Content Post Idle thoughts: the "one-step back" edition

[patfanken]

There has been a half dozen losses over the past few years that I have felt better about than the win I witnessed this afternoon.

By the end of the game, I half started rooting for the plucky undermanned Bengals. A team seemly made up of mostly undrafted practice squad players and other backups.

Now whether that was completely true or not, I'm not sure, but it sure sounded like it and we all know about the 3 stars they were missing and the 4th one they lost in the 3rd quarter. I only know that the Bengal Front did a lot better job stopping our running game with the 31st best Defense, than we did stopping their run offense with the #1 rush D.

All I know for sure is we had to make a stop just outside the redzone save a lead and go home with a win in a game we SHOULD have won by at least 2 scores.

OK, I got that off my chest. The overall news is good. The injury news is bad. The battle for the division crown is pretty much over with the Bills loss, if we can win just 3 of our next 5 games. And we are playing 3 of those games against teams who don't have 4 wins yet. So, let us break it down.


1. I just watched Drake Maye play his worst game of the season. Especially in that first quarter where it seemed like someone switched off his accuracy button. We watch 2 passes to wide open receivers go wildly awry. One to Diggs, who made a miraculous catch and the other to Henry that was who had no chance to catch a ball 4 ft. over his head for the pick six. And it wasn't much better on the passes before those 2. It was really kind of shocking. We've been so spoiled.

Now clearly it got a lot better over the course of the game and he DID throw for a personal best 294 yds, and make some very good throws and decisions later on, along with a few other really questionable balls that we were lucky didn't get picked.

I didn't watch his presser after the game, but I hope it was something to the effect of "Sorry, I was crap out there today, and I promise to be better next Monday. I'm looking forward to sitting down with my coaches and fixing what you saw out there today."

I guess the reality is this was bound to happen. This team has played 12 straight games without a break and they have to do another before they finally can get a week off.


2. Let's get to the injuries. Looks like Campbell suffered an ACL. If it's something less than that and there is a possibility he can make it back for the playoffs, I'd be THRILLED. But, I'm preparing for the worst.

We all knew that our biggest weakness once we saw how good this team could be, would be depth. Reminds me of those good Pats teams of the mid to late 90's. Lots of all pros, but everything was one deep, and when they ran into an injury bug, they weren't prepared to replace those players with adequate replacements.


3. I'm hoping Wilson has some sort of ankle thing and will be back in a few weeks. In the meantime I consider Brown to be one of those "adequate" backups who we can live with, if not thrive. Also, it might give us a chance to see Caden Wallace get his opportunity show his development at G this season with Marrone and his guys.


4. Neither Ponder nor Swinson flashed to me in limited snaps. They'll get some more chances as time goes on. Speaking of edge guys, I'm kid of getting tired of watching Chassion get to the QB and then somehow run by him. He needs to develop the body control at the end of the rush to actually sack the QB. You've done all the hard work, now get the pay off, Klav.

BTW-Klav, you want to never be drawn offside again by a snap count? Just look at the ****ing BALL, you idiot. That's all you and all of your teammates have to do. Don't move until the ball moves. It's your eyes that tell you when to go, NOT your ears. That drives me NUTS when a defensive player goes offside in that situation. It should NEVER happen, especially on the DL. Christ my HS kids knew that.


5. Teams are starting to get on to the twists we were doing earlier this season, and the 5 man looks Cosell showed us in his clips last week. Right now, at least, I don't see our pressure package being enough to get us deep in the playoffs.

Very little pressure on Flacco today without blitzing 5 or more. No one was beating their man one on one. Really only Williams and Barmore have done that lately and then only occasionally.


6. We ran no huddle for exactly 2 plays and it seemed to help. Josh, take the hint. If we want to use that strategy in the playoffs to slow down rushes, we need to begin working on it NOW. Maye needs to practice it, I don't think he did it much last season, and this is a new offense with new semantics. The whole offense needs to practice it under live conditions.

I've been harping on this for over a month now to no avail. Bill always listened to my suggestions; I'm a little bit insulted that Josh seems to be ignoring me.


7. Going into this game one of the things that made me feel good about this team is that managed to be winning all these games WITHOUT having to create a lot of turnovers.

The Bears (+16) and Rams (+10) top the league, while the Pats are at zero. The thing is that you can't count on causing TO's. Some, like Marcus' pick are directly caused by a player. But most are very fickle deflections, bounces, or just being in the right place at right time, like the Cinci DB who picked off Maye. If it wasn't for Drake's wildly inaccurate overthrow there would have been no pick. Or if Flacco had looked at his dump off instead of throwing a blind pass to a spot, no pick 6 for us.

