Idle thoughts - the start of the second half edition.

[Kdo5]

BB's an American and can vote for whoever he wants. He also has the right to talk about it. People need to grow up.

I'm not saying that he can't. But the reality is if it was causing a distraction and messing with their focus, Bill should have foreseen that.

 

[archstanton543]

I'm not saying that he can't. But the reality is if it was causing a distraction and messing with their focus, Bill should have foreseen that.

They're grown men in that locker room that want to win football games. Politics takes a back seat to that.

 

[mihap]

BB's an American and can vote for whoever he wants. He also has the right to talk about it. People need to grow up.

Yeah but not all people cant put politics off in their work and their realtions. Its not that simple.

 

[SVN]

Our secondary yesterday
Courtesy :Michael hurley

Wisdom Is Gained From Losses Like This And Other Leftover Patriots Thoughts

 

[Boomer B]

My thoughts:

I've been worried about this D for some time now. We've played a lot of mediocre to bad QBs which have masked some of the problems but once we saw a good QB like Wilson he had no issues driving against our D.

- Maybe the biggest problem is our D-line is getting no push. Hawks O-line is horrible and we made them look good. If we don't blitz we get no pressure, and our secondary isn't good enough to hold out with no pressure. I still can't understand why we didn't keep A. Hicks. He was one guy on the interior who get pressure on the QB. Long and Sheard have been disappointing. We need to find a rush, but it looks like we just don't have the horses to do so.

- The D has a serious lack of talent. I'm all for in Bill We Trust but we let go 2 of our most athletic defenders (Jones and Collins) and we haven't replaced them with guys who are as talented. In my opinion we have 0 elite players on D, 3 good players (Butler, Hightower, and McCourty), and the rest are all average to below average.

- To go with a lack of talent on D we don't have any intimidators (like Rodney) and we don't have the leadership on that side of the ball that we've seen in the past (Bruschi, McGinnest, Rodney, Wilfork). We saw guys on the Hawks D laying big hits, stripping the ball, etc..

- We saw some horrible coaching on the defensive side last night. Lots fault Patricia, but Belichick oversees everything and he had to sign off and be a big part of that gameplan. The 2 man rush on the last drive of the first half was asinine. That was embarrassing. Even if we had covered with 9 in coverage (which we didn't) it would have left huge running lanes open for Wilson. Made no sense at all. We will play a bunch of crappy teams coming up and the problems may be masked, but good teams and QBs will exploit this D. I would like to see more man to man and blitzes. We can't just let NFL QBs sit back and have 3 seconds + to find a big hole in our zone.

- All this being said the sky hasn't fallen. We have a flawed team but so do everyone else. The D has to get better (including the coaching), but if we can get home field we have as good a shot as anyone. The problem is right now against top teams the offence's room for error is 0. They have to be near flawless to beat a team like Seattle because our D is not that good. On to San Francisco.

 

[Canuck]

Offense: I thought the offense played well. Almost put up 30+ points against a good defense. Credit the Seattle defense coming up with some big stops at the GL at the end of the game. There was some questionable calls on offense at the end of the game. I don't think having Brady sneak the ball was the best play available. I thought Brady played well and had time to throw the ball but he had to make tough throws in this game. Neither Hogan or Mitchell were effective in this game. It was nice to see Bennett look a lot faster. Looks like his ankle might be feeling much better. Brady made some nice back shoulder throws to Bennett, something that was lacking in previous games. Run game was effective but when it came down to crunch time at the end of the game, they didn't have faith in Blount to get in.

Defense: When the defense rushes 2 and drops 9 and the receivers are still wide open, you know it's going to be a bad game. There was clearly a severe lack of communication amongst the defenders. Collins may have freelanced but I think they really missed his coverage abilities last night. Prosise game the defense all kinds of trouble last night. The weakness in the secondary was really exposed last night. Our receivers were tightly covered while Seattle had alot more open receivers. I thought the DL played okay. Got pressure on the QB and stopped the run. The pass coverage by the LBs and the secondary was not good.

