aluminum seats
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2006
- Messages
- 10,420
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Pinning poor performance - like prior losses - on lack of emotion or desire is just trying to brush what truly ails this team - or the simple fact that something or things does under a rug of convenience... I'd love to be a fly on the wall in practice and meetings these days. This team somehow finds ways to convince itself weekly it's correcting mistakes and rounding into form and has a great plan to underscore that when it's pretty obvious nothing could be farther from the truth.
I think this team needs an intervention... They emerged from a troubling (and one of the oddliest managed ever) pre season acting as if what we were seeing was just the inevitable meaningless working out the kinks. They weren't going to need a lot of veteran help, in fact they had little use for it. They had lots of youth and new ideas and potential talent that they were reluctant to risk losing, not to mention emerging talent they expected to pick up where it left off. Only it didn't. And Brady to Lloyd was being fast tracked to fruition like it was a fait acompli. Concerns about the OL were dismissed because lets face it, Scar always finds a way... They were looking ahead to life after Welker and Branch and even the feel good story of Woodhead. They had Lloyd and Edelman and three young backs and the market on TE depth cornered. On defense they had certainly upgraded the talent in the front 7 and it was showing up out of the gate.
This team used to pride itself on self scouting. And focusing on the task at hand, winning one game at a time. Somehow approaching the mid point of this season they seem oblivious to their shortcomings and unable to adapt or adjust an approach that clearly isn't working out remotely the way they anticipated. Perhaps because it was predicated on winning a game they may not get to. Hopefully over the bye not only do some players get healthier, but the coaching staff takes a good, hard look at it's own product on the field and itself and makes some adjustments to counter what has turned out to be some nagging issues in all three phases of this teams game. Can't do much about the talent you've assembled at this juncture. So all that is left is to figure out how to make the most of it. This is the time that Belichick used to reach outside of his in house inner circle to his extended circle of trusted friends and former protoges for input and a potentially fresh perspective.
I think the offense might benefit from coaches taking a step back from their game planning penchant and their plans for the future to work on figuring out what it is this unit can do best here and now. Everyone plays to matchups. Everyone doesn't spend inordinate amounts of time and energy attempting to dictate them via endless personnel groupings. Put your best players on the field and see what shakes out. The old do what we do best until someone stops us approach as opposed to the out thinking ourselves in the process of attempting to out think an opponent. It's kind of the less frenetic version of what we do in up tempo no huddle that seems to at least work better than the alternative to date.
I even think the defense would benefit from more of an adaptation to that approach. Figure out what we do best based on the talent at hand and see if the instincts that got them this far kick in. And perhaps consider approaching matchups by focusing on not just taking away what opponents do well but by being mindful of what we do best as opposed to forcing opponents into doing what we don't do well.
Just a thought. If they keep banging their heads against the wall across the board, I'm going to be a lot less optimistic. Brady needs to be able to answer the question does this offense have an identity. And it's defense has to find an alternative identity to the one with the worst secondary in the league.
I think you've got a point on the defensive side--I do think a reassessment of approach would be helpful there.
But I think the questions of offensive identity are a little overstated. The primary concern there, to me, is health: of the TEs and the OL, two huge areas. Beyond that, the issue of "identity" might be muddled because--when healthy--there's really little this team CAN'T do. So it's tough to say, "we are this." If that makes sense.
