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I started this with with about 5 minutes left in the game, so I might have to make some changes, as this goes along. But I have to get up real early tomorrow so I can't stay up to 3am and write this, so this might be a quick one
1. I was trying to thnk WHAT is missing from this defense compared to last season. It hit me over and over again. It doesn't force turn overs. How many times this season have we lost the turnover battle. Wekk this was another one 0-2
I don't know the exact numbers but the fact is that for well over a decade the Pats have created more turn overs and have a better plus/minus than any other team in league. HOWEVER for some reason, THIS defensive team can't get the ball out or catch it when they have those opportunities. I can safely say that if they just matched the Seattle's TO's they win the game. If they win the TO battle they win the game easily.
The fact is Seattle won the game because they won the turnover battle.
2. OK the games over with one of the most disappointing GL offensive performances I have seen in quite a while. Too cute by a lot. First there was the first Brady sneak, which I somewhat get because he was killing time more than gaining yds and he got a yard. Second down was just a great play by Chancellor to get Blunts legs and keeps him inches from the GL. Its with the 2nd Brady sneak where I think it goes off the rails. Blunt has been the best GL backs in the league. USE HIM, or at least run a PAP and throw it to one of your TE mismatches Devlin out of backfield would have been wide open.
But the final play was the worst of all. Yes there was a lot of contact, and the officials COULD have thrown a flag. But they just as easily not have. Gronk was a part of that contact, and the more I saw the replay, the more I thought they made the right call. Take a test. If that had been Chung on Graham with the same results, would you be happy with a flag. I don't think so.
So whine about the last minute call if you want to. Blame the refs. Blame Goodell, etc. But the fact is that one play was NOT the reason the Pats lost this game.
3. What does BB say so often when we win, "Well we made just a few more big plays than they did". Well tonight Seattle made more of those big plays than we did. It really was as simple as that.
4. The defense is going to get villified by the media this week. Some of it will be deserved. But when your offense turns it over twice and you can't get any, then you will more time than not lose the game when you playing a quality opponent.
5. I love the way Seattle plays defense. The redefine the term "forced fumble". Every fumble the Pats made and they had a few they recovered back, was a DIRECT function of a Seattle player going for the ball. They managed to pry away 4 balls if you count the one we got back because Gronks elbow was down. We USED to do this too. The defense deserves a lot of blame that I'll talk about, but there is plenty of blame to go around.
6. That being said, let me be the first to list my set of *****es. This would be what I'd be saying to the defense if I were the DC.
a. From the start of the game I noticed how often the Pats were not set to play defense when the ball was snapped I think it was Alan Branch who once had his head turned to the DB's when the ball was snapped. Needless to say he wasn't a factor in that pass rush. But it was a lot more than that. There were way too many timed where LB's and DB's were running around trying to get to the right spot when the ball was snapped.
Way too often it seemed like the DB's were playing 2 different defenses. This is best exemplified by the cross field TD pass to Baldwin, when Ryan, who was clearly in zone let Baldwin cross his face, and Chung who watched him run right by him to an empty deep zone for an easy TD.
Way too often, our CB's were some kind of deep zone coverage that allowed Seattle to complete wide open 20 yd comeback routes. These weren't long completions that were great throws and highly contested. These were easy pitch and catches with plenty of time and room. It's like I said in the game thread. It seemed like they hadn't come back from vacation for most of that game.
b. What a HUGE number of chunk plays Seattle got. I thought that THIS is what the defense was supposed to stop. I thought that we could accept 5-15 yd pass plays, but NOT the 20-30 yd plays we saw all night. This is what we were supposed to get by giving up some of our pass rush.
c. In the end, the biggest culprit was Matt Patricia. The defense didn't look ready, both mentally and schematicly. It doesn't happen too often, but I have to say, in THIS game, Seattle had the better game plan and executed it better.
d. Trey Flowers is deserving of those extra snaps he got. And whatever Sheard is doing to lose them, is costing him a TON of money....unless he picks it up. BTW- this has to be about the 5th time Chris Long had a sack and lost it.
e. I've been a big Logan Ryan supporter this season, and up to this game thought he's done a good job in coverage, being very competitive even on completions, forcing QB's and receivers to make quality catches and passes. NOT tonight. He was a day late and a dollar short too often.
f. Shane McCellan showed me nothing to deserve more playing time. Like so much of the defense, he looked completely out of synch.
g. And it would be fair to ask, 'where was the leader of our defense tonight'. Danta Hightower made ZERO impact plays tonight.
h. Should I take some solace in the fact that it took Seattle almost twice as long to score a TD at the end of the first half as they did in the superbowl.
