This wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing win. But there were a lot of positives here, especially for a team loaded with young players for whom development is crucial. The kids won a lot of individual battles and they played tough and smart on the road against a good team. To me some of the key positives:
-- McCourty is taking the next step in his development. Last week on an identical bomb play to Heap he merely broke the ball up in a key situation. This time he turned and ran and showed great closing speed and hands to make the interception. He's getting close to being a weapon for us on defense -- quarterbacks are going to throw away from him.
-- They played great against the run and the linebackers and DEs were excellent setting the edge. Cunningham didn't show up as much in the pass rush (probably because he wasn't playing next to Wilfork this week) but they're all doing much better bouncing everything inside. 38 yards on 19 carries? This team in the Super Bowl years was built around a defense that didn't give up yards on the ground and made you execute through the air. Early in the season they looked historically bad against the pass and merely woeful against the run; now they're so-so against the pass and trending toward excellent against the run. Add the development of McCourty and Chung in there, and this is turning into a defense you really have to earn your points against, just like the old days.
-- Brandon Deaderick has twice shown pretty good speed shedding a block and beating or at least tying a quarterback to the LOS. He's going to be a useful player for them on 1st and 2nd down.
-- The tackling last year and this year in preseason was abysmal; in this game, with just a few exceptions (there was one Sproles catch-and-run in the 2nd half), they were terrific. There were two guys on either side of the ballcarrier on every checkdown. Mayo is looking like a young Zach Thomas -- he's making every tackle and guys aren't getting extra yards once he reaches them. SD had to covert a bunch of 3rd downs because the improved tackling turned would-be 2nd down conversions into 3rd and 1s and 3rd and 2s.
-- They got positive contributions from a lot of young players -- Gronkowski, Hernandez, Mesko, McCourty, Deaderick, Crable (who did a decent job collapsing the pocket on those 3-man rushes in the soft zones they were running), even Edelman. Even Sergio Brown. If this is last year, we give up that 3rd and 10 play to Gates.
-- Lastly, and this is no small thing, after some bad injuries in preseason, the team is staying pretty healthy, which I'm sure has something to do with a lot of these guys being young. Assuming Chung is okay, the tide is beginning to turn in our favor there, as team after team loses key players (look at Pittsburgh yesterday).
I'm starting to really like this team. They play hard and more importantly they play like a Belichick team -- few mistakes, sound tackling, not beating themselves, making their opponents earn it. We've all seen how this formula works. They're playing with the old Patriot attitude, with nobody bigger than the team, and playing like they know they need each other to win because no one part of the team is good enough to win it on its own. That's been missing for four years. They scored 23 points against a very good defense yesterday (with two terrific drives in the second half against a desperate team) and still lead the league in points per game. Plus, they have an improving defense. I don't see how anyone can be down on this team. They're finally fun to root for again.
and it's awesome. They're also physical, aggressive, smart, and have the right attitude but mostly they want to win, whatever it takes. Maybe I'm in the minority but I have a lot of confidence in this team. I picked them at 13-3 awhile ago and was real close to saying 14-2 but didn't
