Idle thoughts - the "oops" edition

[Kdo5]

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My take is very simple, they came out of this game MUCH better off than the last time we opened against KC at home.

No need to panic, this team will be just fine and will be right where we've grown accustomed to seeing them be -- that would be playing a game in Feb and winning it!!!

PS -- The fire in his eyes tells me I would not want to be the team facing him next week.

The Saints are going to get pulverized. Book it.

 

[The Gr8est]

Unless Edelman was playing defense, KC would have won.

I guess we're readying our excuse for all future losses (if there are any).

Not making an excuse. The Pats played poorly, but with Edelman there to allow a safety valve and level of comfort to Brady, we extend some drives and put more points on the board, while keeping the ball away from the Chiefs.

Maybe with less targets Amendola doesn't get hurt as well.

I am saying we would have won an ugly game, but the work remains to be done regardless.

 

[patfanken]

BTW- One point about the game I forgot to put into the summary was to voice my disappointment in how Goodell was treated with kid gloves by the broadcast team and how badly Portnoy's clown towel idea faired on national media. While I appreaciated his effort, going the extra mile for the clown shirts would have been SOOOOOO much more effective..... Just saying

Reading @Joker's monumentally excellent diatribe about his Roger Goodell Fathead toiletbowl liner remined me. It should be made a sticky and anyone who joins this site in the future should be forced to read it before becoming a member.

......and in case you missed it . ...

"If someone wants to post a tweet to Michaels informing him that a certain Patriot fan has had a "Fathead" fashioned for his toilet bowl and plans on defecating on an image of his face the rest of that certain fan's life, I'd appreciate it. THAT is what HE, the rest of them and the rest of this POS league will get from me now on. Gutless, wormlike, anthropoidal wastes of DNA bereft of any conscience, morals or decency...the lot of them. Sorry sukkers...you lose...we won." Joker

 

[luuked]

I think it happened during the "non-TD". He got up slowly from that and had a look of concern on his face. He wasn't the same after that.

I think people are reading way too much into that scene. To me it looked more like he had the wind knocked out of him. If he had any real worries he wouldnt have been on the field afterwards. Do you seriously think that after going through another back surgery he would just not say anything to anyone and play on with something tweaked ?

It was his first real football game after a back surgery and change in training regimen. If he continues to look like that in the next 2-3 games we can get worried but just because he was healthy all preseason and camp it doesnt mean that he wont need a few games to get back into it.

 

[luuked]

I know it's been said that the long ball isn't Brady's game but I think it's a matter of Brady getting used to how fast Cooks really is.

The irony being that usually Brady actually likes to overthrow his receivers a bit just to make turnovers more difficult.

 

[luuked]

Brady was 3-4 in 2015 when Jules was injured. The loss is huge...the 3rd down guy is gone. How many possessions are the Pats going to give up because of this? A couple a game is devastating as we lose the opportunity to score and the opponent gets the ball.
I read too many ..the Pats will be fine because they have so many other weapons. I think we bought into this after hearing it so often. Yes, the Pats will be fine...against weaker opponents, but against the better defenses, this will be a major loss.

It is not the 2015 Patriots team. All of what happened before this season is totally meaningless and has no predictive value. Stop freaking out over a bad game people.

 

[The Brandon Five]

Dunno if it makes the 5 absolute worst cut but I was @ San Diego in 2015; Tommy Boy was bad throwing 2 picks as LT torched the D.
The Patriots Mailing list Bledsoe Krishnas traveling with us were taunting us Brady's Ladies bemoaning BB's trade of Bledsoe.

Do you mean 2005?

 

[Peachhead]

One of the many things that perplexed me Thursday night: Eric Berry pretty much took Gronk completely out of the game. OK, Berry's one hell of a Safety. I'm not too shocked about how well he was against Gronk. But once Berry went out with an injury, why didn't the next few plays go straight to Gronk? And the next few after that? Exploiting a second stringer is such an obvious Patriot thing to do!

And on the 4th and shorts: Why have Brady take the snap and back up 2 or 3 yards to hand it off? He's almost always successful with the sneak. If the Chiefs were clogging up the middle waiting for the sneak it's the perfect opportunity to flip it to a WR on the perimeter. Especially the second time. The last thing we should have done is send an RB up the middle. If it's too clogged for Brady, it's damn sure too clogged for an RB who'll take a few extra tenths of a second to get there.

To me the coaching staff deserve 99% of the blame. Josh called a stinker for the ages. And Matt P. should have been drilling the necessity of good communication into the D's head from minicamps on.

 

[Bourne Again Christian]

If the sneak was called and Brady didn't want to run it or we didn't call it because we are being careful with him and I don't know if either is the case then we are not playing to win the game.
Insert Herm Edwards meme.

 

[luuked]

Clearly KC used the Falcon blueprint as their base defense. Which basically is to be physical and tough in the short zones and clog up the middle using the off side LB/S to discourage short crossing routes the Pats like so much. They were also very physical on the outside guys, using an old Pats tactic which was grab as much as you think you can get away with, because they can't call them all.

Believe me we WILL see some versions of this game plan a lot over the next 3 months. But lets remember that the offense DID score 5 times and 27 points and it very easily could have been more, perhaps a lot more if Brady had been sharper and the game plan more defined. Please credit KC for a good game plan, and better execution. but the Pats brain trust needs to take accountability for not making better adjustments to it, and the players for not executing better.

