The Day the Offense Died

[Ring 6]

Throw out the Skins game as it was an early-season contest and we were still adjusting post-Milloy.

And watch that Lions game again. You can't tell the difference between THAT game and the fluky a-- games that were the Miami and Houston games? The Lions game was no fluke - they marched up and down the field on us.

The defense has been INCREDIBLE all year. The defense has had MUCH worse games in championship seasons than yesterday.
I will gladly play a defense that allows the rb less than 3 yards carry, allows the QB to pass for 300 yards but he must do it at the expense of 3 Int a lost fumble and a bunch of sacks.
If you dont think those things are related you arent watching

 

[BelichickFan]

Here are how many plays we ran in each offensive posession . . .

Other than the 17 play drive, which took 8:31. and all we got out of it was a field goal.......the offense had no continuity to it.

And, yet, we still only punted twice. Blame 3 turnovers and the sacks if you want but yesterday was nothing to do with McDaniels. Although I'm sure that on the sacks, you would have called running plays

 

[JoeSixPat]

There's nothing wrong with the offense that better pass blocking and less fumbles won't fix. And Brady wasn't that good either, several of his completions were dive bombing into the ground. It just wasn't a sharp day - and remember the Lions' DC is ex Jets' DC Donnie Henderson, he knows us well.

Funny thing is, as critical as I've been on the offense all season, it seems to me that given the injuries, and approaching the playoffs I'm actually more worried about the Defense these days... letting the Lions roll over them like they did is a MUCH bigger concern to me.

Caldwell had what is his first or 2nd 100 yard day of his career. I'd love to see some other WRs doing more (hello Doug Gabriel) and obviously the penalites, turnovers, and poor OL play can't be stressed enough.

But Brady STILL completed 70% of his passes.

Of course, we are talking about competition like the Lions, but still -

When Brady and the offense FINALLY developed a rhythm it was thing of beauty. Let's hope that they can capture that and put it in a bottle for the remainder of the games.

If there weren't so many mistakes all across the board - fumbles penalties you name it - I might be critical of the play calling on both offense AND defense - but its REALLY hard to guage that when the team seems to be implementing the plays so poorly.

 

[MDD]

I, for one, dont see "manic depression"... I see constructive criticism and the suggestion that, if the team continues to play like this, once we have to face better teams in a cant lose situation, we probably wont end up as winners.

Bingo. Although my concern is more with the defense than the offense, this sentiment is right on.

 

[SCPatBoy]

Well....The offense just hasn't been very good all year. There have been flashes of promise, but then theres games like Chicago, Indy, Detriot, Jets(2) that just leave you scratching your head. Now I believe our offense is adequate to contend if we don't turn the ball over and more importantly our defense is playing at the level we have in runs years past. Right now I am a little bit concerned as to whether our retooled LB corps is going to be able to perform at Championship level. When Seau went out against Chicago our D started to look a little shaky and yesterday did nothing to change that trend. On offense I think it is clear why we struggle. Caldwell is our best WR and I don't care what anyone says that is not a promising thing. I am not bashing Caldwell, but clearly we don't have anyone on the outside that demands anything other then man coverage. Ben Watson provides some match up issues, but he has become a liability with turnovers. So teams are really playing the line against the run and we just can't seem to get the consistency in the pass game, especially against good or decent secondaries.

 

[Rob0729]

I have only been on this board for a few weeks, but why does it seem like every week people look for excuses to bash McDaniels? I cannot blame him for anything major yesterday. For the most part, the only time the Lions could stop our offense from scoring was due to turnovers or stupid penalties. How is that McDaniels' fault? Brady's INT was Brady's fault for throwing inside Caldwell instead of outside. The Watson fumble was a very good play that Watson blew. The Pass fumble wasn't a great play, but it was clearly Pass not holding onto the ball.

Everyone thinks that just because we went to a no huddle that McDaniels still wasn't calling the plays. That is probably not the case. The Pats were taking time to call the plays and snap the ball on the no huddle so McDaniels was probably calling in the plays just like Weis used to do.

There has been games where McDaniels has done a poor job, but yesterday was an execution problem not a gameplan problem. I would give McDaniels a high grade for yesterday.

 

[Gumby]

Brady's INT was Brady's fault for throwing inside Caldwell instead of outside.

