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I'm not even worried about the offense. What excuse did the defense have?
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I am glad you pointed out the Bolden miss. That was a huge play.Last week the Pats won a big game when they played the definition of a complimentary football game where all 3 units made big contributions throughout the game. Today, especially in the first half, all three units made MAJOR mistakes and they contributed greatly to the result that we got. So lets get started.
1 The defense
a. The first half: It was simply horrible. Buffalo came into this game with the worst 3rd down success percentage in the entire F*cking league, and went 3 for 3 on the first TD drive. The tackling was horrible. Collins missed 2 T's I can remember of hand, where he wasn't square to the ball carrier and got beaten. But he wasn't alone.
This was supposed to be one of the best defenses in the league and only time the Buffalo punter got on the field was the last one of the half, and they had 3 first downs on that one. IMHO, the defense was trying to make the BIG play when they need to take the play the Bills were giving them.
b. You also have to tip you cap sometimes. The Bill were simply more prepared for what the Pats were going to do, than the Pats were for what the Bills presented. I was less concerned about the first TD drives than I was with the 3 others that followed in the first 2 quarters. Usually we adjust faster than that.
The end result was a 13 nothing deficit, and a HUGE time of possession issue, even though we had one more possession than they did.
c.2nd half - I expected to see a better job by everyone on the defense the 2nd half, and I wasn't disappointed. Giving up just 3 points in the final 2 quarters is a solid job. Good, but not great, or rather not as good as it should have been.
d. I don't know if the difference was Bill getting them together and saying "Just calm the f*ck down and do your jobs", or Matty made some subtle adjustments, or they just saw what the Bills did and reacted better
e. Tackling was the key negative. There is nothing a DC can do if he has a person in the right place and they simply miss the tackle. That happened way too often in the first half. It was much better in the 2nd EXCEPT on at least 2 occasions where they had Taylor dead to rights, with both hands on him, and let him slip away (Long and Collins IIRC)
f. The defense caused zero turnovers. When the offense is hobbled, the defense has to pick them up with a TO or 2. The Pats didn't start a single drive in Buffalo territory this game.
g. Now if you just look at the defense. Allowing Buffalo just 13 points when they got over 370 yds of total offense, is actually pretty good, especially when you are only getting about 290 out of your offence and about 70% of that came in the 2nd half
h. In the end I'm a lot less panicky about the defense than I was at the half. Give the OC some credit, they showed some new and inventive looks at the Pats that worked for most of the first half.
2. The offense;
a. The good stuff about Jacoby Brissett- 1) he was better throwing the ball this week than last. You always want to see that in a young player. 2:He had some nice throws that were caught and some that just missed. 3)He doubled his passing yards and threw the ball down field with some authority. 4).Most of the time he had pretty good pocket awareness and stepped up well. 5) JB is a tough SOB. He took some big hits and got up and took the next snap, and never showed signs of happy feet or skittishness.
b. The bad stuff about Jacoby Brissett. 1) Sometimes he looked like a goddamned rookie out there.2) Except for the dump offs to the RB's, he rarely threw the ball in rhythm, so lots of times the ball got there late. 3) While he had good pocket awareness and stepped up well and didn't panic in the pocket, BUTwhen he did step up he often took to0 long to find his 2ndary receivers. All stuff you would figure a rookie QB would do, especially one that, except for 3 walkthroughs for game 3, has never been the one guy taking first team snaps. 4) You don't throw jump balls to Danny Amendola Gronk Bennett and MAYBE Hogan are guys to do that with.
c. RB's Nothing bad you can say for the RB's except for the Boldin's n ar miss. Blunt was as good as ever in limited carries (13) White did his thing as well.
d.OL - Rex presents some difficult problems for any OL, with multiple looks and blitz packages. So over all I thought the OL did pretty well. Remember one of their 2 sacks came when the sacker wasn't supposed to be blocked and had great recognition on the play. A more experienced QB would have thrown the ball away.
