Making Believe At Wide Receiver

[mgteich]

As of now, Brady has does not have a very good wide receiving corps. The emperor has no clothes, so to speak.

Blame it on injuries if you wish (Welker and Edelman).

Perhaps Branch doesn't have all that much left; but he was just supposed to be the icing on the cake, perhaps helping some.

Blame it on the top special teamer in his first full year of play. Of course, Tate is also coming back from injury.

Blame it on rookie that isn't ready, even though very, very few thought that he would contribute much this year. After all, he was available because he was considered a project from a very different kind of system that that run by most nfl teams.
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As is 2006 (a comparison made by another poster), the tight ends are picking up much of the slack.

Caldwell, Gabriel, Gaffney and Brown didn't scare many teams in 2006. Welker, Tate, Branch, and Edelman don't scare many teams today. Even with a healthy Welker, teams will simply double Welker.
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The obvious good news is that we have won with similar wide receiver groupings. As we all recall, in the 2006 season, we were a top team until halftime of the AFC Championship Game.

 

[Patstopia]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

How about we be honest and say Brady hasn't been good so far also.

 

[The_Riddler]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

How about we be honest and say Brady hasn't been good so far also.

Exactly, let's talk about the highest paid player in football throwing balls outside of people's reach and at their feet. These are basic routes that he's missing. The WRs issues are one thing, but let's talk about the QB. I think we should expect more than what he's shown us. And it wasn't just this past game, he's been off alot in a lot of the games. We can now drop the knee excuse, that's long behind him.

 

[Deus Irae]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

How about we be honest and say Brady hasn't been good so far also.

How is making an inaccurate statement being "honest"?

 

[Ian]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

How is making an inaccurate statement being "honest"?

I'll be fair and say he's been a bit erratic this season. He's thrown a lot of balls low and at the feet of receivers, and he's missed some throws we're not accustomed to seeing him misfire on. I'll chalk it up to the fact that he's still trying to get in sync with a lot of new faces offensively - but I think it's not something worth blasting Patstopia for.

 

[JFK]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

How is making an inaccurate statement being "honest"?

Brady hasn't been good enough. I love him as a QB but I have to be honest.

 

[VrabelMayeWin]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

We don't have a good RB either. Nor a big time OL. Of our six picks in the first three rounds next year I expect no more than two on defense. The others we need a WR, RB and some OL. It is what is it and when we dumped Moss and Tate didn't step up, it isn't good.

 

[Deus Irae]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

Brady hasn't been good enough. I love him as a QB but I have to be honest.

This I'll buy. He hasn't been good enough to overcome Moss' removal from the offense and subsequent trade combined with an injured Welker, a WR3 (Now WR2) named Tate who was not ready for his role, an injury to Branch, brain locking by Gronkowski and a poor running back situation.

On the other hand, prior to yesterday, he'd been good enough to get the team to 6-1, with the only loss being a game where he actually had played poorly. Take out that Jets game, though, and he's been tremendous.

 

[Ian]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

This I'll buy. He hasn't been good enough to overcome Moss' removal from the offense and subsequent trade combined with an injured Welker, a WR3 (Now WR2) named Tate who was not ready for his role, an injury to Branch and brain locking by Gronkowski.

On the other hand, prior to yesterday, he'd been good enough to get the team to 6-1, with the only loss being a game where he actually had played poorly.

I'll agree with that as well Deus. Brady's not the reason they lost yesterday either. As I said, they had two turnovers that allowed 14 points - which had they not happened it would have been a different football game. If they don't give the Browns the ball inside their own 20 on that kickoff, and get in the endzone before the end of the first half, things could have swung much differently. He's not turning the ball over, and looking at his final stats yesterday it's tough to pin it on him when he's throwing two TD's and no INT's.

Hard to fight your way back into it when so much went wrong - especially on the road.

 

[crowell33]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

I'll be fair and say he's been a bit erratic this season. He's thrown a lot of balls low and at the feet of receivers, and he's missed some throws we're not accustomed to seeing him misfire on. I'll chalk it up to the fact that he's still trying to get in sync with a lot of new faces offensively - but I think it's not something worth blasting Patstopia for.

Agreed one hundred percent. Phillip Rivers and Peyton Manning have been very successful with extremely depleted receiving corps. I refuse to believe that Brady needs more than Welker, Tate, Gronkowski, Hernandez, Woodhead, Edelman and Deion Branch to be successful .

 

[sbpatfan]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

I have to agree with what Jets fan said about this team the other day. Brady may not have the best stats, but he's been pretty amazing considering he's surrounded by **** on offense.

Obviously, I don't consider our players crap. But the Patriots have given Brady an less than average group of receivers behind a middle of the pack rushing attack. Not a whole lot to work with it. This team desperately needs guys like Edelman and Tate to break out. The only guy Brady seems to consistently feel comfortable throwing to is Hernandez, we're going to need more than that.

 

[BradyManny]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

Agreed one hundred percent. Phillip Rivers and Peyton Manning have been very successful with extremely depleted receiving corps. I refuse to believe that Brady needs more than Welker, Tate, Gronkowski, Hernandez, Woodhead, Edelman and Deion Branch to be successful .

Welker is not Welker yet, Branch is banged up, and the others are all effectively rookies. I think we may have overrated our surrounding cast going into the season.

I do think Hernandez and Gronk are going to be consistently good weapons at some point, but they are both making rookie mistakes. Tate may or may not turn into an every down type of receiver, but he has value either way.

 

[Ian]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

The tough part about yesterday also is the fact that it looked like they hoped to have that game be a breakout game for Gronkowski - and it went badly. Obviously it's better to have a game like that now than weeks from now, but to be honest I think that missed fair catch was in his head and he just couldn't get past it. He looked like he was messed up after that, and it was even worse after the fumble.

