What surprised you most about the Pats this week?

[5 Rings for Brady!!]

Darius Butler's coverage and ball-hawking skills. Mike Wright's bull rushes a close second. Sammy Morris morphing into a Kevin Faulk-like role is also noteworthy and a good use of his skills.

QB12

I mentioned last week that Morris is stealthily doubling Faulk's third down back role if you check out his stats in passing and running. He is out Faulking Faulk!

 

[hgelpke]

Darius Butler - Amazing protection in the end zone. Swatted away two potential touchdowns.

Meriweather - Holy crap! He was a machine out there. I loved how he was called "the best safety from Miami today"

Pass rush - Now that we're seeing that the secondary can hold it's own for the first time in awhile, we'll see more blitz dialing. Can't wait. I used to think that we didn't do it because of personnel. I was proven wrong.

 

[SeymourTrophies]

I'm with some of the guys in the beginning of this thread. The play calling on defense was surprising, but I'm not sure that it was because of the Jets loss...unless it was enough to push BB over the edge and tear into Pees. Ultimately, the offense cost us that game. Being marched on twice in the second half was bad though.

The only game I remember that was anything like the last two games in terms of defensive play calling since the golden years was the Arizona slaughter. I mean, jesus, two players came from the defensive backfield and nailed Flacco at the same time. That never happened last year. We would never have tried that. They were coming from everywhere. Hopefully, Rodney is right in saying that they were just taking time to gel in the first three. It would make more sense than BB taking Pees over his knee because we applied some pressure last week.

Did anyone else notice who had caught up to rice on that huge run? Meriweather got there first, but who came tearing up the field in support? Gary Guyton. That guy is some kind of fast.

 

[pencilneckgeek]

Did anyone else notice who had caught up to rice on that huge run? Meriweather got there first, but who came tearing up the field in support? Gary Guyton. That guy is some kind of fast.

I noticed that. I hadn't noticed him getting caught out of position earlier in the play, but it was hard to miss that closing speed. He made Merriweather look downright slow by comparison.