No question TO's win or lose games every week. But you can't count on them. It seems some years just happen to be better than others, often times with similar players. I guess I just like the fact that we're 10-2 without needing to have that huge + number like the Bears


I have some more thought, but this is long enough and I'm late posting and I've been running around most of the day (most of this was done last night) I'll add stuff to the thread when I get time. Damn I'm retired I shouldn't be this busy.

 

[TheRainMaker]

The Pats were coming off two 4-13 seasons in a row, but we expect them to whoop team's asses now? No team is doing that this season. We are seeing many similarities to the early dynasty days were games were close, offense stalled, but the defense stopped a last minute drive.

Run defense is starting to leak while the Pats lack of push in the run game is a major concern.

Can Douglas please stop tripping over himself? He's got the Ellis Hobbs disease.

 

[NFL Mystique]

No huddle makes your defense more tired. It also gives the other team more possessions. Hardly any team uses it anymore.

I do think the goal line/ redzone offense needs to be worked on. Failing to score TD's will cost a team in the postseason. Same with the red zone D.

The pass rush isn't very good

 

[A Defiant Goose]

Hi Ken I was just wondering if we can be upset about injuries now. I'll hang up and listen thanks

 

[TheRainMaker]

No huddle makes your defense more tired. It also gives the other team more possessions. Hardly any team uses it anymore.

I do think the goal line/ reddit zone offense needs to be worked on. Failing to score TD's will cost a team in the postseason. Same with the red zone D.

The pass rush isn't very good

Reddit zone?

But yeah, their pass rush is pretty bad. They've historically gotten tired out when teams go no huddle. 2001 Rams and 2003 Panthers gave them scares.

 

[Mike the Brit]

Thanks, Ken!

The team's limitations have been there from the beginning. What's remarkable is how a combination of great coaching, excellent running and catching by receivers and tight ends, and really high-class quarterback play have enabled them to work around those limitations.

I'm with you in wondering what was wrong with Maye. It was as if he was trying to throw a ball he hadn't practised with and suddenly his biggest strength -- touch and accuracy -- had gone. I also agree with those who say that JMcD was too conservative. Like it or not, the supposedly useless Bengals defense had all of the answers in the between-the-tackles run game. Time to try something different on first downs.

But we shouldn't be measuring this team against teams that have been winning for the last five years. The Pats are on the way back and whatever happens from here on, it's been a heck of a season.

(Oh, and you recommend more hurry-up. Why am I not surprised?)

 

[PATSYLICIOUS]

Not too panicked unless we come out with another bad performance vs nyg. The team is allowed a stinker, it was the first time since week 3 that they had a poor game but they still managed the w. Lets see how they bounce back monday.

 

[JoeSixPat]

Reports are "a couple of weeks" with an MCL sprain - so that is LITERALLY the best we could have hoped for

But good points as always from Ken

Patriots rookie left tackle Will Campbell to miss ‘a couple of weeks’ with knee injury

It appears likely that Campbell will be placed on injured reserve, while left guard Jared Wilson is also expected to miss several weeks.

www.nytimes.com

 

[palialka]

I think Maye is allowed to have a bad half of football occasionally. I mean what QB hasn’t.

I think the rest of the season is going to be tough sledding due to the injuries. Now we’ll see what kind of coaching staff we really have. I’m interested to see how they scheme up the next few games while Williams, Campbell and Wilson are out.

 

[imahobgoblin]

Vrabel had emphasized at the start of the season that the team must first learn how not to lose. They accomplished that today. Honestly, if Vrabel had settled for 3 points on two different goal line stands, this game would have been over a lot sooner. I understand the desire to go for 6 points, but a 32-20 victory is not a nail-biter. They made enough plays to secure a win yesterday, and they managed to avoid a loss. That’s a significant win, and unlike last year, I comprehend that some of you believe we’ve already won the Super Bowl this year. However, this is still the first year of a rebuilding process. Of course, I want to win it all, and anything can happen, but this season isn’t disappointing if we don’t.

We learned a valuable lesson from Drake yesterday. Despite a poor start, he managed to transition to the next play and succeed. It’s unfortunate that bad games happen, but winners find a way to turn them into victories. Our young quarterback demonstrated this skill yesterday, and it’s an enriching experience for him.

