Good on you for not throwing in Cooks, although losing him did not impact the D (obviously). Ditto Edelman, of course. The inactive list was not considered here or anywhere a slam dunk for the Pats losing this game beforehand; I don't know, therefore, what it explains after the fact.
I and many others would **** all over anybody predicting doom before the coin was flipped (and rightly so) based on the inactive list. I see Branch and Harris, on the defensive side of the ball. The Iggles beat our "healthy" players with a backup QB... it's a tough sell that our injuries made victory impossible, full stop.
The Butler call might merit examination - what was BB seeing before the game? Did Butler transgress some instruction? Were his practices horrible? Flu? Was it a matter of, as somebody here said, reverting to a 4 safety look? What was BB seeing? We shouldn't fall into a
post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; the "it couldn't be worse" claim does not square with even larger outlier scores, on any given personnel/scheme call. BB made the call that sitting Butler gave us the best chance to win. We don't actually know that he was wrong (however, giving up 41 militates to the affirmative - "more likely than not.") We do know that BB and the Patriots lost.
Probably the toughest job will be figuring out what happened - and don't kid yourself, sometime between now and the draft, they're going to be looking (whatever they say at the podium.)
Happy day after, especially doomsayers - it's therefore more legit now to say, what went wrong, and what would
you have done. The worse a performance (or tendency toward poor performance,) the more valid it is to guess at what went wrong and what could have been better.
That's fair enough.
They'll do the same thing in the bowels of Foxborough. I know it's the off-season, but I doubt BB just puts that tape on a shelf somewhere for later viewing. LOL... he's like a month behind prepping for the draft and down one rocket scientist. I know everybody on this thread is thinking "GOOD!" but Matt P's body of work makes me think "replacing" him is a taller order than last night would make us think.
Before the game, Tom was like "Of course I'll be back next year" After the game, TFB was saying "You don't know how you'll process a game but I expect to be back next year" (unless I casually confused the timing - somebody check me on that.) Gronk, by the way, was making "This game (football) HURTS" noises (i.e., might hang them up) as well.
My expectation: That next ring/trophy urge isn't going to just go away, for TFB I mean. The Pats will read out the black box of last night's defensive performance, learn, and adapt.
And all you armchair DBs (don't mean defensive backs) just
waiting for the Pats to stink up the joint, congrats! It took 4 years but you nailed it! Have at it - get at the details. You have to respect the exercise to mirror the examination of what went wrong. I'll be reading the X and O level because so many people here are smarter than me about it, that's one reason I love this place.
But please don't tell me "look at the inactive list" when our D did not stop the backup QB. (I mean factor it in is all you're saying, but come on - I wouldn't hang my hat on it). By the way, Foles has shone when given the chance at times, though he's not a world-beater (usually). He's never sustained excellence but he's put up impressive regular season numbers here and there. He was always capable of having a game of this quality. Congrats to Iggles fans.
Nick. Foles. Beat. Us.
Yes it's worth looking at how to prevent that kind of outcome in any "next time." But this game, while the Pats should look at how we could have prevented the Foles/Blount/[your name here] barrage, the Iggles should rightly celebrate a fantastic end to a fantastic season.
/rant
