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I have a lot of thoughts running through my head after watching this game. From the fact it was such a FU game toward Goodell, to the reputdiation of the "this defense hasn't played a good QB" criticism. As far as Goodell goes, his cowardice in not coming to this game was made plain for all to see this week. And it was great to see Kraft make it as plain as he could to all that heard him, that his so proud of this team because they've been playing on an unlevel playing this year (well, at least that is how I interpreted it)
The game itself offers so many story lines from how wide open the Pats receivers were, to how well the defense played a very good Steeler offense. I'm sure that by the time I get finished with this, I will have forgotted to include several of them. And THEN there will be a few obligitory comments about that next game they have to play, but only a few, since 2 weeks is a LONG time to talk about one game, especially since EVERYBODY will be talking about it.
So lets lets get this started, I have to be up early tomorrow and I't already 12am, and as you know these can take a while.
OFFENSE
1. OL - Did anyone hear James Harrison's name called, No? How about Dupree? I didn't either. Timmons maybe? All had ZERO impact in the Pats passing game and only a few good plays each in the run game. I didn't think Harrison and Dupree would get past Solder and Cannon. No one else had this season, and they've seen a number of dual pass rush threats this season.
a. I did have a concern after the second drive when Andrews got beat on a power move for a sack and Tuitt beat someone and got a QB hit. But both proved to be isolated incidents and were never duplicated. In fact the worst hit Brady absorbed was by Tuitt again, late in the game, on a play where Brady had TONS of time.
b. BB mentioned they had some misses in the run game. There were way too many negative run plays where the RB's was hit behind the LOS. So while the running game did a lot better late in the game, it is something I'd like to see get better in a couple of weeks.
2. Receivers.
a Hogan - after 190 yds (10 more than Julio Jones, btw), there will be a lot of talk and threads about Hogan's game, so I will leave it to others to talk about it in depth. Suffice it to say it was F*CKING AWESOME.
b. Edelman didn't have the highlight real plays, but I thought he had a super game. His YAC was extraordinary. He broke a lot of tackles and made a lot of people miss.
c. Danny had 2 catches and both were for first downs. It's what he's done all year. He doesn't get a lot of targets, but most are impactful
d. Mitchell had a bad drop that ended the Pats first drive, but Edelman and Hogan, also had drops. He had another target on a third down throw that couldn't have been more than an inch out of bounds.
e. Bennett - Nice that he got 5 catches, but I would like to see him get more targets down field, out wide, and in the red zone. I know he reportedly has the cracked ankle bone, but you couldn't tell from his dancing after the game.
f. Floyd - A bit disappointed in that Floyd didn't play and get some targets, as I see him posing some Gronk like match up problems for teams. But, BB in his post game presser, talked about how long it took to get late arrivals like Rowe and Van Noy settled to the point where they could be effective. Maybe we were overly optimistic just how much Floyd would be able to accomplish in just a month, playing a position that is much harder to absorb than DB, or LB
3. RB - Actually I think you have to be disappointed in this group's production, as neither White or Lewis had much impact in the passing game, and none of the RB's had any impact in the running game. (except for LGB's electrifying 4th quarter run) On the plus side, according to Bill, they all protected well.
a. Maybe I'm over thinking this, but it seems to me that Lewis doesn't have that explosive acceleration that mesmerized us early in 2015, either in the passing OR run games. I'm hoping its the old, "you don't fully recover from ACL's until the 2nd year" thing.
4. QB- What can you say. The man had over 300 yds of passing in the 3rd quarter of the game. His 384 yds was a playoff record for him, and his 76% completion percentage was a huge improvement over his 49% last week. That doesn't even count the 4 bad drops he was victimized by. Just an outstanding and remarkable exhibition, and another rebuke to the haters who hav been waiting over 5 years for him to "fall off the cliff".