7 The offensive comments
a. Did anyone hear Cliff Avrill's name tonight? I know I didn't. So can we PLEASE stop slamming Marcus Cannon, because he completely shut down one of the best pass rushers in the league.....and he's not the first one he's done that to, either. Cannon is playing as well as any RT in the league right now.....and at about half the cap space.
Overall the pass protection was excellent, especially given the DL we were playing against
b. IMHO this wasn't Josh McDaniel's finest moments either. The GL fiasco at the end of the game was just not good. I also believe that too many of the running plays were just too slow in forming. Seattle has great LB's and DB's, so slow developing plays would seem to play right into their strength.
And we are more than half way through the season and I'm STILL waiting for Josh to break the tendency to either run or run PAP when Blount is on the field.
AND I'm still aghast that we gave the ball to James White on a running play. He is NOT a good runner.
c. We need to run more plays where the RB can make one cut and hit the hole, or in the case of our OL, the soft spot.
d. Tom looked human. There were some mistakes of course, but accept for the end of the game issues, he played good enough to win most games against most teams. The play I'll be interested in hearing him talk about is the underthrown pass to Mitchell. Mitchell had at least 2 steps on his defender. At least he got he first pick on a play he deserved to get picked on. It wasn't one of those balls deflecting off the receiver's hands picks.
When you come right down to it. The offense did enough. they scored 3 TD's and a FG, and had it first and goal from the 2 yard line to give them a tying TD and 31 points against the best scoring D in the league. That is not a bad job, even at home
8. ST's
a. Once again we see the yin and yang of Cyrus Jones. He is going to scare the crap out of other team's ST's coaches coming out of the endzone and on punt returns. But in the same vein, our coaches will have their hearts in their throats too, but for different reasons. I'm looking forward to having Cyrus playing DB.
9. So I guess when we add it all up. Seattle came here and played a great game, and we gave them our C+ game and the Pats were first a goal and 2 yds from going to overtime.
10. General thoughts
a. I thought this game was well officiated. I wasn't thrilled about the first PI call on Coleman he had great position and made a nice play on the ball.....BUT he did hit the guy in the head. It may have been incidental, but if the official saw it, I understand why he made the call, even if I didn't like it. But on the other hand, the face mask on Edelman really wasn't, even though from where the official was standing, behind the play, it looked like a sure call. I know I thought it was a text book facemask when it happened.
In the end we had 8 calls for 61 yds, and the Seahawks had 7 for 60, so it was a evenly call game. I like Steratore's crew.
b. Pete going for 2 after the last TD was stunningly stupid. 2 point conversions are 50-50 at best, and you have a great defense.
c. BTW- from what I'm learning today it wasn't the best days for those coaches going for 2 points. If I heard correctly the Steelers failed 3 or 4 times going for 2, and lost a game by 5.
d. Denver has to have the best luck in close games of any team in the NFL over the last 2 years. To their credit, they have won so many close games that were gifts from other teams or had great bounces. It's one thing to block an extra point that could win the game for the other team, (that kid made a great play). It's another to have the ball bounce up and into the hands of player right in stride, and then take 3 strides along the sideline so close to being out of bounds, that if they had called him out, they couldn't have changed the call either. Also the fact he had white shoes on made it even tougher to overturn that call.
They have been having great luck....and as you know, luck changes....eventually.
e. I hate it, but it WILL be a fair question for mediots to ask, if any distractions from the political campaign caused the lack luster performance of the team. I can already hear Felger stating as FACT that that WAS the reason for the Pats losing that game. Unfortunately I know the thought popped into my head as I watched a rather confused looking defense play their worst game of the year. Another uncomfortable question we are sure to hear, is if the Collins trade affected the locker room negatively.
OK I have a 1am curfew, so I'm cutting it off here. This is going to be a tough week for me. I can't listen to regular media because I'm depressed over the election, and now I won't be able to listen to sports media, because I can almost predict what they are going to say and that is even MORE depressing. So I guess, this means I'll have one of more productive weeks in a while. Maybe I'll read a book or 2.
