Re: The past two games

[xmarkd400x]

This is an excerpt from the book The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam. It details a series of events during a NY Giants preseason game during Pepper Johnson's (PJ is a current asst. NE coach, was a LB for NYG) rookie season.

As the afternoon went on [Pepper] Johnson, who was calling the defensive signals, kept looking over to the sideline, where Belichick was standing, to let him know that they had to make an adjustment, so they could stop the run. It seemed as if Belichick was intentionally looking away. Finally, Johnson did catch his eye, and the coach's face seemed to be framed in anger; that anger seemed to be directed, as best Johnson could tell, at him personally, as if all of this were Pepper Johnson's fault, because he was the highest draft choice on the field. Finally, the Giants made the defensive stop. As they came to the sidelines, totally exhausted, they expected to hear some words of praise. Not on this day, for a lesson was being taught. Suddenly, Belichick's voice seemed to lash out at them: You're with the New York Giants now! I don't care what you did in college. I don't care whether you were All-American! (That zinger was aimed directly at Johnson, who had made some All-American Teams.) Here you stop the run! I do not care what defense you're caught in! You stop the run! They don't run against us! They never run against the Giants! And they never, never run against us up the middle! If we can't stop them any other way, we stop them with pure physical ability! (Halberstam, 158)

To me, this sounds like a lot of what the Patriots could have been doing these past two games (and they did have all the importance of preseason games -- undefeated season aside). Lining up in bad formations for a given down/distance. If the Patriots did in fact do that, the benefits would be two fold. Their playoff opponents, looking at these games, would learn the wrong things about the Patriots tendencies. Secondly, the players would become a little more experienced. They would have been put (intentionally) in a tough place and forced to play out of it on sheer blood and guts. This goes for both offense and defense.