Special Teams: Cyrus was given another chance and he blew it again. Ghost seems to have gotten better.

Coaches: Not one of their better coached games. The defense was not prepared. The play calling and time management at end of the game was not well thought out.

Officiating: I thought it was a well called game. We didn't lose the game because of them.

Final Thoughts: This was our really first bump in the road where we took a step backward and not continue to improve. For whatever reason Ryan is having a tough time this year and the Patriots seem to have nobody better to take his place. Replacing Collins is going to be a work in progress. Losing 2 talented players in Jones and Collins has weakened this defense to some degree. Still, we have a very good chance to finish 12-4 and could do even better. It going to be a battle for home field advantage and we could really use it. We battled a good team right to the very end. We still are a very good team even when we don't play very well. This was not a blow-out. We will be ready for the play-offs.

 

[deroc5050]

Clearly the Pats D is the achilles heel of the team.. and we got rid of 2 of our better defenders. I am clearly missing something. But its a dead horse at this point.

 

[IndianPat]

Special Teams had at least three lapses that I could see: Cyrus Jones fumble, Ghost's kick off going out of bounds and another time a short kick returned for a decent gain. On a positive note, Cyrus Jones had a fantastic return. He could get exciting.
Defensive game planning was for some reason bizarre. Rushing two or three and dropping the rest in coverage is something teams do when they are up by 28 points in the 3rd quarter. It was obvious this team is not capable of executing that strategy perfectly. Seattle had 6 or 7 scoring drives.
I think the defense will get some what cohesive before the regular season ends. The offense, as it is presently constituted, is capable of putting up six scores on average defenses. We cast our anxious eyes on those teams with good defenses that will restrict our offense to four scores like Seattle and Pittsburgh.
Those are the times when defensive stops need to be made. Scared play calling is not going to cut it.

 

[luuked]

I still can't understand why we didn't keep A. Hicks.

Because he priced himself outside the range that Caserio/BB felt comfortable paying for a player with his projected workload. Additionally, young players (Brown & co) appear to not have developed as fast as was expected.

Now agree or disagree with the that but that's pretty much the reason.

- The D has a serious lack of talent. I'm all for in Bill We Trust but we let go 2 of our most athletic defenders (Jones and Collins) and we haven't replaced them with guys who are as talented. In my opinion we have 0 elite players on D, 3 good players (Butler, Hightower, and McCourty), and the rest are all average to below average.

By this logic we didn't have any elite players on D before we let Jones and Collins go as well. Because no way either of the two is better or more important to the D than Hightower. While I understand why people are upset about Chandler Jones, I think that Collins was mostly a luxury item in our defense. You don't need to have elite talent on your defense if everyone does their job. We don't need them to be a shutdown defense but just above average to compliment our offense. It's about winning football games not about stats whoring.

- To go with a lack of talent on D we don't have any intimidators (like Rodney) and we don't have the leadership on that side of the ball that we've seen in the past (Bruschi, McGinnest, Rodney, Wilfork). We saw guys on the Hawks D laying big hits, stripping the ball, etc..

Not sure I understand what you mean by big hits and stripping the ball. Butler laid out one of their players (Prosise ?) in the second half and Marty pancaked Earl Thomas as well. The team has a **** ton of veteran players so I don't think leadership should be an issue.

- We saw some horrible coaching on the defensive side last night. Lots fault Patricia, but Belichick oversees everything and he had to sign off and be a big part of that gameplan. The 2 man rush on the last drive of the first half was asinine. That was embarrassing. Even if we had covered with 9 in coverage (which we didn't) it would have left huge running lanes open for Wilson. Made no sense at all.

What exactly is everyone's issue with the 2 man rush ?

Even if we ignore the fact that it was actually a 3 man rush as Long (95), Ninkovich (50) and Flowers (98) were attacking the pocket.

