Honestly have no idea how that Defense can be fixed

[SHOWTIME15]

The thing i don't get is if wilson is coming off two ankle injuries and a knee injury, why play contain? He wasn't a threat to run it....

 

[mosi]

here is a good barometer for the problem:

Brady admitted post-game that his first down sneak was just to kill the clock. He has so little confidence in the defense that he thought killing seconds was more important than the down. Unbelievable.

I think that is key point that is getting lost here. When Lombardi commented on the Collins trade, he did not just call out Collins, he called out the entire defense as playing like garbage. I think he, and Belichick, expected the team to respond with improved play. I think they got the opposite. I think the O now thinks the D is garbage and unfortunately, I think the D is starting to realize it is true. The coaching and defensive play in the last minute of the half was just garbage. I always thought the 2009 Indy game was a turning point for the Pats that year - a true gut check. This game was that. Ravens and Bronco's are the next tough games. What will the Pats bring?

 

[Sciz]

The thing i don't get is if wilson is coming off two ankle injuries and a knee injury, why play contain? He wasn't a threat to run it....

He was severely limited as recently as two weeks ago, but he's not anymore. The Buffalo game last week was a huge step up for him physically, and it continued to improve last night.

 

[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

 

[Mack Herron]

 

[mihap]

It's easy. Players need to do their jobs. Plain and simple.

Coaches must do their job. This is totally on coaches and BB as GM. He picks players and coach them. Simple as that.

 

[Rob0729]

Last night was not a lack of talent issue. It was a gameplan and execution issue.

Why Matt Patricia decided to rush two or three so much and still play soft zone is beyond me.

And you saw players clearly not knowing their zone assignments and one player passing a receiver to another player's zone, that player being nowhere to be found because he missed his assignment.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

He was severely limited as recently as two weeks ago, but he's not anymore. The Buffalo game last week was a huge step up for him physically, and it continued to improve last night.

yes, for sure. but he still can't run right now.

 

[patsinthesnow]

Russell Wilson Career Game Log vs. Patriots | Pro-Football-Reference.com

Random thought but Russell Wilson has to be the most successful QB of all time vs. Belichick? (Disregarding Eli SBs. More based on statistical output)

He's managed to keep P. Manning below his career averages & Roethlisberger right at his career averages. Flacco is slightly above his career averages.

Wilson is one all-time Butler play away from tearing BB to shreds. He still has 8 TDs to 1 INT with 300 ypg.

----------------------------------------

Keep it short: We're freaking out about the defense and rightfully so but maybe BB has met his match: A mobile QB who's approaching elite status as a pocket passer. Contain does nothing vs. Wilson.

 

[jbb9s]

Last night was not a lack of talent issue. It was a gameplan and execution issue.

Why Matt Patricia decided to rush two or three so much and still play soft zone is beyond me.

And you saw players clearly not knowing their zone assignments and one player passing a receiver to another player's zone, that player being nowhere to be found because he missed his assignment.

It is hard to differentiate between lack of talen and gameplanning because one influences the other. If your second corner sucks, then that might be the impetus to play a different defense don't you think?

Patricia is in a hard place. He has lost 2 of his 4 best players since last year. And by "lost" i mean they were (a) voluntary and (b) decisions not made by him.

I also don't think Patricia calls the BS 2 man rush at the end of 1H without BB telling him to do that either when it was happening or in their preparation for the game. It isn't like he is going rogue on these decisions.

 

[Kontradiction]

Last night was not a lack of talent issue. It was a gameplan and execution issue.

Why Matt Patricia decided to rush two or three so much and still play soft zone is beyond me.

And you saw players clearly not knowing their zone assignments and one player passing a receiver to another player's zone, that player being nowhere to be found because he missed his assignment.

They didn't fare much better in man either, Rob.

 

[Rob0729]

They didn't fare much better in man either, Rob.

They did fair better though and they didn't give up a gift TD in man like they did with a 2-3 man rush and soft zone at the end of the first half.

 

[NG Pats Fan]

They played better in zone than in man, which is concerning

 

[Kontradiction]

They did fair better though and they didn't give up a gift TD in man like they did with a 2-3 man rush and soft zone at the end of the first half.

Roberts nearly gave up a TD on the long completion to Prosise and the last TD was given up in man. Yeah, it wasn't as ****ty as zone, but they were still struggling even playing man to man.

 

[PF_SU]

Keep it short: We're freaking out about the defense and rightfully so but maybe BB has met his match: A mobile QB who's approaching elite status as a pocket passer. Contain does nothing vs. Wilson.

Yes, they need a new strategy for Wilson. Though in SB XLIX the defensive strategy was working for most of the day. Wilson picked up 109 of the 247 yards in the last two drives of each half. He went 2-3 for 34 yards on the last drive of the first half and 3-6 for 75 yards on the last drive that ended in the arms of Butler. Other than those two drives the defense held Wilson in check with 7-12 for 138 yards. But yeah, don't have 2014 Revis anymore. But going forward, if they meet Wilson again they need to treat him more like a pocket passer. Perhaps have somebody spy him, but contain and forcing him to beat you against a packed zone coverage isn't working.

 

[Froob]

Doesn't Bill have his hand pretty deep in the game plan? How much is really Patricia's fault?

 

[Kontradiction]

Doesn't Bill have his hand pretty deep in the game plan? How much is really Patricia's fault?

Yep. That's Belichick's game plan more than Patricia's.

 

[PF_SU]

Doesn't Bill have his hand pretty deep in the game plan? How much is really Patricia's fault?

Patricia is calling the plays, so that part falls on him. Have to wonder who thought it to be a good idea to have Chris Long cover Jimmy Graham on a 3rd and 9:



Predictably this led to a 14-yard completion and the Seahawks drove to take the lead at the end of the first half.

 

[Froob]

Patricia is calling the plays, so that part falls on him. Have to wonder who thought it to be a good idea to have Chris Long cover Jimmy Graham on a 3rd and 9:



Predictably this led to a 14-yard completion and the Seahawks drove to take the lead at the end of the first half.

Ultimately though, Bill can nix any play he wants to. So he's pretty much just as much at fault.

 

[NG Pats Fan]

Patricia is calling the plays, so that part falls on him. Have to wonder who thought it to be a good idea to have Chris Long cover Jimmy Graham on a 3rd and 9:



Predictably this led to a 14-yard completion and the Seahawks drove to take the lead at the end of the first half.

Chris Long should not be a full time starter at this point in his career, but a situational run defender. He was a cheap replacement for Chandler Jones and it has not worked out.