5. General Offensive thoughts:
a. Did you ever see a game where Brady had so many wide open receivers. In every game you see so many completions being made by well covered receivers that are just thrown so well that they are uncoverable. Not so much in this game. You have to give credit to the Josh and his game plan, and the Steeler's and their deplorable defensive game plan. The coaching gap DID matter in this game.
b. Any team who thinks they can stop the Pats by playing strictly zone defense, like the Steelers have since 2001, need to be fired. I kept waiting for the Steelers to try and at least TRY something different. Even Simms mentioned it on several occasions.
c. I LOVED how the Pats went back to the 2002 game plan and spread out the Steelers and ran the no huddle. I love the hurry up and have decried the fact that we have used it very sparingly this season. It was great to see it again.
d. I didn't know how little the Steelers subsituted on defense, and can see why Josh wanted to use the hurry up. You could see that by the 2nd half, the Steeler were starting to miss tackles more and have more coverage breakdowns. It was probably the reason why our run game started to be more effective late in the game.
e. We can't have 4 drops in the Super Bowl. This game is likely to be a shoot out, and 4 drops usually mean 3 or 4 drives that stall. You can't have that next week (2 would be OK since you can't expect perfection.)
f. Off the top of my head, I can only think of 3 series in the entire game where you can say that it was the Steeler defense that stopped the Pats. The 2nd one and the one at the end of the half. The 3rd was 4th quarter GL stand Every other stall came because of a drop.
DEFENSE
6. Front 7 -
a. One QB hit and just 5 or 6 QB pressures (the 2nd one is just a guess) is not great, but that IS a very good pass protecting OL, But more importantly that group performed well in the run game and the LB's did a good job in coverage.
b. the GL stand at the end of the first half was game changing. First and goal at the one foot line is coverted over 95% of the time. You might have a small shot say at the 2 or 3 yd line, but ONE foot? Valentine's play was game changing.
c. I heard this stat I thought was worth repeating. The 19 runs that occurred when Alan Branch was in the game average 1.9 ypc. Think about that. Who would have thought Branch would have had such an impactful season this year.
d. This group is TRULY a great example of where the sum is greater than the individual parts. When you think about it, there are no great individual players, making highlight reel plays. The rush is totally underwhelming. Our probowl LB was pretty much invisible. No Vick Beasely's here. Yet when the results are tallied, the offense is getting a lot of its production in garbage time....again. Pretty cool if you ask me.
7/ DB's Solid games all around with very few exceptions. What this defensive secondary does so well is tackle and limit the number of 2o+ yd gains. They constantly forced Rothlessberger to make good passes in order to make completions downfield. Sometimes he was really close making really difficult throws, but in the end the secondary was forcing them to make great catches
a. Eric Rowe had another nice game doing what he does. His role is to be phyisical with his receivers off the LOS, play the trail technique, and force QB's to make difficult throws OVER a tall CB, who often has help over the top. Guys might sometimes be "technically open" but its not easy completing those passes on the field as they are from the booth. He's a perfect example of Matty maximizing a limited player's productivity by not asking to do what he can't. He's this year's version of Otis Smith or Brandon Browner
b. James beat Chung a couple of times, but 5 for 46 is not as bad as it seemed at the time.
c. This group is the real strength of this defense. It will be interesting to watch how it fairs against what is the best offense in the league.
8. General Defensive thoughts:
a. This is where I have to make the obligatory, "we have met a quality QB, he had a good game, and his team STILL could score more than 17 points" remark. I wonder how the mediots will spin this one.
b. Rothlessberger DID have a much better game than I expected. He made a lot of tough throws, a lot of them on 3rd down. He had the same 60% 3rd down conversion rate that Brady had. I'd like to think we can improve on that in Houston, but it's hard after watching the Atlanta offense today.
9. ST's - Pretty good. The Steelers did have on KO return to the 30 after Slater almost had him down on the 15 and Gotkowski missed an extra point, Allen had an important 58 yd punt that was important in the 3rd quarter and the rest of ST was clean.
