I don't think the Falcons miss him.
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It’s been pointed out that not all of those may have been his fault though. Some of those plays looked like general over pursuit while others looked like he was trying to funnel Bortles back in to a backer who was supposed to be there but wasn’t. That said, it’s extremely difficult to know for sure without knowing the play call. I suppose we’ll find out if it keeps happening and he ends up in the proverbial dog house.
I agree that the best way to take away a hard pass rush on the road is to go no huddle. I disagree on the onside kick. The correct play was the one that they attempted, which was to kick it to the GL and get the Jags pinned inside the 20. Gotskowski just kicked it about 3 yards too deep.
I thought the defense was very "aggressive" vs the Jags, and as it turned out, too aggressive at times. Without Flowers they rarely got any 4 man pressure like they did against the Texans.
Here's what I think about how the Pat deal with WR's. I believe that do not believe that WR's, even elite ones, that are worth whatever top dollar is at the time. YES they would love to have AB or Julio Jones out there, but NOT at the cost they demand. I believe Bill thinks that the WR position has the most availability of any position. I believe Bill would rather pay 3 competent WR's $5MM each, than 1 elite WR $15MM, and use the money saved elsewhere (on the OL and DL)
Sorry about the delay in getting this out. I took my weekly sojourn to Foxwoods on Saturday and got myself down so badly that it took me until 9:30am on Sunday to even glimpse getting even. So by the time the game was over I took a nap and the next thing I knew it was almost noon on Monday.
It wasn't pretty. In fact it was down right UGLY for a great part of this game. There is lots of blame to throw around and I will get to that in the breakdown, but I want to point out that this loss is just ONE game early in the season to a VERY good team, on the road. They laid an enormous egg. However they did show a lot of fight, especially in the second half when they came very close to clawing their way back into a game they had no business hanging around it.
Over the course of a long season their WILL be bad games. Occasionally you manage to win one or two of them. However when you are on the road and against a good team, the margin of victory becomes incredibly narrow. While they did make a few plays, they also made too many mistakes that cost them any chance to get back into this game.
ADVERSITY is a great character builder and a necessary one as a team creates its identity. So on a positive note, I felt the team passed its first test in the way it kept on fighting through the adversity. They played hard throughout the 2nd half. So while the knee-jerk hot takes of this game will feature the "this is the beginning of the end" dynamic; I would opine instead that this is just one game of 16 regular season battles, and this team shouldn't be judged on what happened on Sunday, but rather on how they RESPOND to that ass kicking, and the next couple of weeks will go a long way to telling that story.
So let the Felgers', Tomases' and Borges' have their fun this week. Over the last 20 years they haven't had many moments to raise their strident voices.... and I doubt they will have many more opportunities this season. But regardless, it is time to take a deep breath and get this breakdown over with. GOD we are spoiled, lets deal with the crap that every other team has to go through as quickly as we can and be done with and get on to the Lions .
1. QB - Another game where Brady throws for almost a 70% completion rate (68.5%), and a 111 QB rating and the narrative of the game will be, "what's wrong with Brady". Well there is NOTHING wrong with Brady. Given the pressure he was under and other factors that we will discuss later, Brady was FINE. He certainly wasn't great. He missed some guys, and frankly for a rare moment, he wasn't the best QB on the field this Sunday. The REAL story at QB, in fact, wasn't Brady at all, it was Blake Bortles. He was magnificent, especially in that first half, where he was almost perfect. Every decision was correct, and every throw was right on the money. If this is what the Jags are going to get from this kid, then the Jags are going to be a tough out for EVERY one they play.
2. OL - Well for all the praise they got last week, it was not good this week. For all the crap they are likely to get for their pass blocking, the more hidden issue was the run blocking, imo. For the 2nd week in a row there was VERY little running room for whomever the Pats gave the ball to. Granted a lot of that has to do with how well the Jags front 7 played, but it was a rare play where any RB got 2 yds down field before they got hit. NOT GOOD. I'll wait until the film comes out, but in particular, it seemed to me that I saw David Andrews wind up BEHIND the LOS of more runs than I'd like. Is HE a problem in the run game?
I'll wait to see the stats geeks, give the hits, and pressures stats out, but they aren't going to be good. Let us hope that when we look back on this game, we will find that it was the low point and it all started to get better from here, Isn't that what the Pats are all about.....getting better?
3. RB's - When your best RB averaged 3.7ypc, it wasn't a good day for the RB's. But that being said, I Liked what I saw from Sony Michel. He ran hard and decisively in his first real action of the season. That was about all you could ask from a guy who missed the majority of the pre-season. But as we mentioned above, there wasn't much open space for them to run to yesterday.
BTW- We now have 2 guys (Burkhead and Michell) who we know will run hard and get some yards after the catch, there should be no need to ever give the ball to James White again on a running play, except for the occasional draw play. I know he only carried it 4 times, but that was about 3 times too many.
4. Receivers - Dorsett continued to prove to be steady and reliable. I would like him to be used more on deeper routes. I remember him beating coverage deep on at least one route that Brady overthrew a tad on. But again, Brady was rarely given the time to comfortably throw the deep ball on Sunday. Hogan made a few plays as well after being a virtual no show for the opener.
