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I don’t like to say I am happy about a loss, but I feel encouraged about this team even in a loss. I never thought this could be a Super Bowl contender this year, but we are starting to see a lot of the building blocks for the future here. A few thoughts:
- I felt that Belichick ran a great defensive game plan. The Pats basically took away Godwin. Except for two back to back fairly big plays, Godwin did nothing for the rest of the night. They basically took away Evans. Sure he had seven catches, but most were shorter passes and not really back breaking plays. They did force Brady to go to his third and fourth option a lot. Luckily for the Bucs, his third and fourth option were AB and Fornette otherwise, the Pats might have shut the Bucs out.
- I said before the game if the Bucs rushed for 120 plus non-garbage time yards, the Pats had a realistic shot of winning the game. Well, the Bucs had 119. If the Pats just gave up one more yard on the ground, they would have won. Belichick came into the game daring the Bucs to run the ball. It did hurt them early with a couple big plays and on several third downs, but it certainly helped slow down the game.
- People this week talked about how Brady knows everything about Belichick and there is nothing Belichick could throw at Brady that he could be tricked by. Well, I guess Belichick does still have a few tricks up his sleeves. And Brady's offensive line clearly are not as well versed in Belichick. Brady can know what Belichick is trying to do with the amoeba defense, but there is no way he can know for sure on every play who will be rushing and who will be dropping back in coverage.
- Props to the secondary. They have gotten a lot of flack so far, but they were great last night.
- I still don't know why they don't get Kendrick Bourne involved. The guy just seems to make plays when they give him the ball.
- Until they fix the o-line problems, they need to run a lot spread with Jones in the shotgun. The play action doesn't work if you cannot run the ball and you are asking the play to develop too slowly and have Jones turn his back to the line. Jones is just more comfortable in the shotgun and allows him to process things quickly. As Collinsworth pointed out, he looks like Brady when he is in the shotgun.
- One area where Jones appears to be already better than Brady is being able to keep his composure when he is hit a lot. The guy is unflappable. He has been hit more in the last two weeks than many QBs get hit in a half a season. Yet he wasn't rattled at all. He has no problem standing in there and making plays while a defender is coming down on him.
- The Bucs threw everything at Jones in terms of blitzing. They ran a lot of blitzing combinations and, other than the INT which was an ill-advised throw into coverage, Jones was near perfect against the blitz. Another Brady trait he seems to have.
- Matt Judon is quickly becoming a defender that teams have to scheme against. At least in the passing game. He improved this week vs. the run, but he is still a liability at times there. But when he is rushing the passer, the only answer the Bucs seemed to have was just hold him and hope the refs don't call it. And they got away with a lot of holding on Judon.
- The Pats defense has its flaws especially against the run, but if you take away the Mac Jones pick six and the Pats would be top three in points allowed for the season thus far. They have yet to allow an opponent to score more than 19 points yet. Bend don't break is in full effect.
- I am still extremely concerned about the o-line. No one is playing well right now. Can Trent Brown returning really fix all the problems? I still think you move him to the LT position, move Wynn inside, and move Onwenu to RT when he get back. The fact that they haven't toyed with the line up while he is out gives me some hope that they might. I am assuming the last thing Belichick would want to do is changing the line up week in and week out. I would assume he would want to make a line up change once and could be waiting for Brown to get back into the line up.
- With less than a month away from the trade deadline, I see the Pats' biggest needs as right or left tackle, a run stuffing LB, and a third down back.
- This season has a lot of 2001 potential in it. No I don't think the Pats will win the Super Bowl. But this is a team with 11 new starters like 2001 with a young, first time QB who started the season looking awful and could potentially gel and become a solid or even top team by the second half of the season. It has a bend, don't brea defense.