, they wilt. Now in 09 the team had a cencerous locker room that had alot of soft veterans hoping a returning Tom Brady would win them a Super Bowl ring. I thought after the big purge that offseason would right the ship; but again in 10 the Jets disrespected the team for almost two weeks and then marched right into Foxboro and punched the Pats in the mouth. The Patriots response was to curl up in a ball and turn over. I thought the reason was just the D being very young, the O installing a new offense since Moss had left, and that playoff game would toughen them up. Now this season; we were down and ripe for the picking against the Jets the second time but the Pats whipped them and showed a mental toughness we hadn't seen in a while from them. The repeated comebacks from being down double digits was encouraging, and finally getting the playoff monkey off our back made me think this team was finally ready for the spotlight again.

However, the AFCCG was really a game we had no buisness winning. Sterling Moore made a season saving play on that non TD and we got lucky on the FG miss...but the game never should have gotten to that point. We had our boot on the Ravens throat and unlike in the regualr season instead of going for the kill we went into our "Don't Blow It" gameplan.

I'd have thought the team learned their lesson after that and it was an abberition, but then the exact same situation comes up Sunday. Team goes down early and comes marching back to be up 17-9 with 25 minutes to go in the game. And then the entire team starts playing not to lose and as usual, the opposite happens. Soft defense and uninspired playcalling on both sides of the ball.

I don't know what the issue is or how to fix it (and just for the record; eliminating Brady, Belichick, or Welker is NOT the answer). I wonder if it a culture of Yes men that surround Belichick these days...all the guys there were brought up by him. Weis and Crennel had the sack to tell him when something wasn't working and I wonder if the coaches there aren't up for doing that because they are so appreciative of Belichick giving them their "shot".

I know winning a Super Bowl is a very hard task and only one team does it every year. I know that winning anything in the NFL is hard. I know that the consistency we have seen with this franchise these last 12 years are incredible. But for 5 of the last 7 years (2008 we didn't make the playoffs and the 2009 loss to the Ravens was a complete beating) we have witnessed the Patriots in their last game of the season losing because the O never stuck a fork in the opponent and D couldn't come up with the plays when the game was on the line.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

The defense has choked in big games this year,last year,the year before ect: ect: all the way back to 2004

.....the running game in the playoffs are a disaster,have been since Dillon left and when you add the two together you see why NE has not won the SB since 2004.

I am tired of seeing the burden and blame on Brady's shoulders...he deserves none of it most of the time and certainly did not deserve it on Sunday.

People blame Brady and Welker for key mistakes in the 4th quarter of Sunday's game...what people fail to acknowledge is that Brady had given his defense 8 points in which to hold the lead in the early parts of the 3rd quarter and once again they couldn't stop an Elite QB from slicing and dicing their way back into the game and back into the lead.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

This is a team built to withstand the rigors of a 16-game season. By having a team with depth, the Patriots are able to play well late in the season, when many other teams have been decimated by injuries. Once you get into the playoffs, however, you're generally not playing teams that have been decimated by injuries. You usually end up playing the teams that have been lucky enough to avoid significant injuries. Against those teams at that stage of the season, the talent level of the Patriots doesn't compare favorably. For a while, the Patriots had a few of those types of players. Now they have two, maybe three: Brady, Wilfork and Gronkowski. That's why you end up with guys like Tracy White, James Ihedigbo, and Sterling Moore starting in the Superbowl.

The Krafts have stated that their goal is to be competitive every year. That's OK, but you're giving something up in exchange. Take Thomas Dimitroff for example. Last year, he went for it--traded a boatload of picks for Julio Jones. BB told him on the day of the draft that he wouldn't do it, and that Jonathan Baldwin was as good as Jones (doubtful). Maybe the Jones trade will work out and maybe it won't, but that's an example of the type of risk-taking that either gets a guy fired, or gets him a ring. Kraft said last week during an interview that you really have to take risks to succeed in business, but the Patriots seem to take the opposite approach.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

So you're blaming the defense everyone knew was held together with duct tape and string for not stopping an (in your words) "elite QB from slicing and dicing their way back into the game"? Come on.

Anyway, I think people are over thinking this to some extent. On a 13-3 team that just barely lost the Super Bowl, we're complaining about how "badly Belichick has managed the roster and how flawed this team has become" and the "scary mentality that is lodged somewhere in the locker room." I'm loathe to imagine what people will be writing when this team starts going 5-11 again.

Really, I think most of this you can chalk up to the vagaries of the NFL. Ostensibly, both NO and GB were better teams than the NYG. We probably should have lost to the Ravens, but got lucky and made it to the Super Bowl. Only on the biggest stage, our luck turned the other way.

There are only a handful of teams that have managed to remain as consistently successful as the Patriots for a reason: because it's insanely hard to do, and relies to a great extent on luck and good fortune. Some years, BB's FA acquisitions are a complete flop; others yield Rodney Harrison and lead to a Super Bowl.

That said, I hope BB is able to improve his hit rate on FA acquisitions this offseason (recent drafts have improved since the late 2000s). That, to me, has been a major factor in why we haven't been able to sustain the levels of pure talent on the roster that we had during the Super Bowl years (we missed on a couple of successive drafts and have largely whiffed on some significant FAs). If there's any offseason in which BB should be able to redeem his record on this account, it's this one.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

All that is good, but I think many of us expect this team to win games were we hold the opponents to 21 or 17 points. As far as the running game, I think we can really be an elite running team if we wanted to be. For some reason, we just forget about that aspect of the game because we have an all-world QB and it's much easier to gain yardage that way. And I don't mean elite as in the traditional sense where one back gets 25-30 carries a game, I mean sharing the load in the backfield, using end arounds, etc.

Re: Coming up small in big situations
 

Man, the defense fell apart in the Carolina Super Bowl as well, dont you remember? They were in danger of losing.

Carolina went away from that game kicking themselves for screwing up the 2 point situation and for Kasay kicking the ball out of bounds. That could have easily been a loss.

I think the Indy game was lost for a variety of reasons (Brown OPI, no field goal attempt, bogus PI on Hobbs, ridiculous non-PI call on a mugging of Caldwell in the end zone, heat turned up on exhausted flu-ridden team, etc.)

I'm not sure much has changed at all other than having a defense that's just not as good, but let's not pretend our stellar defense didn't give up 29 points in 31 minutes to Carolina.