Also hurt BradyRex Burkhead is made of Glass. As great as he's looked everytime he gets tackled he comes up injured.Please Activate Gilly next game BB. I would not extend Burkhead either he spends too much time in the tub.
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Also hurt BradyRex Burkhead is made of Glass. As great as he's looked everytime he gets tackled he comes up injured.
Good game by Cookie he had that drop that could have gone for another 40 yards...but made up for it with those Come Backs and DPI's. Cooks was abusing that Jaguar CB. Can I say it Playoffs Cookie.
6. Defense - General thoughts.
a. Again it was very conservative play calling by Patricia early on. This is when the Jags had early relative success in the run game. He certainly wasn't gashing them by any means, but getting the 3 or 4 ypc necessary to give Bortles easy 3rd down opportunities that he cashed in on.
b. They also did had a few wrinkles of their run/pass option look that caused the Pats some problems in that 2nd quarter. I remarked in the game thread that watching them get 2 first downs in a row on two 3rd down dump-offs was particularly painful. McCourty said the improvement in the 2nd half was more about improving awareness of the play than any major adjustment. Personally, I'm just glad they did something because it was driving me crazy.
c. In the review thread, I'd like to see exactly why those mickey mouse passes were so effective. I can understand the bunch formation crossers, but when some of the dump offs to the RB's were completed, I was surprised to see how much space there was before he was challenged. I'd like to know why. On the other side, our RB's seemed to have no room on swing passes.
d. Matty had some very nice corner blitzes schemed that while they didn't cause a sack, they did force Bortles to get rid of the ball faster. And while Bortles completed a couple of passes against that particular blitz scheme, he never really hurt the Pats on those passes. It was cool that he often used different DB's in this scheme. Chung, Butler, and Rowe all took their shots.
e. and as usual, the defense got better as the game went along. IIRC the Jags were 0 for 6 on their last six third down opportunities. This has been the one universal thing you can expect from a Pat's defense. It WILL get better as the game progresses.
7. Front Seven - They held Fornette to just 3.4 ypc on 24 carries. That good but not great. What was great was WHEN they started to shut down the run late. By the end of the game, Fornette was lucky to get to the LOS most of the time. Guy and Brown were particularly effective, but RJF made a few plays as well.
a. I was surprised to see Alan Branch on the inactive sheet for this game. He seemed a perfect fit for the Jags run game. I'm guessing if he wants to see any action going forward he's going to have blow some people up when the Pats have their final padded practice this week. If we are looking to add a few million to our cap next season, cutting Branch would be one of them. Branch had a few good years with the Pats, but this wasn't one of them.
b. I noticed James Harrison lose leverage on an early run that got a first down. He set the edge strongly but squeezed in to much and lost his outside leverage. Late in the game when he became part of the rush package, he again showed up well. He didn't get any sacks, but he was a constant irritant to the QB late in the game, with at least 3 QB's in the 4th quarter alone.
c. KVN and Roberts did well for the most part with 9 and 7 tackles between them. I was a little disappointed in MFlowers production. He didn't have much of an impact (1 tackle) on either the run or pass game. Last week I had hoped he would develop into a Ninko-type story. This week, not so much.
8. Secondary - played a little loose early on, but tightened up considerally as the game wore on. Also, the tackling on those little dump offs wasn't as good as usual until later in the game.
a. NOW we know why they paid Gilmore all that money. He shut Westbrook out for all but one catch, and made the big play to end the last Jags threat with an outstanding play. I expect him to be on Jeffery next week, with Butler on Tory Smith. Meanwhile, Ertz with 8 catches will be quite a challenge for Chung. It will be interesting to see how Patricia will make the matchups
b. Chung might have given up the TD, but the Jags TE's only accounted for 2 catches for a combined 8 yds in the game (one each for Lewis and O'Shaughnessy).
c. Hard to see just what the ratio of man to zone was in this game. Early on there seemed to be a lot of yac room on the outside. Could be a bust or missed tackle, or could have been that they caught them in man.
d. Tougher challenge next week than this one for the secondary. Like I said Ertz is a key target for Foles, and Smith and Jeffery present a difficult size and speed problem to shut down and there RB's .
9. ST's - Great as usual on KO coverage, even better on punts. Having Allen pin them down around their 10 on 3 different occasions late made a big difference.