But the guy I want to talk about is Patterson. I really want to see this kid featured more. I love it when he gets his hands on the ball. He runs hard and with the quickness and abandon you wouldn't expect from a tall WR type. Granted his catch and fall down was an ugly play, it happens. He's another guy I would like to see utilized down field more, especially in the middle.
And as for Gronk, he got covered well by various combinations of Jags, and THIS time those doubles were executed very well. It was as simple as that. My only complaint was that he didn't get thrown to enough. He was getting grabbed (as usual) a lot, and I wonder if we could have gotten some flags
Telvin Smith was a binky of mine when he came out. To my mind he is the prototype of the SS/LB type that is necessary for defenses to have in this uber-passing game. Shazeir comes to mind as another guy like that and the one armed kid Seattle picked was my binky this year for that role. So yes it was very frustrating to watch Pats LB's being left in the dust by various combinations of RB's and WR's, but I really don't blame the players. They are what they are. What we do need is to find and develop a player to fill that role. Clearly it is difficult to find that kind of guy and I know that they are looking for him. The guy with 3 names the Eagles stole from us was another attempt to fill it. I really like what I saw from him that preseason. Too bad that stash job didn't work.
5. Defensive overview - Well that SUCKED. It certainly didn't help that Bortles had a career game, but I was concerned that it never got better as the game went along. One of the hallmarks of this long run was that over the course of the game, the defense would get better from quarter to quarter. I didn't get the sense that this was the case for this one. Did you?
A lot was made from the media and by fans about the different look the Pats D showed from Patricia to Flores. It looked more "aggressive", and of course everyone was happy with the "more aggressive" look they saw in the first game. Well let this be a lesson on WHY we haven't been all that aggressive over the years. We showed more 5 and 6 man rushes than I've seen in a long time, and for the most part, the defense PAID dearly for that aggression. I'm not sure whether it was a bad design, or the early loss of Flowers, or simply the matter of great decision making and execution by Bortles and the Jags; but way too often those 5 and 6 man rushes were turned into first downs.
6. Front Seven - You know my perception of the pass rush was that the DL was getting some decent initial push off the LOS, but it never QUITE got into Bortles' face often enough to disrupt his rhythm. No one seemed to stand out as a success or a problem in the rush, though it was clear that the Jags were attacking Davis on the run to great success. It is so hard to isolate what went wrong form the couch in front of the TV, and so easy to wait a few days when you can have the film guys break it down for us. So I won't try to guess what went wrong, but it WILL be important to get to this week's film review to get some of those answers so we can see how (hopefully) we fix it going forward.
b. Still waiting to see when Hightower will be removed from the milk carton.
7. Secondary - I didn't think the secondary played all that badly DESPITE all the yardage that got put on it. In this case, I thought it was more the Jags execution than bad play by the Pats. There were a LOT of completed passes that were the result of great throws and good designs than bad coverage. A lot of completed passes into tough coverage. It seemed that only later in the game when the Pats were taking even more chances did there seem to be guys running wide open.
b. This secondary has been so dependable over the last few years, that it will interesting to see how they try and replace Patrick Chung, one of the most underrated players in the league.
8. General observations. 77% was the stat that stood out to me as the one that typified this game. That 77% was the 3rd down conversion rate (10/14) That is TEN times the Pats had a chance to get their offense on the field and FAILED to do so. So if there is anything we want to figure out WHY, it is this. Christ, 5o% is a bad number and 33% (which is what the Jags got) is just barely OK. This is what tells the story of this game.
b. On a positive note, the Pats only committed 2 penalties, so you can say the overall team discipline improve substantially.
c. Think about this, in a game where the Pats were completely outplayed and outclassed after the first half, by the beginning of the 4th quarter they were a strip sack away from at worst, making that a one score game and a nail biting 4th quarter.
d. There were 3 disturbing plays that stood out for me in this game. One was the long TD run that finally put the game out of reach. It killed me to see so many missed tackles. Second was the offside on the punt that wasn't taken advantage of that ended ANY chance the Pats had to get back in the game. That was a mental lapse that Romo pointed out so well. Finally, it pissed me off that we were even punting in that situation at all. WHY weren't we going for it on 4th and an inch. What was the point of punting at all. Who cared if we didn't get it at that point. What were your "disturbing plays".
Summary:
Bad game against a good opponent. The bottom line all the breast beating we are about to hear this week will be soon forgotten, just like the noise after the KC game last season. So while all the issues we saw are real and need to be dealt with by this staff, we have to remember that this is the NFL and its how you finish and NOT how you start a season.
I think you're correct, and I also think it shows that even the GOAT has some flaws. It's wrong for him to choose to lock onto his first preference and throw into coverage instead of checking on down the progression to throw to an open receiver, just because he doesn't "trust" him. Damnit if his coach (also the GOAT) trusts the receiver enough to put him on the roster and on the field it's stupid and selfish to override that out of fear it might hurt stats and QBR.