When the ball was snapped there were 14 seconds on the clock with no timeouts for the Seahawks. Exactly where do you think Wilson would have run from the 20 yard line if there are 8 players in coverage with Flowers actually kinda spying him ? It was a perfectly reasonable call that situationally made tons of sense as the only objective was to prevent them reaching the endzone. The only thing that blew it up was the ****up of either Ryan or Chung on the handoff. And a blowup like that can happen on any given play.

- All this being said the sky hasn't fallen. We have a flawed team but so do everyone else. The D has to get better (including the coaching), but if we can get home field we have as good a shot as anyone. The problem is right now against top teams the offence's room for error is 0. They have to be near flawless to beat a team like Seattle because our D is not that good. On to San Francisco.

I don't think the margin is 0 as we were about to tie the game despite 2 turnovers but it's definitely not a big margin.

 

[tombonneau]

Clearly the Pats D is the achilles heel of the team.. and we got rid of 2 of our better defenders. I am clearly missing something. But its a dead horse at this point.

What? You don't like sacrificing current real talent that can help your 39 yo HOF QB win in 2016 for future speculative talent that may never amount to anything beyond Tavon Wilson?

 

[luuked]

1. I was trying to thnk WHAT is missing from this defense compared to last season. It hit me over and over again. It doesn't force turn overs. How many times this season have we lost the turnover battle. Wekk this was another one 0-2

Add in the fraction of a second that prevented the Gronk fumble to count, Ebner being in place to scoop up Cyrus' fumble and Brady somehow recovering the fumbled snap it's even worse than it looks on the stats sheet. Ball security has been pretty bad.

2. OK the games over with one of the most disappointing GL offensive performances I have seen in quite a while. Too cute by a lot. First there was the first Brady sneak, which I somewhat get because he was killing time more than gaining yds and he got a yard. Second down was just a great play by Chancellor to get Blunts legs and keeps him inches from the GL. Its with the 2nd Brady sneak where I think it goes off the rails. Blunt has been the best GL backs in the league. USE HIM, or at least run a PAP and throw it to one of your TE mismatches Devlin out of backfield would have been wide open.

But the final play was the worst of all. Yes there was a lot of contact, and the officials COULD have thrown a flag. But they just as easily not have. Gronk was a part of that contact, and the more I saw the replay, the more I thought they made the right call. Take a test. If that had been Chung on Graham with the same results, would you be happy with a flag. I don't think so.

Fully agree. To extend this a bit, I am kinda disappointed so ar in how little creativity goes into our goalline sets given the monster personell we have available. For heavens sake the playcalling last year with Scott Chandler was more creative and deliberate than with Marty this year. I guess it will get better once Lewis returns closer to his usual role but I expected a lot more in the redzone.

What a HUGE number of chunk plays Seattle got. I thought that THIS is what the defense was supposed to stop. I thought that we could accept 5-15 yd pass plays, but NOT the 20-30 yd plays we saw all night. This is what we were supposed to get by giving up some of our pass rush.

You nailed it.

I've been a big Logan Ryan supporter this season, and up to this game thought he's done a good job in coverage, being very competitive even on completions, forcing QB's and receivers to make quality catches and passes. NOT tonight. He was a day late and a dollar short too often.

Ryan had an awful game. Between the ****up with Chung at the end of the half, allowing another 40 yard completion to a completely open Richardson in the second half and finally getting beat badly by Baldwin on Seattle's final TD.

Not sure what made him regress that much. Because most of those issues have nothing to do with our pass rush being less potent than last year. He just seems mentally and physically slow so far.

Shane McCellan showed me nothing to deserve more playing time. Like so much of the defense, he looked completely out of synch.

This one remains a total head scratcher. I guess this aquisition is the anti corollary to how they got Hogan. I guess they saw him at camp last year, looked at his numbers + tape and projected him to fit into the team. Swing and miss.

Did anyone hear Cliff Avrill's name tonight? I know I didn't. So can we PLEASE stop slamming Marcus Cannon, because he completely shut down one of the best pass rushers in the league.....and he's not the first one he's done that to, either. Cannon is playing as well as any RT in the league right now.....and at about half the cap space.