I read somewhere that Brady glared at Caldwell after the play. The writer said that was significantly different from his normal reaction on a bad play that he believes Caldwell was supposed to be on a curl and ran to the wrong spot. But QB takes the blame and the stat no matter whose fault it was.

 

[DaBruinz]

Perhaps it was just me, but I thought that the defense was more disappointing than the offense. There were a lot of nice plays, particularly the various catches to Caldwell, the tight ends and Troy. Sure, the hurry-up was very good (Faulk was excellent as usual catching the ball out of the backfield) but so were many other aspects of the offense. I didn't think that play-calling or play design were terrible.

Three huge things let the offense down:

1. The loss of Maroney. Much though I love him, Dillon is not the kind of break-it-for-twenty-yards-to-the-outside threat that Maroney is and so our running game was more one-dimensional.

2. Penalties. Granted that holding appeared to be being applied wholly one-sidedly, the false starts were bad.

3. Turnovers. I count four (including the safety). I'm inclined to give Watson a pass on his: a huge guy going head over heels and a helmet hits the ball. Stuff happens ... But I can't excuse the other three. Pass wasn't even carrying the ball close to his body (shades of Doug Gabriel). Brady seemed to be trying to throw to the defender. And protecting your quarterback when you're in your own endzone is basic.

What burned me most about the game (and I have to admit it was one of the most frustrating games I've seen in a long time) was watching the Lions completing at will in their first-half touchdown drive and Kevin Jones converting on -- what was it? -- third and 22? Our pass rush was ineffective (although the referees seemed to give the Lions a lot of latitude) and I lost count of the missed tackles.

Your last comment goes directly to your 2nd comment. The Patriots were getting called for holding and the Lions weren't.

On that series, they took a shot for over the Refs right shoulder towards Kitna. And, right in front of Kitna was Warren engaged with Siapaia. Only problem was that Siapaia's right arm was over Warren's shoulder and had a hand full of jersey, bright as day, right in front of the ref. The result? Warren can't get to Kitna and he makes a long completion to keep the drive alive.

 

[Rob0729]

Well....The offense just hasn't been very good all year. There have been flashes of promise, but then theres games like Chicago, Indy, Detriot, Jets(2) that just leave you scratching your head. Now I believe our offense is adequate to contend if we don't turn the ball over and more importantly our defense is playing at the level we have in runs years past. Right now I am a little bit concerned as to whether our retooled LB corps is going to be able to perform at Championship level. When Seau went out against Chicago our D started to look a little shaky and yesterday did nothing to change that trend. On offense I think it is clear why we struggle. Caldwell is our best WR and I don't care what anyone says that is not a promising thing. I am not bashing Caldwell, but clearly we don't have anyone on the outside that demands anything other then man coverage. Ben Watson provides some match up issues, but he has become a liability with turnovers. So teams are really playing the line against the run and we just can't seem to get the consistency in the pass game, especially against good or decent secondaries.

People do realize we do have the eight best scoring offense in the league. We are scoring 23.4 points a game which is better than our 21.8 in 2003 and slightly less than the 23.7 last year. Only in 2004 under Brady and Belichick, have we scored significantly more points.

Yes, our offense does have problems especially in the turnovers recently, but the offense isn't as bad as people make it. We are averaging 9.6 more points a game than we are giving up. I think other than Chicago we have the highest average margin of victory in the league.

 

[Rob0729]

Sorry, but you are not looking at it in the correct manner, IMO, of course.

You have to look a little deeper and see what may have caused a player error to occur.

Many times it is the play, or plays, that were called BEFORE the interception , or fumble, occured. If certain plays were called that were doomed to fail, then the opposing defense has control of the succeeding play, and inmany case, moreso than not, will guess correctly and FORCE that turnover..... or the play which had the turnover may have been caused because that play was a desperation play , once again because the prior plays did not work, and/or were the wrong plays selected to begin with.

Sure, McDaniels cant be blamed, DIRECTLY, for a fumble, or in interception, but stupid, or bad play calls prior to the mistake certainly are a factor that leads upto the mistake.

McDaniels has, absolutely, NO CONTINUITY to his play calling. He veers off fromsomething that has been working to, all of a sudden, go in a different direction.