10 General thoughts
a. I thought the Jags did everything they could tonight. They played good enough to win most games. They won the TO battle. They knocked out our best offensive weapon. They had a GREAT game plan that was good enough to make Blake freakin' Bortles look like competent QB. No doubt they are a talented group that SHOULD be heard from in future years
b. I call this the 3rd and 18 edition because it was just one of those improbable plays that this team makes in critical situations so often. It remined me of the 3rd and long against Seattle that ignited the Pats late run on offense in the Superbowl. Or the 3rd and long from the GL early in the game tying drive against Atlanta, and you can name a dozen more. WOW, just WOW.
c. Now a few rants. I've had enough of Jim Nance. He made every call the Pats call seem suspicious regardless of how obvious they were. He took every chance he could to question those calls and to point out the effect of them on the game. Now the haters narrative has focused on the refs and their rallying cry. The fact that only ONE of the calls was even possibly marginal and several legitimate calls were ignored, never was presented. Nance has entered into the Fox News version of "fair and balanced" reporting. It wasn't fair, NOR was it balanced. Sometimes Romo went along for the ride, but it was Nance who initiated the narrative and kept it alive. It was screaming at the TV worthy and I bet I wasn't alone.
d. I was really worried about Beakman's crew and their propensity to throw flags. I was dead wrong. They only threw 7 combined accepted penalties all night. And for all their *****ing, the Jags only got called for 6 with only one being even marginally questionable. With few calls and only one review, the game had a good pace.
e. When the NFC game started I was rooting for the Eagles. Selfishly I didn't want there to be a home-field advantage in a Superbowl the Pats were in. I was right in thinking that. I also thought the Eagles were the weaker potential opponent. I might have been just a little off on that one.
f. There was one play made by Nick Foles that proved to me that he is more than just a weak backup. In it, while he was being pressured in the pocket, he was forced to pull back a throw because there was a rusher in his face and reload, and then, still under great pressure, he changed his arm angle to avoid another rusher and threw a 20 yd completion outside the hash off his back foot. THAT was the Nick Foles who threw for 27 TD's and 2 picks 3 seasons ago.
He also threw for 354 yds tonight on just 33 attempts against the best defense in the league.
Now it seems Foles is a feast or famine kind of QB. Tonight was a feast of epic proportion. I don't know who will show up in 2 weeks. I just know that our defense helped make Blake Bortles look good, so I hope no one looks past the Eagles or get insulted if anyone likes them to win.
g. I think the worst part of sitting there in the 4th quarter staring the REAL possibility of the Pats losing this game, was the shot they took of Coughlin sitting in his box and then telling us how he has been the Patriot'a Kryptonite over the years. I HATE that narrative. Again, Coughlin didn't plan the Helmet catch, or the Manningham/Eli prayer. Besides, the Giants were supposedly the better team in 2011. The fact is that in 2 games the Giants won 2 extremely close games. It is also true that OTHER than those 2 years the Giants were barely relevant over the last several years. They have NEVER been in the Pats head, nor should they be.
h. RPO will become part of the lexicon of all Pats fans before the next 2 weeks are up. Deal with it.
i. Can we put the whole Jimmy G thing to rest. As good as he is right now and how good he MIGHT become there is one unbreakable truth that should be clear to EVERYONE. Jimmy was the 2nd best QB on the Pats this year, and he would have been the 2nd best QB on the Pats next year as well. There was never a reasonable scenario where Jimmy could have remained with the Pats when the EARLIEST he might be likely to play was 2019 and THAT was just a possibility, and NOT a guarantee
OK let's stop here. It's almost 3 am, though I did nod off for a couple of hours so it isn't as bad as it looks
Your comments are not only welcome but demanded.
Agreed. Taking a knee with 55 seconds on the clock & holding two time outs? I was at the game, and remember thinking, wow, that is going to cost them. They might have lost the game right there (of course, those thoughts vanished in the 4th quarter when we were down by 10 and seemingly couldn't get anything going).
There were so many penalties in that game that weren't called. The holding on the Pats all day in the 1st half was maddening. I was wondering why the Pats didn't hold more as obviously it wasn't going to be called. I know that everyone is screaming about the refs and only making calls in the Pats's favor (shame on you Boomer Esiason - another media hack who pretends to like the Pats when he's paid to come on all the local radio stations every week), but to me the only calls they made all game were the really obvious ones. It took a deliberate head shot to Gronk, a push of the receiver out of bounds way after 5 yards, and wearing the defender as a necklace to get anything called. Heck the most controversial call (not a penalty but a "fumble" that many thought Lewis had re-possessed before he hit the ground) went AGAINST the Pats and should have been soul-crushing. Instead our D finally got a stop and Brady went into Brady mode.
He hasn't been used much or targeted this season but the guy still has plenty of talent and hauled in a terrific catch.Shoutout to Mr. Phillip Dorsett! He takes a lot of flak around here (as do many others
And how about taking a knee with 55 seconds and 2 TOs left in the 1st half? Going conservative actually started then.