McDaniels needs to address our poor yardage management in play calling. I understand that he expects us to easily convert first and goal at the 1-yard line, but the glaring issue is that we simply cannot. Our quarterback sneak is ineffective, and Drake is always too high. We struggle to run for a single yard. McD is aware of this and must devise a better scheme. We were repeatedly stopped by the league’s 31st-ranked run defense on the goal line. That’s embarrassing. Please, give us a naked bootleg, a Philly special, or something completely different from what we’ve seen. Westover blocks like a piece of paper. Just figure it out. We must fix this aspect of our game before the playoffs.

 

[JoeSixPat]

On the QB issues, I've been happy to see some more short passes by Maye that are more akin to the West Coast offense that moves the chains but doesn't rely on the big throws.

Maye has the touch and talent (regardless of his atypical misfires yesterday) to excel in the short game

That being said he still lives and dies on the big passes downfield

And when the field shortens, near the goal line, he seems to tighten up a bit too. It's not unusual for most QBs to like room for separation on a pass play, so when they got the penalty pushing them back from the goal line I felt like that would be a blessing in disguise.

But even noting the injuries on the OL, they've got to address this one way or another, and it doesn't appear the Blount-like runner they need in those situations is currently on the roster.

As far as the OL is concerned, you don't have to be Nostradamus to know you're one injury away from a mess of an OL in general - and we saw what that looked like last year.

That being said, both Lowe and Brown are free agents next year and if they want a chance to showcase what they can do to earn a new contract with the Pats or some other team, this is going to be it. So at least they should be inspired!

 

[VrabelJr]

Not surprised that our two rookie OL are starting to wear down. We're at that point of the rookie wall kicking in and these guys have played a ton of football for us.

We have problems at DE but I expect the interior to be better when Milton is back. At this point of the season that part of the team is what it is. We'll see if lack of pressure is our Achilles heel or not. I suspect against the really good passing QBs (Mahomes, Stafford, Goff) it will be. Thankfully there aren't that many.

 

[mayoclinic]

Getting injured and wearing down are 2 different things.

Not surprising our OL wasn't as good with them out.

Not surprising our run defense wasn't as good with Williams and Tonga out.

 

[p8ryts]

There has been a half dozen losses over the past few years that I have felt better about than the win I witnessed this afternoon.

By the end of the game, I half started rooting for the plucky undermanned Bengals. A team seemly made up of mostly undrafted practice squad players and other backups.

Now whether that was completely true or not, I'm not sure, but it sure sounded like it and we all know about the 3 stars they were missing and the 4th one they lost in the 3rd quarter. I only know that the Bengal Front did a lot better job stopping our running game with the 31st best Defense, than we did stopping their run offense with the #1 rush D.

All I know for sure is we had to make a stop just outside the redzone save a lead and go home with a win in a game we SHOULD have won by at least 2 scores.

OK, I got that off my chest. The overall news is good. The injury news is bad. The battle for the division crown is pretty much over with the Bills loss, if we can win just 3 of our next 5 games. And we are playing 3 of those games against teams who don't have 4 wins yet. So, let us break it down.

1. I just watched Drake Maye play his worst game of the season. Especially in that first quarter where it seemed like someone switched off his accuracy button. We watch 2 passes to wide open receivers go wildly awry. One to Diggs, who made a miraculous catch and the other to Henry that was who had no chance to catch a ball 4 ft. over his head for the pick six. And it wasn't much better on the passes before those 2. It was really kind of shocking. We've been so spoiled.

Now clearly it got a lot better over the course of the game and he DID throw for a personal best 294 yds, and make some very good throws and decisions later on, along with a few other really questionable balls that we were lucky didn't get picked.

I didn't watch his presser after the game, but I hope it was something to the effect of "Sorry, I was crap out there today, and I promise to be better next Monday. I'm looking forward to sitting down with my coaches and fixing what you saw out there today."

I guess the reality is this was bound to happen. This team has played 12 straight games without a break and they have to do another before they finally can get a week off.

2. Let's get to the injuries. Looks like Campbell suffered an ACL. If it's something less than that and there is a possibility he can make it back for the playoffs, I'd be THRILLED. But, I'm preparing for the worst.

We all knew that our biggest weakness once we saw how good this team could be, would be depth. Reminds me of those good Pats teams of the mid to late 90's. Lots of all pros, but everything was one deep, and when they ran into an injury bug, they weren't prepared to replace those players with adequate replacements.

3. I'm hoping Wilson has some sort of ankle thing and will be back in a few weeks. In the meantime I consider Brown to be one of those "adequate" backups who we can live with, if not thrive. Also, it might give us a chance to see Caden Wallace get his opportunity show his development at G this season with Marrone and his guys.

