WHO CARES ABOUT THE SEXY STATS??? You stat whores will come up with every excuse why those units kept failing in the clutch, when it's obviously due to predictability issues.
Just as with the 01 Rams or 03-04 Colts, who cares how many points they put up, they got stopped because they stubbornly wouldn't adjust after getting exposed. Mike Martz didn't change even though Belichick figured out their offense was all slants and in-cuts to WR's, and backfield passes to Faulk. The explosive Colts got stopped once the Pats figured out their stretch play. The same thing has happened to EVERY single McDaniels' coached unit.
You don't care about stats because they don't help or do a bit of justice to your argument and you know it. You said that McDaniels' offense was just as vanilla and predictable as the one we have now, right? If that were the case, we wouldn't have been anywhere close to the number one offense in the league statistically. The fact of the matter is that the offense, while it had weapons, set a record for the amount of points scored. A predictable offense does not do that. A predictable offense scores 14-20 points a game, maybe. Our offense in 2007 was averaging WELL above that. Were we in the shotgun? Sure. But being in the shotgun a lot does not make your offense predictable. It's the plays that you call out of it. That's where the 2007 offense and the 2009 offense pale in comparison. I didn't see Josh calling the same draw play out of the shotgun to Faulk 10+ times in a game.
That 07 offense exploded because no one saw Moss+Welker+Stallworth on the field before, with a Meyer-adapted offense from Belichick, on a motivated unit pissed off over the Video Witch Hunt. After 10 games their offensive production dramatically went down as teams figured them out.
Though I think your reasoning is flawed, I'll go ahead and grant you Welker because nobody could have seen what he would do in our offense. However, are you seriously trying to sit here and tell me that teams didn't know what Moss and Stallworth were capable of? Really? Teams were plenty aware of what Moss and Stallworth are capable of. The difference in the team early in the season and late in the season was that defenses were shadowing Moss with multiple guys. They figured (correctly) that their best chance to win was not death by firing squad (Moss), but instead death by crucifixion (Welker). Limit the big play and you can slow that offense down. It didn't exactly take a genius to think of that. Still, after those ten games, McDaniels and Co. managed to win eight more games en route to an appearance in the Super Bowl where the loss of Stephen Neal, more than anything, lost us the Super Bowl because the Giants (unlike any team before them) were able to get pressure on Brady up the middle to the point where he couldn't step into his throws and had to throw off his back foot. Once again, blaming McDaniels for the Super Bowl loss is ******ed. But you already knew that.
Oh, and by the way, you just went ahead and thanked the personnel for the 2007 offensive explosion where, in another thread, you went out of your way to say that coaching and schemes are what make the personnel either look good or bad in a particular game. I'll go ahead and quote it for you...
mav said:
People need to stop thinking that shotgun automatically gives you more time and comfort to pass. It make it VERY EASY for the d-ends, corners, and safeties to not even have to worry about the run and play pass all the way. This dramatically improves a pass rush, no matter how good your O-line is. The talent on O-line is way better than what we ever had from 01-04, it's the scheme and predictable play calls that are the problem.
The pressure on Brady, impotence of receivers, and blame on O-line are all way too similar to the 07 choke job.
It's not about how amazing the opposing D-line is, it's the scheme and play calls. A defensive end becomes a better rusher, a corner and safety become better in pass coverage, if they don't have to worry about defending the run.
http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...mnf-recap-jaworski-blames-ol.html#post1618530
http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...mnf-recap-jaworski-blames-ol.html#post1619242
Talk out of both ends much? By the way, Brady was getting hit just as much passing out of a singleback formation as he was passing out of the shotgun. The line just sucked last night no matter what formation the offense was in.