Game Thoughts

[Rob0729]

1.) Get out the bad first. I was disapointed in the defense in the second half. I don't think they put their foot on the Bengals' throats. I will chock it up on young players not knowing how to play 60 minutes. Gives Belichick a teachable moment. Damn, Gresh just made the same point on the radio. Hate when he agrees with me.
2.) Otherwise, the defense was fast and physical. Belichick was definitely holding things back this preseason.
3.) McCourty really has the potential to be a shutdown CB. Kinda wish he was on Chad OchoCinco rather than Butler. The guy is physical and fast.
4.) Wow! Pat Chung looks to have taken a huge leap from his rookie year. The guy could have a Pro Bowl season.
5.) Mayo had a great game. Two near INTs. Looks like he is rebounding from an injury year last season.
6.) Gotta love the options Brady has on offense. I think he is gifted with an embarrassment of options this year.
7.) Another game by the o-line like this and the Pats might want to consider trading Mankins. The o-line didn't seem to miss a beat. They gave Brady tons of time and opened holes in the running game.
8.) Wes Welker is amazing. That is all.
9.) Kudos to Bill O'Brien. For all the crap he got last year, he called a near perfect game this year.

 

[condon84]

Our defense came out aggressive and forced the action. Our DLine looked extremely aggressive and not just held their ground but came out and penetrated into the backfield.

Then, when we got the large lead, we started playing softer zone and reacted instead of forcing the play. Why not stay aggressive?

 

[A.C Vegas]

The second half kind of sucked but they were a little bit gasses cause they were on the field so long late in the first half

I am hoping Ghost and Zoltan get a little be more used to each other we need Gost soild all year

The Kick off teams is going to be great 4 kick off returns 1 broke for a TD and 2 other long and almost broke.

The O has almost too many weapons. Like i have been saying all along the running game is going to be way better then what people are thinking it is going to be

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

1) Kickoff coverage was excellent, giving up 4 returns of 15,18,19,19, none over 20 yards!!!
2) The only punt had no return yards.
3) Tate averaged 46 plus yards on 4 kickoff returns.....
4) Offense and special teams put up 31 points and left more on the field, against a top ten defense from last year....
5) Offense had no turnovers, plus 2 for the day ...
6) Running game averaged 5.2 yards per carry....and defense held Cinn and Benson and company to 3.2. He for 6 carries for 0 yards early on...
7) Brady's QB rating was 120 plus. (Manning was only 109.2 for his 433 yard day)
8) When was the last time the team scored on offense, defense and special teams in the same game??

 

[Ring 6]

Here are my random thoughts without rewatching the game yet.
-GREAT job by the defense. Thet were dominant until the game was 31-3. You cannot judge them by the prevent we were in the entire second half because when Cincy did score it took a lot of time off the clock
-This O is going to be unstoppable
-Welker is Welker
-Run D was swarming
-The begininnig of the Ron Brace starting DE era began 2 series into game 1
-Cunningham saw a lot of action in the Burgess nickel/dime DE role
-Mike Wright was very active out there
-I thought the corners played very well. Other than the Hail Mary short of the end zone, there was really only one play more than the intermediate area, the TD to Ocho, which wasn't real bad coverage either.
-This felt like a 2007 game
-Fred Taylor is far from through
-The offense has so many weapons its scary.

 

[Rob0729]

Our defense came out aggressive and forced the action. Our DLine looked extremely aggressive and not just held their ground but came out and penetrated into the backfield.

Then, when we got the large lead, we started playing softer zone and reacted instead of forcing the play. Why not stay aggressive?

I will chock that up to a lot of young players that Belichick didn't want to get too cute and they were not used to the fact they need to keep it up for all sixty minutes. If they are doing this in November and December in similiar situations, I will worry. But I will give them a pass on it in the first game (the first game of many of the defender's careers).

 

[Ring 6]

Our defense came out aggressive and forced the action. Our DLine looked extremely aggressive and not just held their ground but came out and penetrated into the backfield.