10. General comments
a. If you get a chance to get a link to Matthew Slater's post game presser, it will be well worth the effort. He gives as an articulate explanation of WHY this program is so successful, as I've ever heard. It really is a must view. I'm sure it will be somewhere.
b. Someone please find "dur Fuhrer" this week. I'm sure there will be one, and I need to see it.
c. I know the Falcon offense looked completely unstoppable, but the GB defense which was bad when it was healthy, was completely battered coming into this game and it only got worse during it. There is no question that it is an awesome offense with an MVP worthy QB. and a lot of "individual stars", but what they did to the Packer in a home game will be much harder to do to the pats D on neutral ground.
d. Unfortunately we won't be seeing a Pittsburgh like zone defense this week. Dan Quinn has been trying to duplicate what we've seen from Seattle in the past. We should expect a very aggressive front with fast LB's playing a lot of very physical tight zone coverage, with a single high safety. It looks a lot like man, but it is in fact a zone most of the time. In other words it will look a lot more like we saw vs Houston, that what we saw vs Pittsburgh. However I don't think they have the personnel yet to pull it off. They are very young, I heard they start 3 rookies and three 2nd year players, so I'm sure they are much better now that they were early in the first half of the season.
e. I couldn't believe that on 4th down at the 2 yd line, the Steelers would run a play to their 5th best receiver (Hamilton) when they could have thrown the ball to Brown, Rogers, James or Andrews. This was at a point in the game where it was essentially the Steelers last chance to make it a game. And they compound the insanity by throwing a ball that wouldn't have led to a score if it had been completed. I was totally baffled.
f. It is my fondest wish we have this ref crew for the superbowl. NO penalties in the first half, and just 5 for 29 yds for BOTH teams. What a pleasure. When this is the result, I don't care if they miss a few.
g. I swear that half the airtime during this game was taken up by commercials. I remember one time switching to another station and getting distracted by what I was watching for a few minutes, and when THAT station when to a commercial being pissed because I imagined I missed a few plays, only to go back to the game and find out they were STILL in commercial. It had to be 5 minutes straight of commercial time.
h. There is something wrong with a society that will root for Atlanta simply because they are "tired" of seen the Pats in the superbowl, but I guess it's true. Is consistent excellence NOT a quality to be valued anymore?
BTW- when you think about the fact that BOTH of last year's superbowl teams failed to even make the playoffs, it should give you a better idea of just how HARD it is to be consistently successful and how special what the Pats have accomplished really is just to get this far. We take the playoffs and AFCCG's as a given, but it is HARD to make the playoffs.
i. Bill REALLY really likes this team. He likes it enough to make it public now on several occasions. I don't recall him using the term "special" very often over the last 17 years.
OK almost 2am, and I know there will be stuff I wanted to say but have forgotten. I'm hoping you all will fill in the blanks. Enjoy
The game itself offers so many story lines from how wide open the Pats receivers were, to how well the defense played a very good Steeler offense. I'm sure that by the time I get finished with this, I will have forgotted to include several of them. And THEN there will be a few obligitory comments about that next game they have to play, but only a few, since 2 weeks is a LONG time to talk about one game, especially since EVERYBODY will be talking about it.
So lets lets get this started, I have to be up early tomorrow and I't already 12am, and as you know these can take a while.
OFFENSE
1. OL - Did anyone hear James Harrison's name called, No? How about Dupree? I didn't either. Timmons maybe? All had ZERO impact in the Pats passing game and only a few good plays each in the run game. I didn't think Harrison and Dupree would get past Solder and Cannon. No one else had this season, and they've seen a number of dual pass rush threats this season.
a. I did have a concern after the second drive when Andrews got beat on a power move for a sack and Tuitt beat someone and got a QB hit. But both proved to be isolated incidents and were never duplicated. In fact the worst hit Brady absorbed was by Tuitt again, late in the game, on a play where Brady had TONS of time.
b. BB mentioned they had some misses in the run game. There were way too many negative run plays where the RB's was hit behind the LOS. So while the running game did a lot better late in the game, it is something I'd like to see get better in a couple of weeks.
