Idle thoughts - the "shoot out" edition

[DarrylS]

too much is being made of Dorsett's lack of playing time in this game. Thus far this season the has played a decent role and far exceeded most people's expectations. At this point his lack of playing time is more a matter of expectations than anything he's done. I suspect that he will have his moments from time to time, much like Amendola's last couple of seasons. Hopefully he'll be just as clutch as DA.

Personally I'm glad he's on the team.

And it is only a matter of time before he is needed due to some sort of injury, he is in his second year in this offense.. otoh he only played 3 O snaps, and nada on ST's.. wonder how long the Pats will tolerate that level of inactivity.

 

[maineman209]

Taking away the 14 + 3 would mean that Hill would’ve had 4 catches for 53 yards, so I get what you’re saying, but he still would’ve had 4/53/2, and it’s difficult (for me) to praise them when you’re allowing someone to score twice, that’s all.

I understand your point, although this feels like one of those “should we count the stats because a 10 point lead with 5 mins left should be considered garbage time” types of views, which tends to favor the Pats in a debate. The bottom line is that the dude went off for 145 yards and 3 touchdowns, and I think there’s a lot of gray area to how effective the defense really contained him if he had a 6/70/2 line prior to the long catch. You’d have to take away a touchdown or two to convince me that they achieved their pre-game goals. Just my opinion, of course.

I'm certainly not praising the defense. I'm just trying to avoid over-exalting (if that's a word) Hill's gross-stats line and keep things in perspective. It seems to me that the defense was tasked with keeping Hill from doing "Hill things". The 75-yard TD was a "Hill thing." The 3-yard "layup" and the 14-yard "jumper from the paint" were "two or three other Chiefs players could have done that" sorta things. That they ended up on Hill's gross-stats line instead of on Ware's or on Harris' is at least somewhat happenstance.

It's still not a good look for the Pats defense to have allowed those two shots to get through the net. However, it's also worth remembering that it wasn't any spectacular play by Hill or Hunt or Mahomes, or any failure by the Pats defense itself, that put the Chiefs offense in position to take those relatively easy shots - it was failure by the Pats ST and by the Pats offense.

The bottom line for me is that - aside from the uncharacteristic coverage brain-farts that allowed the long scoring receptions to Hill and Hunt, the defense did fairly well at keeping Hill from doing "Hill things" and Hunt from doing "Hunt things" and Mahomes from doing "Mahomes things" and Kelce from doing "Kelce things".