We saw a good example of an experience offensive coordinator, Mike Martz, hit on something that was working, and he stuck with it, as he shredded our secondary until the final moments when we went ahead, and it was too late, at that time, for him to adjust.

Brady can get hot, and hit on 2, 3 4 inside pass routes at a time, then all of a sudden when we are close to striking gold, McDaniels tries to force the iside running game on multi-ple occasions, and we are dead in the water.

If something works, KEEP DOPING IT UNTIL the oipposition figures out how to stop it. McDaniels does NOT subscribe to that theory, apparently..It appears as if he is trying toprove that he is better than he is, and when he does that, the team fails.

Is this 100% accurate...all the time? No, but most of the time, it is.

I don't believe in the theory keep doing it until the defense figures it out. I believe you need to change things up before the defense figures out what you are doing or it can be ten times worse. What made Weis so good is that he would constantly change up the offense and keep opposing teams guessing. That is what McDaniels is trying to do with lesser talent.

I'm sorry, but we had a 17 play scoring drive in the first quarter. Yes it was for a field goal, but I blame Kazcur's holding penalty on first and ten on the Lions' 11 for us not scoring the TD. Our our first drive of the second quarter, it was also stalled by a holding call making an 2nd and 18. Our second drive was stopped on a Pass turnover on a run on 2nd and 5 where he would have had a first down if he held onto the ball. The next drive was a 5 play TD drive. The drive after that was a field goal which was only kicked because there was only three seconds in the half. We kicked on third down on that drive on the Detriot 9. The first drive in the second half Brady was intercepted on a 2nd and eight. The drive after that, Dillon fumbled on a second and 11. The drive after that, we had a 9 play TD drive and a successful 2 point conversion. The drive after that, Watson fumbled on a first down after a nine yard pick up. The drive after that, we had seven play TD drive.

I listed basically all of offensive posessions of the game. You cannot say that any of the turnovers were because McDaniels put us in a position that we had to force a play because they all happened on first or second down. Penalties had more impact on stalled drives than McDaniels yesterday.

There have been games where McDaniels has been one of the bigger causes of our offensive problems. Yesterday wasn't one of them. He called as good of a game as anyone could expect especially with Maroney going down. It was execution that was the problem with our offense yesterday.

 

[DaBruinz]

Sorry, but you are not looking at it in the correct manner, IMO, of course.

You have to look a little deeper and see what may have caused a player error to occur.

Many times it is the play, or plays, that were called BEFORE the interception , or fumble, occured. If certain plays were called that were doomed to fail, then the opposing defense has control of the succeeding play, and inmany case, moreso than not, will guess correctly and FORCE that turnover..... or the play which had the turnover may have been caused because that play was a desperation play , once again because the prior plays did not work, and/or were the wrong plays selected to begin with.

Sure, McDaniels cant be blamed, DIRECTLY, for a fumble, or in interception, but stupid, or bad play calls prior to the mistake certainly are a factor that leads upto the mistake.

McDaniels has, absolutely, NO CONTINUITY to his play calling. He veers off fromsomething that has been working to, all of a sudden, go in a different direction.

We saw a good example of an experience offensive coordinator, Mike Martz, hit on something that was working, and he stuck with it, as he shredded our secondary until the final moments when we went ahead, and it was too late, at that time, for him to adjust.

Brady can get hot, and hit on 2, 3 4 inside pass routes at a time, then all of a sudden when we are close to striking gold, McDaniels tries to force the iside running game on multi-ple occasions, and we are dead in the water.

If something works, KEEP DOPING IT UNTIL the oipposition figures out how to stop it. McDaniels does NOT subscribe to that theory, apparently..It appears as if he is trying toprove that he is better than he is, and when he does that, the team fails.

Is this 100% accurate...all the time? No, but most of the time, it is.

So, according to YOU, NEM, Pass was destined to fumble the ball because McDaniels and Brady called a run to Dillon over the left tackle, a Pass to Troy Brown that drew a Dre' Bly penalty and a pass to Dillon on the right side. It had NOTHING to do with Patrick Pass NOT tucking the ball into his body and protecting the ball.

NEM, your extreme hatred for McDaniels combined with this amazing belief that you are the be all end all for football knowledge is what makes you wrong so many times.

Yes, I believed that McDaniels was an issue. But the last several games have changed that belief. He's gotten better. The execution by the offense is more of an issue. Coaching prep in general has been an issue as well.