2. Receivers.
a Hogan - after 190 yds (10 more than Julio Jones, btw), there will be a lot of talk and threads about Hogan's game, so I will leave it to others to talk about it in depth. Suffice it to say it was F*CKING AWESOME.
b. Edelman didn't have the highlight real plays, but I thought he had a super game. His YAC was extraordinary. He broke a lot of tackles and made a lot of people miss.
c. Danny had 2 catches and both were for first downs. It's what he's done all year. He doesn't get a lot of targets, but most are impactful
d. Mitchell had a bad drop that ended the Pats first drive, but Edelman and Hogan, also had drops. He had another target on a third down throw that couldn't have been more than an inch out of bounds.
e. Bennett - Nice that he got 5 catches, but I would like to see him get more targets down field, out wide, and in the red zone. I know he reportedly has the cracked ankle bone, but you couldn't tell from his dancing after the game.
f. Floyd - A bit disappointed in that Floyd didn't play and get some targets, as I see him posing some Gronk like match up problems for teams. But, BB in his post game presser, talked about how long it took to get late arrivals like Rowe and Van Noy settled to the point where they could be effective. Maybe we were overly optimistic just how much Floyd would be able to accomplish in just a month, playing a position that is much harder to absorb than DB, or LB
3. RB - Actually I think you have to be disappointed in this group's production, as neither White or Lewis had much impact in the passing game, and none of the RB's had any impact in the running game. (except for LGB's electrifying 4th quarter run) On the plus side, according to Bill, they all protected well.
a. Maybe I'm over thinking this, but it seems to me that Lewis doesn't have that explosive acceleration that mesmerized us early in 2015, either in the passing OR run games. I'm hoping its the old, "you don't fully recover from ACL's until the 2nd year" thing.
4. QB- What can you say. The man had over 300 yds of passing in the 3rd quarter of the game. His 384 yds was a playoff record for him, and his 76% completion percentage was a huge improvement over his 49% last week. That doesn't even count the 4 bad drops he was victimized by. Just an outstanding and remarkable exhibition, and another rebuke to the haters who hav been waiting over 5 years for him to "fall off the cliff".
5. General Offensive thoughts:
a. Did you ever see a game where Brady had so many wide open receivers. In every game you see so many completions being made by well covered receivers that are just thrown so well that they are uncoverable. Not so much in this game. You have to give credit to the Josh and his game plan, and the Steeler's and their deplorable defensive game plan. The coaching gap DID matter in this game.
b. Any team who thinks they can stop the Pats by playing strictly zone defense, like the Steelers have since 2001, need to be fired. I kept waiting for the Steelers to try and at least TRY something different. Even Simms mentioned it on several occasions.
c. I LOVED how the Pats went back to the 2002 game plan and spread out the Steelers and ran the no huddle. I love the hurry up and have decried the fact that we have used it very sparingly this season. It was great to see it again.
d. I didn't know how little the Steelers subsituted on defense, and can see why Josh wanted to use the hurry up. You could see that by the 2nd half, the Steeler were starting to miss tackles more and have more coverage breakdowns. It was probably the reason why our run game started to be more effective late in the game.
e. We can't have 4 drops in the Super Bowl. This game is likely to be a shoot out, and 4 drops usually mean 3 or 4 drives that stall. You can't have that next week (2 would be OK since you can't expect perfection.)
f. Off the top of my head, I can only think of 3 series in the entire game where you can say that it was the Steeler defense that stopped the Pats. The 2nd one and the one at the end of the half. The 3rd was 4th quarter GL stand Every other stall came because of a drop.
DEFENSE
6. Front 7 -
a. One QB hit and just 5 or 6 QB pressures (the 2nd one is just a guess) is not great, but that IS a very good pass protecting OL, But more importantly that group performed well in the run game and the LB's did a good job in coverage.
b. the GL stand at the end of the first half was game changing. First and goal at the one foot line is coverted over 95% of the time. You might have a small shot say at the 2 or 3 yd line, but ONE foot? Valentine's play was game changing.
c. I heard this stat I thought was worth repeating. The 19 runs that occurred when Alan Branch was in the game average 1.9 ypc. Think about that. Who would have thought Branch would have had such an impactful season this year.
d. This group is TRULY a great example of where the sum is greater than the individual parts. When you think about it, there are no great individual players, making highlight reel plays. The rush is totally underwhelming. Our probowl LB was pretty much invisible. No Vick Beasely's here. Yet when the results are tallied, the offense is getting a lot of its production in garbage time....again. Pretty cool if you ask me.