Overall the pass protection was excellent, especially given the DL we were playing against

They need to send Scar to Brady's guy to preserve his age the same way he is doing it to Tom. He is doing an amazing job.

And we are more than half way through the season and I'm STILL waiting for Josh to break the tendency to either run or run PAP when Blount is on the field.

I noticed Blount aligning as receiver a few times this game. He was never targeted but they might start to move him around a bit.

 

[Sicilian]

And we are more than half way through the season and I'm STILL waiting for Josh to break the tendency to either run or run PAP when Blount is on the field.

AND I'm still aghast that we gave the ball to James White on a running play. He is NOT a good runner.

I agree that they need to mix in a pass to Blount now and again, but I think that's exactly the same reason they throw a James White draw play into the mix on occasion. If he never ran the ball, it would be just as easy to key in on that as it is to key a run/PAP when Blount is in the game. That tiny half second mental hesitation might mean the difference between a white catch or no catch, or a catch that reaches the edge versus one that gets stopped for a minimal gain.

I know the flip side argument to that is that no team respects the run with James White, which is half true. No one is scheming specifically against it, but if you completely ignore it he's still capable of getting 6 or 7 yards, which I'm sure you'd take every time.

 

[SVN]

Pats went deep more than they usually did in the SB. They didnt stick to their gameplan of short underneath passes and maybe ran blount too much initially. Not sure why.Their first drive was perfect. After that seattle's pass rush for whatever reason came alive and they went to strange plays. Throwing deep to edelman in triple coverage for e.g .Yeah the pats were about to tie the game with 2 turnovers but see the amount of big plays they needed to get every yard. 3rd and 25 doesnt get converted often .

 

[patfanken]

I agree that they need to mix in a pass to Blount now and again, but I think that's exactly the same reason they throw a James White draw play into the mix on occasion. If he never ran the ball, it would be just as easy to key in on that as it is to key a run/PAP when Blount is in the game. That tiny half second mental hesitation might mean the difference between a white catch or no catch, or a catch that reaches the edge versus one that gets stopped for a minimal gain.

I know the flip side argument to that is that no team respects the run with James White, which is half true. No one is scheming specifically against it, but if you completely ignore it he's still capable of getting 6 or 7 yards, which I'm sure you'd take every time.

Sounds good on paper, BUT the fact is that in those rare occasions that we give the ball to White we AREN'T getting those 6 or 7 yards. IIRC that result only happened in one game.

THAT is what is missing from this offense. At it's best when Gronk was healthy and Whitehead was the RB, we had a guy who could run the ball between the tackles and was a threat to break a run, and not be knocked down by the first guy to touch him.

White has be a consistent and effective pass receiver and a willing pass blocker. But no team is going to adjust their pass rush or be afraid of the draw play when he is in the line up, because when he is in there, defenses aren't paying a price for ignoring the draw play.

 

[Sicilian]

Sounds good on paper, BUT the fact is that in those rare occasions that we give the ball to White we AREN'T getting those 6 or 7 yards. IIRC that result only happened in one game.

THAT is what is missing from this offense. At it's best when Gronk was healthy and Whitehead was the RB, we had a guy who could run the ball between the tackles and was a threat to break a run, and not be knocked down by the first guy to touch him.

White has be a consistent and effective pass receiver and a willing pass blocker. But no team is going to adjust their pass rush or be afraid of the draw play when he is in the line up, because when he is in there, defenses aren't paying a price for ignoring the draw play.

Fair, but there you're assuming that they are actually ignoring the draw play. Who knows, they may be, but I would be really surprised if any DC drew up a defense where the possibility of a draw wasn't built into somebody's assignment. The only time I can imagine that happening is if they looked at the film and saw that it NEVER happens. Now, to your point, that's a perfect reason to mix in some pass plays to Blount, because it wouldn't surprise me if teams just start letting him release free because they've shown an unwillingness to throw the ball to him.