4. Neither Ponder or Swinson flashed to me in limited snaps. They'll get some more chances as time goes on. Speaking of edge guys, I'm kid of getting tired of watching Chassion get to the QB and then somehow run by him. He needs to develop the body control at the end of the rush to actually sack the QB. You've done all the hard work, now get the pay off, Klav.

BTW-Klav, you want to never be drawn offside again by a snap count? Just look at the ****ing BALL, you idiot. That's all you and all of your teammates have to do. Don't move until the ball moves. It's your eyes that tell you when to go, NOT your ears. That drives me NUTS when a defensive player goes offside in that situation. It should NEVER happen, especially on the DL. Christ my HS kids knew that.

5. Teams are starting to get on to the twists we were doing earlier this season, and the 5 man looks Cosell showed us in his clips last week. Right now, at least, I don't see our pressure package being enough to get us deep in the playoffs.

Very little pressure on Flacco today without blitzing 5 or more. No one was beating their man one on one. Really only Williams and Barmore have done that lately and then only occasionally.

6. We ran no huddle for exactly 2 plays and it seemed to help. Josh, take the hint. If we want to use that strategy in the playoffs to slow down rushes, we need to begin working on it NOW. Maye needs to practice it, I don't think he did it much last season, and this is a new offense with new semantics. The whole offense needs to practice it under live conditions.

I've been harping on this for over a month now to no avail. Bill always listened to my suggestions; I'm a little bit insulted that Josh seems to be ignoring me.

7. Going into this game one of the things that made me feel good about this team is that managed to be winning all these games WITHOUT having to create a lot of turnovers

The Bears (+16) and Rams (+10) top the league, while the Pats are at zero. The thing is that you can't count on causing TO's. Some, like Marcus' pick are directly caused by a player. But most are very fickle deflections, bounces, or just being in the right place at right time, like the Cinci DB who picked off Maye. If it wasn't for Drake's wildly inaccurate overthrow there would have been no pick. Or if Flacco had looked at his dump off instead of throwing a blind pass to a spot, no pick 6 for us.

No question TO's win or lose games every week. But you can't count on them. It seems some years just happen to be better than others, often times with similar players. I guess I just like the fact that we're 10-2 without needing to have that huge + number like the Bears

I have some more thought, but this is long enough and I'm late posting and I've been running around most of the day (most of this was done last night) I'll add stuff to the thread when I get time. Damn I'm retired I shouldn't be this busy

They really miss Williams on defense. Didn't notice Swinson. Ponder shows some quickness, inconsistent setting the edge and staying home. Flacco made some really good throws under pressure. Maybe just before the first offensive possession somebody needs to knock Maye on his butt and tell him it's gametime.

 

[DarrylS]

I agree Maye seemed a lot off yesterday, but checked the overall QB stats for the NFL and he is #1. Considering his youth and having to adapt to 2 different O systems that is very remarkable, seemed as the whole team looked tired and "slow"... did not think Gonsalves played his best game either. The Giants are coming to town, then they have a well earned break before the final 4 games.
The injury news on Campbell and Wilson is not as dire as originally thought, gotta wonder his Cincinnati has some field issues as there seemed to be a lot of injuries for both teams. Didn't see any news on Schooler or Tonga.
It wasn't a pretty win, but at the end of the day all that matters are W's.
On the other hand Kyle Williams did well returning kick offs, so he might be the new guy.
Yesterday was probably the most frustrated that I have felt in a long time, but it ended well and that is important.

 

[rochrist]

They really miss Williams on defense. Didn't notice Swinson. Ponder shows some quickness, inconsistent setting the edge and staying home. Flacco made some really good throws under pressure. Maybe just before the first offensive possession somebody needs to knock Maye on his butt and tell him it's gametime.

Well, they lost Tonga too.

 

[TommyD4207]

Only in this fanbase could a win be 'a step back'.

 

[Joey007]

Only in this fanbase could a win be 'a step back'.

Yeah, that’s a little more of an unmeasured take than I would expect from probably the most well measured poster on this board.

This team is finding ways to win games where they aren’t playing great football. There’s major value to that.

 

[mayoclinic]

There is, indeed.

It's a paradox:

- Injuries and poor play decrease the chances the team has of making a deep run in the playoffs

- Overcoming adversity increases the chances of making a deep run in the playoffs

 

[A Defiant Goose]

Only in this fanbase could a win be 'a step back'.

Exactly. 12 straight games* and 6 wins on the road. Big time injuries on both sides of the line. I don't care who it's against or how it looks. It's another win stacked. Let's see how much of a "step back" this win is when we get the 1 seed on conference record tiebreakers

*games, not wins