The thing is that we started to transitioning our offense to be more vertical over this offseason because of exactly this reason. The games against the Texans and the Falcons have clearly shown BB that we cant just rely on what was our bread and butter for years. This is why I am not concerned at all about other teams trying to do the same thing that KC or the Texans did to us. We have a roster that should be able to handle this by punishing teams that flood the intermediate game with speed and vertical routes.

Now as I said the intermediate game was one of the pillars for this offense in the past couple of years. Brady has developed certain automatisms in those years and transitioning the offense and also the way he looks at the field and his progressions takes some time. The same way you develop muscle memory for certain physical actions I am sure that there is also a mental side of it where if you get a certain look as a QB you go through your progressions a certain way based on experience and what has been working. Adjusting this takes some time.

The way I look at it is that we have seen pretty regularly in the last few years that our defense needed a few weeks to find its identity. And since our offense didnt change that much in the past few years it could always kinda carry the defense if necessary for those weeks. Now both sides of the ball are in search of their identity which makes us vulnerable initially but longterm will help us because we are actually evolving away from something that has been shown to be getting less effective against better teams.

 

[luuked]

If the sneak was called and Brady didn't want to run it or we didn't call it because we are being careful with him and I don't know if either is the case then we are not playing to win the game.

Would have been enough...

 

[luuked]

To me the coaching staff deserve 99% of the blame. Josh called a stinker for the ages. And Matt P. should have been drilling the necessity of good communication into the D's head from minicamps on.

So the players who just couldnt execute get 1% of the blame ?

Guess it was Boyers and Patricias fault that Chung let a ball slip through his hands, Gilmore&DMac blew a coverage or when Butler didnt turn his head and produced a PI in the endzone with less than a minute in the half. Similarly, I guess we should blame McD for Brady not knowing where the ****ing line of scrimmage is when throwing the ball or when Amendola and White ran their routes a yard too short to leave us with & 1 a few times.

It was just a bad game with too many mistakes from all sides. There is not a single person or group to blame.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

I think people are reading way too much into that scene. To me it looked more like he had the wind knocked out of him.

It wasn't just that. He looked slow and laboring even a long, long time after that play.

 

[luuked]

It wasn't just that. He looked slow and laboring even a long, long time after that play.

I just dont see how the medical staff would let him (and his medical history) play if he tweaked something.

 

[supafly]

Unless Edelman was playing defense, KC would have won.

I guess we're readying our excuse for all future losses (if there are any).

I respectfully disagree. As a matter of fact, we were moving the ball well enough and had already scored 27 when Amendola went down, let alone Edelman.
There's obviously a relationship to moving the ball, scoring, and keeping KC's offense off of the field, rather than watching Brady go 3/10 in the fourth quarter with a bunch of desperation heaves, punts, turnover on downs, etc.

I believe an argument could easily be made that we may have won had Amendola stayed in, where we would've been moving the ball better, likely scoring more, chewing up some more clock, and limiting their possessions. The game got out of hand when our offense couldn't move the ball and stopped playing our game. That helped to tire the defense out, led to at least another 2-3 KC possessions that they may not have had, and changed their playcalling and overall approach.

At the very least it would've been a close one possession nail biting loss.

 

[supafly]

It wasn't just that. He looked slow and laboring even a long, long time after that play.

He most certainly did. I think we'll all feel much better if he looks good next Sunday. If he still looks slow and troubled, it will definitely be something to monitor and may be worth fretting over.

 

[supafly]

I just dont see how the medical staff would let him (and his medical history) play if he tweaked something.

There was a point right before the commercial break where one of the trainers/medical staff went over and asked him if he hurt something specific, but I couldn't make it out. It may have been his arm that they were concerned with, due to landing a bit awkwardly, but that's simply speculation.

It's possible that he may have tweaked something and isn't letting on to how much it bothered him. He has plenty of reasons why he may try to conceal something a bit more than in the past, including financial reasons, reputation, pride, desire to play, and potentially being out of Foxborough or football altogether with another season of injury concerns + missed time.

Of course, common sense says that they'd likely catch that at some point during practice within the next week or two. There's also the possibility that it wasn't a serious enough injury to remove him from the field altogether, and that football players work through injuries. Like I said, we'll have to wait to see how he looks next weekend. In the meantime, there doesn't appear to be any reason to be overly concerned, which is likely your point.

 

[thecore762]

The run defense was awful other than that first drive which they caused a fumble. Our defensive tackles played like garbage and disappointed with Brown... the safety play wasn't as great but when your front 7 fail to generate any type of pressure not even the world greatest corners and safeties will be able to stop that. We have to stick to the run game and we should play Rex more often, he is a downhill runner.

BB will probably give a earful to the coaches and players.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

Do you mean 2005?

I meant 2002 will edit

 

[ChessToCheckers]

Great post, Ken!

For me, this thread routinely generates the best "Reader Value", which is the average "thoughtful observation" per post. (I try to limit my responses so that I don't drag down the value. )

That said, I thought this game was a clunker that the team can learn a great deal from. The Chiefs played well and deserved the win. IMO, our Offense suffered from a bad day from Brady and McDaniels. Our Defense appeared to be confused, especially in the fourth quarter. Our D-Line was out-played, which led to many of the problems we saw in the secondary.

Bottom line: just another day in the NFL. Let's see how the Pats respond.

Go Pats!