e. TE's Gronk was again pretty invisible, though the way he made a tough catch look so easy makes me glad Brady will be back tomorrow. Bennett had over 100 again today. When he a Gronk get fully integrated into the offense, it's going to be a nightmare for DC's to scheme for.
g. WR's, NO ONE is going to be happier to see Tom Brady than Julian Edelman. Hogan got blanked, which will probably thrill Bill fans. So did Mitchell, according to the stats, though I thought he had one.
f. general: Blount had 3 catches in 3 targets today, but only 4 yards. He seems much surer this year in catching the ball. I would hope that, now that Brady is back, Josh would look to use LBG more in the passing game once in a while. The only passes we seem to do now ,when he is in there are play action passes. We need to break that tendency.
3. Special Teams:
a) Like I said, this was a TOTAL team loss, and blunders on special teams were huge;
b) Cyrus Jones is going to get killed the week for his blunders on the first 2 KO's. BTW- it goes the intelligence of Pats fans they the cheered the next 2 times when he kneeled down
c. Now lets be real here, kicking a 49 yd FG is NOT a gimme by any means. HOWEVER if you are going to win a game like today, you have to get more out of your best players, and that means Gotkowski needs to make even the HARD kicks.
d. Ryan Allen was the best Pats player on the field today. He alone duplicated that great team victory over Houston.
4. The officiating:
a. WAY too man flags in general today. It's not supposed to be about the officials. So this group was bad regardless of whose team you followed.
b. NFL.com had the Bills getting 6 for 60 yds while the Pats got 9 for 74. But it seemed like a lot more flags than just 15. Just looking at the differential, it didn't seem like it was that even while I watched the game. Also the Pats were victims of a couple of non-calls at critical times that would have changed things. The end result is that in a game like this one when you know you aren't going to be close to 100% on offense, you CAN'T give up 74 yards on penalties, most of which were on the offense.
In the first half the Bills overcame big penalty situations twice, where the Pats never did.
5. General points:
a. On the plus side, I won't have to hear any 16-0 crap any more this year. On the negative, I will have to hear all the speculative **** the media will spew out this week. But really I won't, because the only place I plan to go this week for any news is right here.
b. To me the biggest disappointment about JG not playing was not getting 4 more quarters of value added on to what was already there. I feel bad for the kid, he deserved better. I'm sure he was devastated when he was ruled out. Maybe things will go well enough that he can get the start in week 17. If he was healthy enough to play we probably would have won this game.
c. I'll say it right now, I do not think we are going to see a 100% Tom Brady for at least a month. That is not saying that what we do get for this month won't be better than what we had at the position so far, but Brady isn't a guy who can just jump in and play. There is a reason he loves practice so much. He NEEDS it and he hasn't had it the past month and didn't get the all the snaps he needed in the preseason for the obvious reasons. So while I'm sure he's be "ok" the next few week, I believe we won't get VINTAGE Tom Brady until November. Hope I'm wrong here.
d.Happy that the Jets and Ravens lost. I don't care about what Denver does because I believe we will beat them in Denver this year.\
e. Did you guys get the feeling that Rex knew JG wasn't playing long before our mediots did. I did.
f. Now all that's left to do is to figure out who is going to be gone tomorrow and will they make it back to the PS.
g. I'm sure it was cigars and brandy all around at 354 Park avenue this afternoon, but their joy is going to be as short lived as Rex's Now I'm not a guy who believes Tom is going to come back like an avenging angel, Tom coming back just being Tom is good enough for me. I don't see this team losing more than 2 more games this season, and that's being conservative. God forgive me, but I hate those SOB's
h. The Pats have now lost the penalty numbers in 3 out of their first 4 games. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues
I look forward to your replies. It's nice to get this done before midnight for a change.
That was 2 years ago.
I meant 2 years ago the year they won it all. I try to forget last year.