At any rate., I'll have to get my sports fix here, unless the game-day thread panickers and whiners take control of the board. Look forward to your comments and insights.....sorry for the "shortened" version. Good night
1. I was trying to thnk WHAT is missing from this defense compared to last season. It hit me over and over again. It doesn't force turn overs. How many times this season have we lost the turnover battle. Wekk this was another one 0-2
I don't know the exact numbers but the fact is that for well over a decade the Pats have created more turn overs and have a better plus/minus than any other team in league. HOWEVER for some reason, THIS defensive team can't get the ball out or catch it when they have those opportunities. I can safely say that if they just matched the Seattle's TO's they win the game. If they win the TO battle they win the game easily.
The fact is Seattle won the game because they won the turnover battle.
2. OK the games over with one of the most disappointing GL offensive performances I have seen in quite a while. Too cute by a lot. First there was the first Brady sneak, which I somewhat get because he was killing time more than gaining yds and he got a yard. Second down was just a great play by Chancellor to get Blunts legs and keeps him inches from the GL. Its with the 2nd Brady sneak where I think it goes off the rails. Blunt has been the best GL backs in the league. USE HIM, or at least run a PAP and throw it to one of your TE mismatches Devlin out of backfield would have been wide open.
But the final play was the worst of all. Yes there was a lot of contact, and the officials COULD have thrown a flag. But they just as easily not have. Gronk was a part of that contact, and the more I saw the replay, the more I thought they made the right call. Take a test. If that had been Chung on Graham with the same results, would you be happy with a flag. I don't think so.
So whine about the last minute call if you want to. Blame the refs. Blame Goodell, etc. But the fact is that one play was NOT the reason the Pats lost this game.
3. What does BB say so often when we win, "Well we made just a few more big plays than they did". Well tonight Seattle made more of those big plays than we did. It really was as simple as that.
4. The defense is going to get villified by the media this week. Some of it will be deserved. But when your offense turns it over twice and you can't get any, then you will more time than not lose the game when you playing a quality opponent.
5. I love the way Seattle plays defense. The redefine the term "forced fumble". Every fumble the Pats made and they had a few they recovered back, was a DIRECT function of a Seattle player going for the ball. They managed to pry away 4 balls if you count the one we got back because Gronks elbow was down. We USED to do this too. The defense deserves a lot of blame that I'll talk about, but there is plenty of blame to go around.
6. That being said, let me be the first to list my set of *****es. This would be what I'd be saying to the defense if I were the DC.
a. From the start of the game I noticed how often the Pats were not set to play defense when the ball was snapped I think it was Alan Branch who once had his head turned to the DB's when the ball was snapped. Needless to say he wasn't a factor in that pass rush. But it was a lot more than that. There were way too many timed where LB's and DB's were running around trying to get to the right spot when the ball was snapped.
Way too often it seemed like the DB's were playing 2 different defenses. This is best exemplified by the cross field TD pass to Baldwin, when Ryan, who was clearly in zone let Baldwin cross his face, and Chung who watched him run right by him to an empty deep zone for an easy TD.
Way too often, our CB's were some kind of deep zone coverage that allowed Seattle to complete wide open 20 yd comeback routes. These weren't long completions that were great throws and highly contested. These were easy pitch and catches with plenty of time and room. It's like I said in the game thread. It seemed like they hadn't come back from vacation for most of that game.
b. What a HUGE number of chunk plays Seattle got. I thought that THIS is what the defense was supposed to stop. I thought that we could accept 5-15 yd pass plays, but NOT the 20-30 yd plays we saw all night. This is what we were supposed to get by giving up some of our pass rush.
c. In the end, the biggest culprit was Matt Patricia. The defense didn't look ready, both mentally and schematicly. It doesn't happen too often, but I have to say, in THIS game, Seattle had the better game plan and executed it better.
d. Trey Flowers is deserving of those extra snaps he got. And whatever Sheard is doing to lose them, is costing him a TON of money....unless he picks it up. BTW- this has to be about the 5th time Chris Long had a sack and lost it.
e. I've been a big Logan Ryan supporter this season, and up to this game thought he's done a good job in coverage, being very competitive even on completions, forcing QB's and receivers to make quality catches and passes. NOT tonight. He was a day late and a dollar short too often.
f. Shane McCellan showed me nothing to deserve more playing time. Like so much of the defense, he looked completely out of synch.
g. And it would be fair to ask, 'where was the leader of our defense tonight'. Danta Hightower made ZERO impact plays tonight.
h. Should I take some solace in the fact that it took Seattle almost twice as long to score a TD at the end of the first half as they did in the superbowl.
