Havent had a chance to read the rest of the thread, but here are my thoughts from the first watch last night.
Brace is a beast. I sure hope the injury is minor because Brace is the best DE we have. I dont care about experience or anything else, really. I care that he literally manhandles the guy trying to block him. I have absolutely no question that if he is healthy he will a 'starter' and he will be more than just a run stopper. His bull rush ability is very useful in our 2 gap base D. It doesnt take a lot of film study to know that a guy who drives his blocker backwards relatively often, at least holds his ground consistently in run D and knows how to find the ball is going to be a good player. Brace-Wilfork-Warren with Wright subbing in when needed, give us Wright 100% fresh to play rush DT in the sub packages.
Burgess is one awful OLB. Which means about the same things as Tom Brady is an awful OLB because he is going to play there about as much. Anyone who watched Burgess last night in the base D will realize why he doesnt play in the base D, except in an emergency. Whether or not he can rush the passer in sub packages is all that matters, and we will see how that goes. I reaffirm my hope that he is playing DT on 3rd and long to get more inside pressure. Could easily happen if Cunningham gets on the field and he and TBC are the DEs.
Count me among those who don't like to see it, get a nagging worry, but truly could care less how our defense looks in a preseason game against a dink and dunk passing team. People on this board are acting like the 1st player taken in the draft shouldn't be able to see we are playing a zone and complete a 5 yard pass in it. Or that BB isnt famous for making his defense play the same D until they get it right in the preseason rather than calling a D that would be best to stop the other team. I gag at the comments about play calling and gameplanning. Duh.
I think that when Tom Brady was 18-22-276-3 TDs, I dont have to worry that we had a few drives stopped because we didnt convert 3rd downs.
I don't know how we can judge running game or run blocking when we never really tried to run.
Gronk is going to make a lot of plays as a Patriot. However, TE plays in our offense tend to come in bunches, so I'm not sure about consistency of production.
I expect next week Hoyer will play almost the full 60, and we will run the ball 40-50 times with Maroney and Taylor getting at least 10 a piece to get ready for week 1. Without Brady playing much if at all, the O will get a good chance to work on the running game, which probably has to do with why it was ignored yesterday.
Lost in all the sadsacking is that Tom Brady looks completely unstoppable. The TD drive that started with the long play to Welker looked like the drive in 07 when he came back in the game against Miami. After they scored, then pick-sixed Cassel, and Brady threw 3 passes for 80 yards and a Td like he was toying with them. With Welker, Tate, Hernandez, Gronk, Faulk, Edelman, we can attack the entire field WITHOUT Moss. I don't know if its more exciting that they may not be able to overcommit to Moss, or how dangerous this offense will be if they don't.
I don't know how a team with Brady looking like he does now, and the weapons that he has wins less than 12 games even if it has a bottom 5 D. Brady is better and has more weapons than Manning when Manning was winning 12 games a season with a bad D. Not tossing the D aside, just saying I think Brady with these weapons wins 12+ win anyones D.