Then, when we got the large lead, we started playing softer zone and reacted instead of forcing the play. Why not stay aggressive?

Because playing aggressive would have given them the chance for big plays to get back in the game.
With a 31-3 lead at the start of the 2nd half its almost impossible to lose if you make them move in small chunks.
Aggressive might make the final margin larger, but who cares?
We gave them the plays that would require 14 plays and 6 minute drives.

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

1) Chung 12 tackles, 4 assists while Mayo had 8 tackles 4 assists...Wow.....

 

[condon84]

I will chock that up to a lot of young players that Belichick didn't want to get too cute and they were not used to the fact they need to keep it up for all sixty minutes. If they are doing this in November and December in similiar situations, I will worry. But I will give them a pass on it in the first game (the first game of many of the defender's careers).

I hope you're right. From what i saw, the young players looked GREAT playing aggressive but looked awful playing soft. Playing aggressive, they gave up 3 points, when they played soft, they gave up 24 points. I love our talent on D because clearly we have some, but I don't understand the philosophy change when we're playing so well a certain way.

 

[Kontradiction]

1. Guards clearly won their battles against the Bengals. Brady almost always had a nice little pocket to step up into. Also pretty solid tackle play from both Light and Vollmer.

2. DE containment on running plays is going to be a bane for our defense this year. Both DE spots were getting sealed pretty easily on runs up the B-Gap and to the outsides. The Bengals were taking what they pleased there. Wilfork was solid and was crashing the line on the inside. He had a great game.

3. Our current crop of CB's play better in bump and run coverage than they do when the give cushions to the WR's. Safety play is strong.

4. Our offense has a lot of weapons in the passing game this year. Even though the TE's weren't used as much as I thought they were, the passing game was extremely efficient. The only time I saw Brady lock on to Welker when someone else was open was at the end of the game. Otherwise, Brady was finding the open man and hitting him.

5. Brady is in midseason form already. The Brady that spreads the ball around is back. Welker, the open man most of the time, had 8 receptions. Moss had 5, Tate and Faulk had 4 each. Gronk had 1 for a nice little TD grab. He should be a big red zone threat this year. Also like the grab that Hernandez made at the beginning of the game.

6. I like the mixture of run and pass plays. BoB called a good game in that regard. Taylor also looks good. I was surprised to see BJGE out there instead of Morris, but he looked patient and was picking up some nice gains. If Taylor can stay healthy this season, we should be a hard offense to stop. Can't wait until Maroney gets healthy to see his dimension added as well.

7. Brandon Tate has the ability to be one of the more dangerous returners in the league.

8. Our safeties should be the best in the AFC East, by far. Meriweather is still improving and Chung has improved by leaps and bounds from last year. He's a hitter (Ochocinco can testify to this), and he covers a lot of ground quickly. They should help offset some of the growing pains this year.

In all, I love what I saw in the first half. Not so much in the second half. The example I made in the other thread was that we had our foot on their collective throats, but didn't stomp on it. Hopefully this is a product of playing soft on defense after getting up to such a big lead. It was a great win, but BB still has some work to do with the team in the film room this week.

I'll add more if I can think of it.

 

[JGaffney]

One thing that stood out for me: The long snaps seemed to be consistently, well, inconsistent. I think some of our FG issues may have been related to this; it looked like those snaps in particular were into the Space Emperor of Space's right side of his body and he had to drag 'em down for Gost.

If this and the fact that the defense gets gassed because we score too quickly in too many phases of the game are our biggest issues, it's a happy year.

I have to say - the Patriots are REALLY fun to watch. So many looks on offense and defense. You just don't know what's going to happen (which is good on O, and sometimes good, sometimes Nexium-worthy on D).

 

[RhodyPatriot]

In the 2nd half the D made the Bengals work for their points. After Tate ran back the kick to start the 2nd half the Bengals needed points and fast.
They went 80 yds on their next possession but it took them over 7 minutes. THAT is what you want from this D. Make the other team have to work for their points. Don't give up anything easy. Heck they even forced Palmer to run with the ball on the Pats 10 yd line because nobody was open.
All in all was quite pleased with the D. Very pleased. The Bengals have a ton of talent on offense.