7/ DB's Solid games all around with very few exceptions. What this defensive secondary does so well is tackle and limit the number of 2o+ yd gains. They constantly forced Rothlessberger to make good passes in order to make completions downfield. Sometimes he was really close making really difficult throws, but in the end the secondary was forcing them to make great catches
a. Eric Rowe had another nice game doing what he does. His role is to be phyisical with his receivers off the LOS, play the trail technique, and force QB's to make difficult throws OVER a tall CB, who often has help over the top. Guys might sometimes be "technically open" but its not easy completing those passes on the field as they are from the booth. He's a perfect example of Matty maximizing a limited player's productivity by not asking to do what he can't. He's this year's version of Otis Smith or Brandon Browner
b. James beat Chung a couple of times, but 5 for 46 is not as bad as it seemed at the time.
c. This group is the real strength of this defense. It will be interesting to watch how it fairs against what is the best offense in the league.
8. General Defensive thoughts:
a. This is where I have to make the obligatory, "we have met a quality QB, he had a good game, and his team STILL could score more than 17 points" remark. I wonder how the mediots will spin this one.
b. Rothlessberger DID have a much better game than I expected. He made a lot of tough throws, a lot of them on 3rd down. He had the same 60% 3rd down conversion rate that Brady had. I'd like to think we can improve on that in Houston, but it's hard after watching the Atlanta offense today.
9. ST's - Pretty good. The Steelers did have on KO return to the 30 after Slater almost had him down on the 15 and Gotkowski missed an extra point, Allen had an important 58 yd punt that was important in the 3rd quarter and the rest of ST was clean.
10. General comments
a. If you get a chance to get a link to Matthew Slater's post game presser, it will be well worth the effort. He gives as an articulate explanation of WHY this program is so successful, as I've ever heard. It really is a must view. I'm sure it will be somewhere.
b. Someone please find "dur Fuhrer" this week. I'm sure there will be one, and I need to see it.
c. I know the Falcon offense looked completely unstoppable, but the GB defense which was bad when it was healthy, was completely battered coming into this game and it only got worse during it. There is no question that it is an awesome offense with an MVP worthy QB. and a lot of "individual stars", but what they did to the Packer in a home game will be much harder to do to the pats D on neutral ground.
d. Unfortunately we won't be seeing a Pittsburgh like zone defense this week. Dan Quinn has been trying to duplicate what we've seen from Seattle in the past. We should expect a very aggressive front with fast LB's playing a lot of very physical tight zone coverage, with a single high safety. It looks a lot like man, but it is in fact a zone most of the time. In other words it will look a lot more like we saw vs Houston, that what we saw vs Pittsburgh. However I don't think they have the personnel yet to pull it off. They are very young, I heard they start 3 rookies and three 2nd year players, so I'm sure they are much better now that they were early in the first half of the season.
e. I couldn't believe that on 4th down at the 2 yd line, the Steelers would run a play to their 5th best receiver (Hamilton) when they could have thrown the ball to Brown, Rogers, James or Andrews. This was at a point in the game where it was essentially the Steelers last chance to make it a game. And they compound the insanity by throwing a ball that wouldn't have led to a score if it had been completed. I was totally baffled.
f. It is my fondest wish we have this ref crew for the superbowl. NO penalties in the first half, and just 5 for 29 yds for BOTH teams. What a pleasure. When this is the result, I don't care if they miss a few.
g. I swear that half the airtime during this game was taken up by commercials. I remember one time switching to another station and getting distracted by what I was watching for a few minutes, and when THAT station when to a commercial being pissed because I imagined I missed a few plays, only to go back to the game and find out they were STILL in commercial. It had to be 5 minutes straight of commercial time.
h. There is something wrong with a society that will root for Atlanta simply because they are "tired" of seen the Pats in the superbowl, but I guess it's true. Is consistent excellence NOT a quality to be valued anymore?
BTW- when you think about the fact that BOTH of last year's superbowl teams failed to even make the playoffs, it should give you a better idea of just how HARD it is to be consistently successful and how special what the Pats have accomplished really is just to get this far. We take the playoffs and AFCCG's as a given, but it is HARD to make the playoffs.
i. Bill REALLY really likes this team. He likes it enough to make it public now on several occasions. I don't recall him using the term "special" very often over the last 17 years.
OK almost 2am, and I know there will be stuff I wanted to say but have forgotten. I'm hoping you all will fill in the blanks. Enjoy
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