Official Unofficial Post Game Thread

[Marqui]

Not time to panic, but I dont remenber the Pats ever winning a SB without any playmakers on D.

It is time to panic. They've never won a SB without having a very good/great secondary. It's over, another wasted year for Brady.

 

[Kontradiction]

Cant believe all the negative threads.

Brady wasnt going to win every game this season or go without throwing an INT. This defense started out great and most everyone was expecting it to get even better. The NE D can still be good enough to go all the way.

Last night was a wake up call for the whole team. I like the Pats chances going forward.

They need to tweak the line-up. Rowe needs to be the other outside corner and Jones needs to be the nickel corner. Use Chung in more of a LB/hybrid role and put him on the field at the same time as Harmon and McCourty, giving them deep coverage. Flowers needs to be rotated in more often over Long and Sheard.

 

[Brewskies]

I blamed the Pats offense for the loss not the Pats defense or the refs calls. But I should have given credit to Blount for his 3 TDs and running without that the game would have been a disgrace.

 

[Kontradiction]

I blamed the Pats offense for the loss not the Pats defense or the refs calls. But I should have given credit to Blount for his 3 TDs and running without that the game would have been a disgrace.

The offense didn't have a good game at all but, compared to the defense, they looked like world beaters. Both units and coaching were catastrophic in this contest, but the defense was the worst of the bunch.

 

[long distance]

this game was incredibly close, not just coming down to the last play, but stat-wise. almost every stat line was comparable. big difference was the two turnovers:

Pretty fascinating mirroring stats.
Just one example of how short stats fall to tell the story: watching the game everyone (more or less) had a feeling that Hawks are converting 3rd downs at will. This stats would indicate that it was not true (just 50%). But the fact is that the Pats D couldn't stop the Hawks between the redzones (many times Wilson didn't even need the third down) and the 4 third down stops came in the condensed area of redzone which is the main reason Pats stayed competitive. So it was more of what we're seeing throughout the season. The Pats D is unable to stop drives between the 20's but has great success in the red zone. Add to this a great success in the red zone by Pats O and you have a clear picture what makes them competitive and why the D is a problem. Every drive but 2 was an easy scoring drive by Seahawks. Thats a lot of pressure on O no matter how great it is.

 

[long distance]

Just got back from the game....so dam frustrating those last 4 tries to send it to OT as well as the Jules fumble...mistakes and we made more than they did and you do that against seattle..you pay for it.

Both losses coming at home is strange (although the L to Buffalo with with a hurt Jacoby)

Rest of our schedule looks fairly easy so we are still in good position for a bye...ugh

Those frustrating last 4 tries had unfortunately something to do with lack of trust in the D. They didn't want to leave time on the clock so they couldn't go all-in on the first try - having in mind what happened on the last drive of the second half.

 

[obgod3]

I am not in any panic, these things happen every year and then all of a sudden Pats are playing better. I dont think they played bad, the defense could have done a better job, 50% on 3rd down isnt anything to be proud of, but I think the strategy they are taking with mobile QB's is a strange to me. On the offensive side of the ball, well JEII's fumble was a disaster and all due to his nature to get more yards, then again when it works we love it. **** happens. What I didnt care for was the crappy calls on the last goal line set of plays, I would have handed it to Blount 4 times and if you dont make it then so be it. That last pass play was crap and I agree that there shouldn't have been a flag. Lets face it when NE loses games like this it is typically a turning point for them for the better.

 

[long distance]

I think you're overreacting a bit.

Belichick will give us a competitive defense to go with our talented offense, and that usually gives us a chance come January.

He didn't do that tonight, even with two weeks to prepare.

You missed to notice that yesterday was not January like supafly was proposing. This was just two weeks of what is an obvious defense rebuilding. There's still two month time for the things to crystalise and come together. Luckily the standings, the schedule and the Pats O give BB and MP the luxury of that time.

 

[JMC00]

So Trey Flowers, 4 sacks in the last 2 games..

 

[The Brandon Five]

You have to hand it to Russell Wilson, he beat us with his arm. He was fitting the ball into some tight windows. Sometimes as little as 5-10 yards!

 

[PatsFan92]

Hey all, I was pretty disgusted last night going to bed but after some shut -eye I feel better prepared to reflect on last night-

In a way I think this will serve as the KC game for 2014. Did we get our doors blown off like in KC? No, but a lot of those same desperate "man, this defense couldn't stop Everett high school" feelings were present in a lot of people. Here are my takeaways. Let me know how you feel.

• I think this defense is not as good as a lot of us wanted to believe all year, but last night was also an extreme inaccurate example of our worst football
  
  
• Seattle played great and deserved that victory, but like any teams losses, last night we uncharactersitaly had too many mistakes on both sides that I wouldn't expect to continue
  
  
• the offense seeming un-new England like was more of a product of playing the best overall defense in football, and less a product of bad mistakes, though we did has a few
  
  
• to go along with that, I think last nights defense was more about how many terrible mistakes we made on defense and less about our inability to stop them. I can't rememeber a game where so many of our starters looked completely lost. So many. Blown assignments, DBs looking around in confusion at each other after Big wide open games. Seattle didn't do anything special or that we haven't seen before, I think we just had a terrible night and those things happen sometimes. We seem to always have an uncharacteristic complete breakdown on defense once a year. This was that game.
  