This offense is scary good. Faulk killed 2 drives in the red zone with drops in the 1st half and the offense scored only 3 out of a potential 14 pts with those possessions.
This offense is going to be special.

 

[voluntarysaftey]

The offense executed as I expected them to do (which is to hopefully be the top offense in the league, but no worse than 3rd best).

The defense showed me enough in the first half to get me excited about watching their development and expecting them to be a solid d by year's end (top 10)

 

[condon84]

Because playing aggressive would have given them the chance for big plays to get back in the game.
With a 31-3 lead at the start of the 2nd half its almost impossible to lose if you make them move in small chunks.
Aggressive might make the final margin larger, but who cares?
We gave them the plays that would require 14 plays and 6 minute drives.

So you agree with us playing soft after getting that huge lead?

 

[Leave No Doubt]

Barring injuries this team should dominate. The D will get to the 60 minute play point and the offense will click completely; by November this team'll be insane. A couple of beautiful drives by Brady, lots of smart, heads-up, game-changing type plays from the D. Damn it feels like 2004 all over again Offense more like 2007 It's good to see that kind of play again, long time coming.

 

[Ring 6]

So you agree with us playing soft after getting that huge lead?

Absolutely.
And uit worked,
I dont care if we win 38-24 or 38-37.
It is intelligent defensive strategy to make them take a lot of time off the clock in order to score.
Playing aggresively and giving them a shot at big plays is really the only way they could have gotten back in the game, which they never did today.

 

[ahmed]

Great game . The defense was amazing first half. Second half, they clearly softened but I think that was the coach's call. The offense was great as well but I want to see more throws to the TEs. I don't want them to depend on Welker and Moss all the time.

The DBs were very exciting. I did not notice Brace and Cunningham much, were they good?

 

[ALP]

My notes:

the offense needs improvement, 14 pts came from D/ST, this offense should be able to do better

we need to incorporate TE's more consistently from start to finish

hopefully with edelman back the #3 and #4 wr's get more looks, still too many balls to moss and welker when it was very close

the deep ball is tough to throw, but as a tandem moss and brady are NOT at 07 form yet

BJ might actually be good against 1st stringers

defense:

i LOVE this new D, really do....im pretty pumped about it

however, the safeties are great at run support, but late getting to the deep passes....im thinking this will improve

 

[Marqui]

I did not notice Brace and Cunningham much, were they good?

They had solid games. Not spectacular, but solid.

 

[mb6592]

1.) Get out the bad first. I was disapointed in the defense in the second half. I don't think they put their foot on the Bengals' throats. I will chock it up on young players not knowing how to play 60 minutes. Gives Belichick a teachable moment. Damn, Gresh just made the same point on the radio. Hate when he agrees with me.
2.) Otherwise, the defense was fast and physical. Belichick was definitely holding things back this preseason.
3.) McCourty really has the potential to be a shutdown CB. Kinda wish he was on Chad OchoCinco rather than Butler. The guy is physical and fast.
4.) Wow! Pat Chung looks to have taken a huge leap from his rookie year. The guy could have a Pro Bowl season.
5.) Mayo had a great game. Two near INTs. Looks like he is rebounding from an injury year last season.
6.) Gotta love the options Brady has on offense. I think he is gifted with an embarrassment of options this year.
7.) Another game by the o-line like this and the Pats might want to consider trading Mankins. The o-line didn't seem to miss a beat. They gave Brady tons of time and opened holes in the running game.
8.) Wes Welker is amazing. That is all.
9.) Kudos to Bill O'Brien. For all the crap he got last year, he called a near perfect game this year.

10. Falk is (and has been) this team's Troy Brown. He is at least my fourth favorite Patriot. He's the antithesis of Moss when it comes to mental toughffness.