JE11: Are We Back...

[Pape]

Julian Edelman Asks Question After Patriots' Wild Win Over Bills

Julian Edelman posed a question on social media after the New England Patriots' dramatic Week 7 win over the Buffalo Bills.

nesn.com

Jules asks a good question... Are we back?

The short answer is no...

The long answer is No, we are a 2-5 team approaching the mid-season mark... This weeks game, and even last weeks game to a limited extent, are a step in the right direction... but its going to take a bigger step forward to erase the lingering taste of 3-38 & 0-34 back to back thrashings by the cowboys and saints respectively...

The line showed promise... Kicking Onwenu out to the RT spot, combined that with the return of Cole Strange to the line-up & the line had the best game of the season so far... But I temper those thoughts with the knowledge that the Bills D-Line was without Ed Oliver, who had been wreaking havoc behind the line all season long... By far he is their best d-lineman... Yeah I get it, you can't make excuses for injuries, but given the spate of injuries we have had this year, we all know missing pieces can alter a game... so not an excuse, but an acknowledgement that its part of the game... However, it takes none of the shine off this game... We went out there and played well for the most part...

One thing in particular that was a noticeable improvement was the play of Sack Jones... I suppose he's earned the right to be called Mac this week... he didn't make any stupid, boneheaded plays, stepped into his throws for the most part, and was decently accurate... The continuing emergence of Pop Douglas will only help that moving forward... The most critical factor in Macs play this week was he didn't turn the ball over... No pick 6's... no fumbles or interceptions on bad sacks when things mattered most... Amazing how much more competitive a team can be when you don't start the game in a 10-0 hole... And he legit lead this team down the field in the last few minutes and scored a TD ( btw, nice catch Gesicki! ) to seal the win... Good on him... More of that in the future please...

The lone turnover was a fumble by Bourne... That was just good play by Buffalos defense... ball security is usually not a problem with Bourne, so I will take that as a one-off play... By limiting the turnovers, what we saw was a more balanced game... b32/ne28 top of possession split... while I would like to see a little more ball control to balance that out, or even tip it onto the positive side, the defense was better rested... they still gave ground in the 4th quarter, but they were not gassed this week... the TOP game vs Dallas & New Orleans gassed the defense in the back half of the games... I attribute that, at least partially, to limiting the turnovers... The Vegas game had basically the same TOP split as this weeks game, but remember the raiders first drive that game chewed up a full 15 minutes... an entire quarter... that's not how you want to start a game off...

Okay, so we had better play from offense... Going to shift gears here and talk about a bad trend that continues... We were flagged for 8 penalties this week... 6 defensive penalties, 1 short bus penalty and 1 offensive penalty (Vederian Lowe, Inelligible receiver)... Thats got to stop... This weeks series of blunders didn't truly hurt us, but the penalties easily could have... Got to be better fellas...

So, with that... Are We Back? No... not yet... Do what we did this week next week & the week after then we can think about starting to talk about being back... One game at a time... Lot of football left in the season, but we still have a tough road ahead of us... this years schedule is brutal, no doubt... But this win was a huge step in helping this team gain a little bit of confidence that they can build from...

Go Pats!

 

[archstanton543]

"Decently accurate"?! He had 5 incompletions on the day!

 

[JayNM]

Get one win over Tua and we are back baby!

 

[Pape]

"Decently accurate"?! He had 5 incompletions on the day!

Arch... my dude... Me saying that about Sack is a compliment. Take your win and don't complain about it.

 

[Pape]

Get one win over Tua and we are back baby!

would be nice

 

[archstanton543]

Arch... my dude... Me saying that about Sack is a compliment. Take your win and don't complain about it.

I want to know in what universe completing over 80% of your passes is "decently accurate".

 

[1960Pats]

Get one win over Tua and we are back baby!

That would be a hell of a start. Finish off with wins vs Buffalo and NJ and they'd be in the hunt for the division. The other 3 teams would be playing each other and there'd be a loss each time they played.

 

[Pape]

I want to know in what universe completing over 80% of your passes is "decently accurate".

In my world.

While you may dislike my post, I dislike Mac even more. I have proverbially bent over backwards giving mac jones credit for this win.

You should know this. You have tagged a multitude of my anti-Sack Jones screeds with dislikes and I disagree reactions.

Take your victory lap. This week he played well.

 

[PATSYLICIOUS]

Way too early for that JE lol Lets see what we look like Sunday.

The offense has been considerably better since halftime of the vegas game though. Encouraging, but they also looked good against philly before laying an egg in the first miami game

 

[Pape]

@archstanton543 ahh, another dislike... I see you are not a fella who is generous of nature, demonstrating poor sportsmanship in a "win"... nothing but a full debasement would be good enough I suppose...

But, screw that. **** Sack Jones til he proved otherwise. One game is not enough to do that.

Sack has played one good game in one and a half seasons. He hasn't earned the right to get any benefit of the doubt.

 

[1960Pats]

Julian Edelman Asks Question After Patriots' Wild Win Over Bills

Julian Edelman posed a question on social media after the New England Patriots' dramatic Week 7 win over the Buffalo Bills.

nesn.com

Jules asks a good question... Are we back?