  
• I think it's safer to say we are closer to a 14-18th ranked defense instead of the the fringes of the top 10 or a bottom 5 defense like we played last night. The good thing is that tom Brady and BB have made some noise with much worse defenses. 2011 we brought our bottom 2 defense to the super bowl and held the giants to a low scoring and that our offense ended up blowing.
  
  
• BB is a master at tightening up or defense in the playoffs. This was also our first game back with Jamie and I that it was a large factor in our performance. Jamie being traded took a large emotional toll on our defense and I think people like Hightower would admit that behind closed doors. The further removed we get from the trade and the more game time we have without him the better we will play without him. Even if he was "freelancing" or having a "down" year, he still was a constant rock and force in our defense and playing without him will take time to get used to.
  
  
• the positives to me are that- despite our defense playing the worst game I've seen out of them all year, (and probably worst game since 2012-2013) and our offense making some mistakes we usually don't make, we still moved the ball at will in the second half and left a bunch of points on the board. If driving down the field at will in the second half on ten best defense in football and losing on the goal line is as bad as it's going to get for our offense, then I feel fantastic about them going forward
  
  
• the Jules fumble was just a great play by Seattle, but Brady's int, our failure to go for 2 on a couple of scores, and our failure to convert a couple red zone trips into TDs are not really "typical" problems that plague us. Like I said, Seattle played great and held us to 24. But if 24 against the best defense in the league, when it easily should have been in the 30s because of our own uncharacteristic mistakes, is a "bad" night for us then I feel okay. We saw what Brady did with a worse offense in xlix.
  
  
• overall this game sucked and will largely be a throwaway game when we look back on it. Sometimes you just don't have "it." Seattle is a top 3 team and we didn't play patriots football tonight. Sometimes this happens. We have 7 games left and 5 of them are very favorable situations. Hopefully we can have a couple confidence building games defensively over the next few games and get to form for the playoffs.
  
  
• the last thing that goes in our favor is that the raiders, chiefs, and broncos all have to play each other 3ish times down the stretch and will definitely beat up and trade losses with each other.
  
  
• at the end of the day we had an unpatriot loss , but that happens. I fully expect this team to rip off at least 5-6 out of our final 7 and be right back where we always are----> playing for a super bowl berth in NE. Every season we have awful losses that make us think "wow, I can't see us being competitive in the playoffs this year", but we also usually have 12+ victories that show other wise and usually can look back and laugh at our bad losses when it's all over.
  

Lets go blow the doors off of SF, NY, and Baltimore and then solidify the 1 seed in Denver. Unless we meat them again in the super bowl, we won't play another team as complete as Seattle. I'll put my money on BB in a rematch

 

[Kontradiction]

So Trey Flowers, 4 sacks in the last 2 games..

Yeah he needs more playing time. I would even go so far to say that he needs to start.

 

[Bradyking12]

I don't like that we play the 49ers next week, we need more tough games to harden this team up and help make ourselves better

 

[moejr]

I blamed the Pats offense for the loss not the Pats defense or the refs calls. But I should have given credit to Blount for his 3 TDs and running without that the game would have been a disgrace.

The last 4 plays were horribly called. Should have been Blount on 4th and 2. Not a pass. Didin't work for the Seachickens in SB49 and it didn't work for us here

 

[JMC00]

They need to tweak the line-up. Rowe needs to be the other outside corner and Jones needs to be the nickel corner. Use Chung in more of a LB/hybrid role and put him on the field at the same time as Harmon and McCourty, giving them deep coverage. Flowers needs to be rotated in more often over Long and Sheard.

Next week would be a good time to implement this kind of scheme.

 

[NG Pats Fan]

I don't like that we play the 49ers next week, we need more tough games to harden this team up and help make ourselves better

Ravens and Broncos have mean defenses. They will test us for sure. Don't worry

 

[QuantumMechanic]

The last 4 plays were horribly called. Should have been Blount on 4th and 2. Not a pass. Didin't work for the Seachickens in SB49 and it didn't work for us here

As in SB49, the act of passing wasn't the problem. The pass play chosen was.

 

[Froob]

Felt like we had Brett Favre at QB last night, ball may have been striped if he didn't throw that pass that was intercepted first. Hope BB roasted him for that today. Just throw the ball away.

 

[Froob]

Ravens and Broncos have mean defenses. They will test us for sure. Don't worry

Prediction: A lot of people on here say the Ravens sucks and it'll be an easy game and it comes down to the final minute.

 

[NG Pats Fan]

Flacco is not a good QB but he is licking his chops to face our defense.