We know he's a good player, and hopefully we'll see him step up in the coming weeks. Some days it just doesn't go your way, and I'm sure all of us can relate to that in some way.

 

[Kontradiction]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

Welker is not Welker yet, Branch is banged up, and the others are all effectively rookies. I think we may have overrated our surrounding cast going into the season.

I do think Hernandez and Gronk are going to be consistently good weapons at some point, but they are both making rookie mistakes. Tate may or may not turn into an every down type of receiver, but he has value either way.

Indeed. One thing I did like yesterday, though, was that they allowed Gronkowski to run routes a lot more often. In the past games when he was relegated to being mostly a blocker and our offense stalled, I wondered what was the point of even having a pass catching target like that if we're going to keep him back to block 90% of the time. My best guess was that Mankins was back yesterday and the team felt good enough about the O-Line to let the kid get out there and catch some passes. He was our second leading receiver behind Hernandez in the Browns game. It's just a shame that he made the mistakes he did.

As for Hernandez, a lot of us forget, I think, that he's the youngest player in the league right now. He's already made a pretty big impact with this team and his improvement will be something that can really open up the passing game. The wild card in this offense is Tate. He needs to build on what he already knows. He has all of the physical tools to be a real dynamic threat in this league. However, either due to the fact that his route running is suspect or that Brady just doesn't trust him, we aren't seeing a whole lot of him in any given game unless it's a broken play. If Tate can turn it on, things look a whole lot more rosy for our passing game.

 

[The Dynasty]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

The OL's struggles have definitely effected Brady's play. When teams rush more than 4 guys the OL has had a difficult time picking them up and Brady has been under pressure and has had to rush throws. This is not when Brady is at his best. When teams rush 3 or 4 the OL can protect Brady and give him plenty of time, but it is tough to find open WRs when there are 6 or 7 guys covering our 4. The OL needs to be able to pick up the blitz better. This will be an even bigger issue with better defenses, such as the Steelers this week. It all starts with the OL, they need to step up

 

[Ian]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

Indeed. One thing I did like yesterday, though, was that they allowed Gronkowski to run routes a lot more often. In the past games when he was relegated to being mostly a blocker and our offense stalled, I wondered what was the point of even having a pass catching target like that if we're going to keep him back to block 90% of the time. My best guess was that Mankins was back yesterday and the team felt good enough about the O-Line to let the kid get out there and catch some passes. He was our second leading receiver behind Hernandez in the Browns game. It's just a shame that he made the mistakes he did.

As for Hernandez, a lot of us forget, I think, that he's the youngest player in the league right now. He's already made a pretty big impact with this team and his improvement will be something that can really open up the passing game. The wild card in this offense is Tate. He needs to build on what he already knows. He has all of the physical tools to be a real dynamic threat in this league. However, either due to the fact that his route running is suspect or that Brady just doesn't trust him, we aren't seeing a whole lot of him in any given game unless it's a broken play. If Tate can turn it on, things look a whole lot more rosy for our passing game.

:yeahthat:

 

[Uncle Rico]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

The tough part about yesterday also is the fact that it looked like they hoped to have that game be a breakout game for Gronkowski - and it went badly. Obviously it's better to have a game like that now than weeks from now, but to be honest I think that missed fair catch was in his head and he just couldn't get past it. He looked like he was messed up after that, and it was even worse after the fumble.

We know he's a good player, and hopefully we'll see him step up in the coming weeks. Some days it just doesn't go your way, and I'm sure all of us can relate to that in some way.

Well said Ian. I thought the same on Gronk.

 

[The_Riddler]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

Well said Ian. I thought the same on Gronk.

Let's hope Gronk learned for this, that fumble was a game-changing play right before the half and took all the steam out of this football team.

Now that Gronk is on film putting the ball the on the carpet, he's going to have to pay extra attention to ball-security because it's only going to get worse from here with DB's really tugging away while he's trying to get some YAC.

 

[BradyManny]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

The wild card in this offense is Tate. He needs to build on what he already knows. He has all of the physical tools to be a real dynamic threat in this league. However, either due to the fact that his route running is suspect or that Brady just doesn't trust him, we aren't seeing a whole lot of him in any given game unless it's a broken play. If Tate can turn it on, things look a whole lot more rosy for our passing game.

Agreed - Tate is the key. I thought based on everything we saw in camp that he was a more complete package, and that he had earned Brady's trust in a way that other youngsters came up short (Bethel, CJax).

Unfortunately, it might just be that his playing time was more a function of need, and that's he more a change of pace guy.

I will say that we have a lot of guys who are deadly with the ball in their hands in space. The problem is, we can't get them space to work in.

I also don't think its unreasonable to think Taylor Price breaks the inactive streak at some point. I know Tate comes from a much more polished collegiate system, but last season, he literally came off PUP and overtook Aiken on the depth chart for a game before going out with an injury. They will throw the guy with higher ceiling in there if they think he can help.

Says a little something about what we had for receiver depth last season.

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

Re: Making Believe At Wide Reciever

Brady definitely has a couple misses yesterday, but every QB is going to have a handful in each game. There's alot that goes into playing QB for the Patriots with the way the offense gets run (requiring the QB and receiver to be on the same page with how they react to defenses.).

Not al lthe low throws are always on Brady. I recall last week or maybe 2 weeks ago he had a low pass throw to Welker coming acorss the middle (right to left) on a 3rd down play that went right to Welker's feet. I recall thinking the same thing, unless you looked at the replay and you saw that Welker had to adjust his route because the ref was standign there i nthe middle. If Welker had been unable to keep his route, the pass would have hit him at the waist or in the numbers.

Withotu the deep threat, it seems like we're playing every snap as if opposing defenses are applying a red zone-like defense to our team.