The Pats should have known that Cory Redding has become a very fleet afoot pass rusher and prepped Light accordingly as well as had the offense set up to we aware of him.

There were two breakdowns by the O-line. One led to the sack and the other to the safety. One was by Matt Light, the other by Nick Kaczur. All things considered, that's not bad.

Also, losing Maroney yesterday hurt the Pats and forced them to change their gameplan. Especially after Pass proved that he wasn't going to be reliable.

 

[Rob0729]

I read somewhere that Brady glared at Caldwell after the play. The writer said that was significantly different from his normal reaction on a bad play that he believes Caldwell was supposed to be on a curl and ran to the wrong spot. But QB takes the blame and the stat no matter whose fault it was.

I saw his reaction and he looked like he was just upset that the ball was intercepted. I think it was Brady's fault because he could see that the defender had gotten inside of Caldwell and even if Caldwell was out of place, Brady should have adjusted or dumped the ball out of bounds or gone to a different receiver. I could be wrong, but it did look like that even with a blown route Brady shouldn't have thrown that ball.

My point was though that it wasn't McDaniels' fault for the interception.

 

[Rob0729]

So, according to YOU, NEM, Pass was destined to fumble the ball because McDaniels and Brady called a run to Dillon over the left tackle, a Pass to Troy Brown that drew a Dre' Bly penalty and a pass to Dillon on the right side. It had NOTHING to do with Patrick Pass NOT tucking the ball into his body and protecting the ball.

NEM, your extreme hatred for McDaniels combined with this amazing belief that you are the be all end all for football knowledge is what makes you wrong so many times.

Yes, I believed that McDaniels was an issue. But the last several games have changed that belief. He's gotten better. The execution by the offense is more of an issue. Coaching prep in general has been an issue as well.

The Pats should have known that Cory Redding has become a very fleet afoot pass rusher and prepped Light accordingly as well as had the offense set up to we aware of him.

There were two breakdowns by the O-line. One led to the sack and the other to the safety. One was by Matt Light, the other by Nick Kaczur. All things considered, that's not bad.

Also, losing Maroney yesterday hurt the Pats and forced them to change their gameplan. Especially after Pass proved that he wasn't going to be reliable.

Ooops. I did miss the safety drive in my list of offensive drives. I do agree that that was a breakdown in protection that stopped that drive more than the play. But I guess you can fault McDaniels for calling for passing play, but a running play didn't work on first down. So I think people would complain if we ran the ball again and it went nowhere.

I agree that McDaniels is growing as a OC. I compare this season to Weis' in 2002. Weis was generally maligned by the fans that year for being too predictable, giving up on the run too quickly, calling the FB draw too much when it never worked, and over using trick plays. Many of these same criticisms are being floated McDaniels' way now. Weis ended up leaving the Pats an offensive genius. Maybe in a few years, McDaniels will too.

 

[JoeSixPat]

The problem has been Joe, that when Brady gets hot, and in rythym, all of a sudden McDaniels goes away from it and thats when we get in trouble and committ those damned mistakes.

It's time to let Brady have more time calling plays, using the no huddle and going inside with more passing routes.

It seems to me there is a bias about using a spread WR formation and/or the hurry up or no huddle offense except in the 2 minute drill - or if they are down by 8 with limited time.

That bias isn't that unusual in the NFL - the problem is that the Patriots have shown they are MOST effective in it and should be using it more.

Dennis and Callahan on WEEI try to be diplomatic with Brady in the Monday morning interviews, but they asked him about that again as they have for several weeks - i.e. why don't you use the spread formation more, why don't you use the no huddle more....

Brady diplomatically does not criticize the OC but you can read between the lines in the way that he goes out of his way to avoid criticizing the playcalling, still without disagreeing with Dennis & Callahan, that he's in agreement.

 

[AzPatsFan]

I used to emphasize to NEM when he would criticize a Charlie Weis' playcall, that sometimes you do something not for the next play but to set up something else for later in the game. Sometimes you actually "waste" plays, too.

You show a formation or a pass route that doesn't work but the Defense must prepare for it, and later you run a play with a route more favourable for success and the D is unprepared for it and its wide open.

