SITE MENU
Registered Members experience this forum ad and noise-free.
CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments."Knee, Questionable" isn't exactly hiding anythingLloyd the last 6 games has looked like an over the hill Branch.It makes me wonder if he is playing hurt and not letting anyone know about it.
Lloyd the last 6 games has looked like an over the hill Branch.It makes me wonder if he is playing hurt and not letting anyone know about it.
Brady is 35 years young and he is losing his deep accuracy. Brady never was a particularly great deep thrower anyway, and has mde his money on very accurate short and intermediate throws, while thinking and reading the opponents while finding the weakness in the Defense.
He is seldom on the money to receivers when they are deep. Thankfully, he is usually long with his throws so there is little problem with INTs. If his target can't get it no one else can either, but there are also few deep receptions too.
Just a few things:
- Many, though of course not all, of us looked at Llllllllllllllllllllllloyd as a player who would help by threatening middle-deep, but mostly by threatening outside the lines in the mid-range as opposed to making lots of deep catches.
- There has clearly been a change in the way that Llllllllllllllloyd is being used. The Jets game was the turning point. Whether that's because of injury, or because of the several Brady passes that Lllllloyd should have gotten but didn't, is something that this team isn't about to share with the public.
- The Patriots have, through their choice of constant CIA information lockdown, created a situation where the media and fans glom on to the tiniest bit of information and analyze it as if it's the next Rosetta stone. As a result, so-called "overreaction" is guaranteed to happen, pretty much on a daily basis.
- Assuming Stallworth gets on the field, it will be interesting to see whether the Patriots put Stallworth into Branch's old role, or whether they slide him into Lllllllllllloyd's role and have Llllllllllllllllllllllllloyd take the Branch/Edelman role.
Bedard had some interesting observations on Lloyd in his D&C appearance yesterday. We're a game specific offense and at times that is personnel/role specific. When we need the short to intermediate quick passing game to pick up the slack it's all about YAC. That is why Edelman was taking targets and snaps away from Lloyd, as was Branch before he got dinged. While Lloyd's bread and butter is body control and the back shoulder sideline play, and they worked on that a lot early on possibly to their detriment as returns weren't justifying the attempts, due to other injuries he's been asked to do more of late of what he said he could, run all the routes including crossing the middle. Bedard says he's not a physical receiver and he avoids contact. Not to the extent he alligator arms catches, but he tends to get down quickly and settle for less than may be there. Guys like Welker and Branch will avoid the big hit, but they don't go to ground premptively as Lloyd seems inclined to. They get as much YAC as they reasonable can before discreetly avoiding harms way. He believes Lloyd has been talked to in the recent past and anticipates he's going to be hearing the same thing again. Have to remain upright in reasonable situations where the expectation is tacking on some YAC if you want to be targeted. Will be interesting to see if they turn to Stallworth at all. That was his forte once upon a time. But he was struggling in camp to pick up or catch balls in anything resembling traffic.
The thing is people's expectations of Brandon Lloyd were way off-base. He's never been a fast guy, he's never had the ability to threaten a defense deep. He's a strong receiver who struggles to get separation but can make tough catches on the sidelines. That's it. And that's who he has been. He's a complimentary piece, fans were thinking he'd be Reggie Wayne or Greg Jennings for this team. He isn't that kind of player. If he were, he wouldn't have signed a 3 year, 12 million dollars deal here.
Just a few things:
- Many, though of course not all, of us looked at Llllllllllllllllllllllloyd as a player who would help by threatening middle-deep, but mostly by threatening outside the lines in the mid-range as opposed to making lots of deep catches.
- There has clearly been a change in the way that Llllllllllllllloyd is being used. The Jets game was the turning point. Whether that's because of injury, or because of the several Brady passes that Lllllloyd should have gotten but didn't, is something that this team isn't about to share with the public.
- The Patriots have, through their choice of constant CIA information lockdown, created a situation where the media and fans glom on to the tiniest bit of information and analyze it as if it's the next Rosetta stone. As a result, so-called "overreaction" is guaranteed to happen, pretty much on a daily basis.
- Assuming Stallworth gets on the field, it will be interesting to see whether the Patriots put Stallworth into Branch's old role, or whether they slide him into Lllllllllllloyd's role and have Llllllllllllllllllllllllloyd take the Branch/Edelman role.
This is where I'll disagree. Defenses have been selling out to take away Welker/Gronk/Hernandez since day 1, and Lloyd hasn't shown he can make them pay yet.