7 The offensive comments
a. Did anyone hear Cliff Avrill's name tonight? I know I didn't. So can we PLEASE stop slamming Marcus Cannon, because he completely shut down one of the best pass rushers in the league.....and he's not the first one he's done that to, either. Cannon is playing as well as any RT in the league right now.....and at about half the cap space.
Overall the pass protection was excellent, especially given the DL we were playing against
b. IMHO this wasn't Josh McDaniel's finest moments either. The GL fiasco at the end of the game was just not good. I also believe that too many of the running plays were just too slow in forming. Seattle has great LB's and DB's, so slow developing plays would seem to play right into their strength.
And we are more than half way through the season and I'm STILL waiting for Josh to break the tendency to either run or run PAP when Blount is on the field.
AND I'm still aghast that we gave the ball to James White on a running play. He is NOT a good runner.
c. We need to run more plays where the RB can make one cut and hit the hole, or in the case of our OL, the soft spot.
d. Tom looked human. There were some mistakes of course, but accept for the end of the game issues, he played good enough to win most games against most teams. The play I'll be interested in hearing him talk about is the underthrown pass to Mitchell. Mitchell had at least 2 steps on his defender. At least he got he first pick on a play he deserved to get picked on. It wasn't one of those balls deflecting off the receiver's hands picks.
When you come right down to it. The offense did enough. they scored 3 TD's and a FG, and had it first and goal from the 2 yard line to give them a tying TD and 31 points against the best scoring D in the league. That is not a bad job, even at home
8. ST's
a. Once again we see the yin and yang of Cyrus Jones. He is going to scare the crap out of other team's ST's coaches coming out of the endzone and on punt returns. But in the same vein, our coaches will have their hearts in their throats too, but for different reasons. I'm looking forward to having Cyrus playing DB.
9. So I guess when we add it all up. Seattle came here and played a great game, and we gave them our C+ game and the Pats were first a goal and 2 yds from going to overtime.
10. General thoughts
a. I thought this game was well officiated. I wasn't thrilled about the first PI call on Coleman he had great position and made a nice play on the ball.....BUT he did hit the guy in the head. It may have been incidental, but if the official saw it, I understand why he made the call, even if I didn't like it. But on the other hand, the face mask on Edelman really wasn't, even though from where the official was standing, behind the play, it looked like a sure call. I know I thought it was a text book facemask when it happened.
In the end we had 8 calls for 61 yds, and the Seahawks had 7 for 60, so it was a evenly call game. I like Steratore's crew.
b. Pete going for 2 after the last TD was stunningly stupid. 2 point conversions are 50-50 at best, and you have a great defense.
c. BTW- from what I'm learning today it wasn't the best days for those coaches going for 2 points. If I heard correctly the Steelers failed 3 or 4 times going for 2, and lost a game by 5.
d. Denver has to have the best luck in close games of any team in the NFL over the last 2 years. To their credit, they have won so many close games that were gifts from other teams or had great bounces. It's one thing to block an extra point that could win the game for the other team, (that kid made a great play). It's another to have the ball bounce up and into the hands of player right in stride, and then take 3 strides along the sideline so close to being out of bounds, that if they had called him out, they couldn't have changed the call either. Also the fact he had white shoes on made it even tougher to overturn that call.
They have been having great luck....and as you know, luck changes....eventually.
e. I hate it, but it WILL be a fair question for mediots to ask, if any distractions from the political campaign caused the lack luster performance of the team. I can already hear Felger stating as FACT that that WAS the reason for the Pats losing that game. Unfortunately I know the thought popped into my head as I watched a rather confused looking defense play their worst game of the year. Another uncomfortable question we are sure to hear, is if the Collins trade affected the locker room negatively.
OK I have a 1am curfew, so I'm cutting it off here. This is going to be a tough week for me. I can't listen to regular media because I'm depressed over the election, and now I won't be able to listen to sports media, because I can almost predict what they are going to say and that is even MORE depressing
. So I guess, this means I'll have one of more productive weeks in a while. Maybe I'll read a book or 2. At any rate., I'll have to get my sports fix here, unless the game-day thread panickers and whiners take control of the board.
Look forward to your comments and insights.....sorry for the "shortened" version. Good night
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