NEM could never abide that Weisplay callfavorable and Belichick self scout; and if they are getting outside the parameters of high use they would "waste" plays to get back to where there was no dicernable trend and the DC scripters couldn't antiicpate certain things. Things like run/pass ratio ARE important.

The spread is such a specialized formation. Overuse can lead to its shutdown. For example, there is almost no ability to run from that empty backfield formation, except for scrambles, reverses and run like shovel passes and flares.

NEM insists that every play caller the Patriots have ever had is an idiot; Its really no different than the old days when QBs used to call plays, and the fans would jump on a QB when they didn't always work, irrespective of cause or talent level. At least today, the QBs are less criticized for that, and its great that the QBs are offloaded and no longer subject to that criticism.

 

[Krugman]

Mike,that screen pass to Jones when they had a third and 22 gave me fits!I was thinking we were going to blow this game about this time,luckily the team woke up after this.....it was frustrating,but not unheard of,remember the last two years we won superbowls,there were a couple of games where mediocre (or plain bad )teams almost beat us.Houston was one of these I recall,and there were others.

 

[JoeSixPat]

I used to emphasize to NEM when he would criticize a Charlie Weis' playcall, that sometimes you do something not for the next play but to set up something else for later in the game. Sometimes you actually "waste" plays, too.

You show a formation or a pass route that doesn't work but the Defense must prepare for it, and later you run a play with a route more favourable for success and the D is unprepared for it and its wide open.

NEM could never abide that Weisplay callfavorable and Belichick self scout; and if they are getting outside the parameters of high use they would "waste" plays to get back to where there was no dicernable trend and the DC scripters couldn't antiicpate certain things. Things like run/pass ratio ARE important.

The spread is such a specialized formation. Overuse can lead to its shutdown. For example, there is almost no ability to run from that empty backfield formation, except for scrambles, reverses and run like shovel passes and flares.

NEM insists that every play caller the Patriots have ever had is an idiot; Its really no different than the old days when QBs used to call plays, and the fans would jump on a QB when they didn't always work, irrespective of cause or talent level. At least today, the QBs are less criticized for that, and its great that the QBs are offloaded and no longer subject to that criticism.

A good example is last week's double reverse, and this week's reverse.

That was lambasted as poor playcalling - though the fact that one play worked and the other didn't doesn't mean it was poor playcalling. If the double reversed worked we'd be signing the OC's praises.

The reason the triple reverse didn't work was that the defense didn't bite on the first reverse last week. So when the ball went back in the original direction, all the defenders were well placed.

This week's reverse to Troy that worked so well kept it simple - and who knows - maybe the Lions saw the game tape from the Bears and chose not to commit to the reverse because they thought it might be coming back.

In that respect, giving up even a bunch of yards in a rare attempted double reverse can pay dividends, in sowing seeds of doubt and confusion as to where the ball might be going - and might have done just that yesterday.

 

[Dagg]

I think the tough pill to swallow was how badly a weak Dolphins offense chewed up Detroit onTurkey day and then we go in and stink up the joint. This thread shouldbe renamed The Season the offense fumbled games away. I dont see the blame on McDaniels here even though I think he is sub par OC over all.

It should be renamed the Day the Defense died and how lame hobbs is and how much we lack without Junior in there stuffing the run.

 

[MrBigglesWorth]

You hit that nail right on the head, in fact, Iposted comments like those over on the Lions message board.

Martz was the one name I brought up after Weis left to go to ND.

People may not like him, and he sucks as a head coach, but he knows how to find weaknesses in team's defense and exploit them...and when he finds something that works, he keeps using it until the opposition figures out how to stop it. McDaniels does not.

I agree. It seems the Pats can only on occassion find weak spots in a defense and exploit them. They did it big time in the vikings game. They've done it off and on. and when they're rolling in the spread formation they decide to go power run with double tight end and it nets very little. save those plays for 3 and 1, not 1st and 10 or 2nd and 10. save them for the goal line.

they have a huge fixation with the double tight end set and seem to stubborn in making themselves into a power running team. they are not a power running team.

they need to acknowledge and admit the offense is so much better in the spread formation with single back set.

 

[MrBigglesWorth]

the sad thing is they could be stuck with mcdaniels for 3 or mroe years and he could single handedly sabotage playoff runs with his playcalling. if he was a player he would be limited with his involvment in plays, benched, or cut.