The fact that it's a preseason game makes winning/losing irrelevant but I thought the play of the Pats 1st team O/D was mediocre to terrible. The "backups" weren't any better. It reminded me of the Pats horrible play against average-good teams last year. The Dline got shoved around, the LBs as a group looked like crap and were always on the ground or behind the play and the best that can be said about the DBs is that they made the tackle...after the catch. The Oline still seems unable to pick up a blitz or keep Dlinemen from disrupting the play. Welker screwed up a blocking play causing the RB to get tackled early. Meriweather looks too small to be safety and whiffed badly on a tackle. The only bright spots I saw were Washington/Gaffney/Faulk. The rest of the team looked as slow and overmatched as they were last year against good teams. Please don't use the "it's only preseason" excuse because I've watched other preseason games and no team, not even those that lost, has looked as slow and overmatched as the Pats.
Taking your concerns at face value here goes:
"DLine shoved around" - do you have any evidence? there was one bad drive for the first team D out of maybe three, where they gave up 49 yards rushing. but there were two other drives where the 1st team D got a lot of pressure and broke up plays. That sounds like "some good, some bad" to me, not terrible, getting pushed around all night.
"LBs as a group looked like crap" - again 1st team LBs were unremarkable, but didn't get beat either. Second team guys (particularly inside) looked bad. The D opened the game with 2 three-and-outs. That was good. They were part of that one bad drive, too. That was bad. same as for the DL.
"DBs made the tackle after catch" - TB started the game 1 of 6 with two scrambles. Someone was covering on those first 8 downs. BTW if the DL and LB were getting pushed around and off the ball, did TB players just wait around for the DBs to come up and stop the play?
Bottom line they gave up 13 points total. Terrible is more like, oh maybe 38 points?
Now for the O:
"Missed blitzes" - one sack (Cassel), a few hurried (3 or 4 tops, the Cassel scrambles were due to coverage) one batted ball (which was a just a good DL play, what was he supposed to do, hold the DL from jumping? Brady might have stepped or lofted it differently). The O was no where near crisp, but hardly beaten and missing guys running free. Those missed blocks were on screen plays so maybe it just looked worse, since the play is designed to have DLs getting into the backfield.
Welker - had a couple bad plays to be sure, but was also wide open on a Brady overthrow that would have been good for 15+ yards. Good route running on that one.
Meriweather - played corner (or NB) almost the whole game. Don't remember seeing him much one way or another, which is generally a good thing for a DB.
"slow and overmatched" - generalization is hard to address, I'd ask "compared to what?" The play was generally pretty mediocre. On a hot humid day where you're trying to get the fundamentals down rather than "do whatever it takes to make a play" situation. Also, you would expect the Pats coaches to run the things they most needed to see the players doing, new techniques and things they needed the work on, in order to evaluate. Finally, most of the fast guys weren't there - Maroney, Moss, Stallworth, Watson. So a slow sluggish offense is what you would expect.
To me, it did look a lot like last year's team during their off game (a lot like the Jets home game). Good D (scoring wise), sluggish O. Of course, since none of the new additions were on the field, that's what you would expect. Also, since last year the Jets game was week 10 or something, I say not bad for week -4 to be already as good as they were last year with the same crew.
BTW, last years team was ALMOST good enough to win a SB. All the other contenders had and will have their own flaws. Also, I think many folks around here are spoiled by selective memory. We only remember teams like 04 and 03 making highlight plays. Go watch those games in full again, and you'd be surprised how uneven some of those games were (13-7 against the Jets in 04, 9-3 against a terrible Cleveland team in 03) and so on. This doesn't give them a pass for things the do wrong.
Right now, this kind of thing reminds me of my old college roommates who would start to pick apart pretty hot women because they were so used to the touched up photos and other fakery you see in magazine supermodels.
