There was a post about 8 weeks ago asking when Brady would break the record, or how many he would get. People were predicting 55 or 60 or something. I remember thinking (maybe even posting) that the Patriots were going to come back to earth and that 50 or 51 was the likely number. Weather. More game film. Understanding how we use our personel. Injuries. (I won't use "blueprint" here because it freaks people out, but the Colts did some nice things against us for a while that others copied.)
I also, though, thought that our play calling got weird. Maybe stats don't back it up, but we seemed like much more of a home-run oriented team to me in the second half. I look at our team, and I don't really understand how a team could stop our offense if it took a ball-control, we have 3 plays (and sometimes 4) to get 10 yards, approach. It seemed to me early on as though we were content to keep the chains moving and using a grinding offense to set up the big plays, rather than vice versa -- now it seems like we think 20-plus yards first and then take the smaller stuff after we establish the deep threat.
I think back on those first 8 games, and I remember us pounding our opponents with 12, 13, 14 play drives, moving mechanically down the field and keeping our defense on the sideline rested. Then after grinding away, boom, the home run was wide open.
I think comparing time of possession stats from the first half of the season to the second is exceptionally telling. In the first half of the season, we had a dramatic time of possession differential in every game we played -- holding the ball more than double digit minutes more than our opponents in 4 games. (The TOP differential in the first 8 games was 6+ minutes, 11+ minutes, 9+, 4+, 14+, 16+, 11+, 15+.)
In the second half, it was a much different story. In half the games, our opponents had the TOP edge -- Indy, Balt, Pitt, and Miami. The other 4 games were much less slanted, except the Giants game.
Maybe Morris' injury had something to do with this. Maybe pursuit of records was the reason. Maybe the offensive philosophy changed. Or maybe Belichick wants to have more up his sleeve. I don't know.
What I do know is that this team seems like it could score every time down the field if it was content with a moving-the-chains offense rather than a big-play offense. You have to take what you're given, but it seems to me as though we've tried to go for the big plays even where they weren't there, and only moved to a more ball-control mentality when the game was on the line.