The short answer is no...

The long answer is No, we are a 2-5 team approaching the mid-season mark... This weeks game, and even last weeks game to a limited extent, are a step in the right direction... but its going to take a bigger step forward to erase the lingering taste of 3-38 & 0-34 back to back thrashings by the cowboys and saints respectively...

The line showed promise... Kicking Onwenu out to the RT spot, combined that with the return of Cole Strange to the line-up & the line had the best game of the season so far... But I temper those thoughts with the knowledge that the Bills D-Line was without Ed Oliver, who had been wreaking havoc behind the line all season long... By far he is their best d-lineman... Yeah I get it, you can't make excuses for injuries, but given the spate of injuries we have had this year, we all know missing pieces can alter a game... so not an excuse, but an acknowledgement that its part of the game... However, it takes none of the shine off this game... We went out there and played well for the most part...

One thing in particular that was a noticeable improvement was the play of Sack Jones... I suppose he's earned the right to be called Mac this week... he didn't make any stupid, boneheaded plays, stepped into his throws for the most part, and was decently accurate... The continuing emergence of Pop Douglas will only help that moving forward... The most critical factor in Macs play this week was he didn't turn the ball over... No pick 6's... no fumbles or interceptions on bad sacks when things mattered most... Amazing how much more competitive a team can be when you don't start the game in a 10-0 hole... And he legit lead this team down the field in the last few minutes and scored a TD ( btw, nice catch Gesicki! ) to seal the win... Good on him... More of that in the future please...

The lone turnover was a fumble by Bourne... That was just good play by Buffalos defense... ball security is usually not a problem with Bourne, so I will take that as a one-off play... By limiting the turnovers, what we saw was a more balanced game... b32/ne28 top of possession split... while I would like to see a little more ball control to balance that out, or even tip it onto the positive side, the defense was better rested... they still gave ground in the 4th quarter, but they were not gassed this week... the TOP game vs Dallas & New Orleans gassed the defense in the back half of the games... I attribute that, at least partially, to limiting the turnovers... The Vegas game had basically the same TOP split as this weeks game, but remember the raiders first drive that game chewed up a full 15 minutes... an entire quarter... that's not how you want to start a game off...

Okay, so we had better play from offense... Going to shift gears here and talk about a bad trend that continues... We were flagged for 8 penalties this week... 6 defensive penalties, 1 short bus penalty and 1 offensive penalty (Vederian Lowe, Inelligible receiver)... Thats got to stop... This weeks series of blunders didn't truly hurt us, but the penalties easily could have... Got to be better fellas...

So, with that... Are We Back? No... not yet... Do what we did this week next week & the week after then we can think about starting to talk about being back... One game at a time... Lot of football left in the season, but we still have a tough road ahead of us... this years schedule is brutal, no doubt... But this win was a huge step in helping this team gain a little bit of confidence that they can build from...

Go Pats!

They're not back but it was a great start.

The thing that's scaring me at the moment is Mac's lack of feel for pressure. He did fumble but we recovered. He reminds me of Drew a bit.

As for penalties, it seems like all the games I see have the same play being called in different ways. The Pats have had some doozies.

 

[Pape]

They're not back but it was a great start.

The thing that's scaring me at the moment is Mac's lack of feel for pressure. He did fumble but we recovered. He reminds me of Drew a bit.

As for penalties, it seems like all the games I see have the same play being called in different ways. The Pats have had some doozies.

It was absolutely a good start.

I tried to point out Macs lack of pocket awareness a few weeks ago and was shouted down

the penalties are tough.. each crew does their own thing, makes it difficult.

 

[The Gr8est]

They're not back but it was a great start.

The thing that's scaring me at the moment is Mac's lack of feel for pressure. He did fumble but we recovered. He reminds me of Drew a bit.

As for penalties, it seems like all the games I see have the same play being called in different ways. The Pats have had some doozies.

Does anyone remember how easy it was to separate Brady from the ball in his first (OK second) year?

He fumbled a lot, but the Pats recovered the vast majority of them.

 

[Pape]

Does anyone remember how easy it was to separate Brady from the ball in his first (OK second) year?

He fumbled a lot, but the Pats recovered the vast majority of them.

very true.

but he won the SB in his first year starting... tends to give a player partial immunity in terms of criticism

 

[Thelonious]

So what did this game mean? Should I change my views based on this one game?

1) Obviously, we want to avoid putting too much weight on one game, so let's get that out of the way, but "We'll it was just one game, so I can't draw any conclusion at all." is just as lazy and erroneous a take as "Based on what I saw, we are Super Bowl bound and Mac is TB12 reborn." So,

2) Mac played a good game, a really good game, arguably. His stats are sound - it's particularly gratifying to see zero turnovers, which was a point of emphasis for him - and in the "critical moments," he really did come through, in contradiction of his critics' view that he is incapable of rising to such occasions. People who claim the performance means nothing and those who damn it with faint praise are full of it, likely more interested in defending their pre-game evaluations than in actually learning from the game and Mac's performance. He had a good game in a fashion of his detractors have deemed him incapable. That's meaningful. Does it mean he is for sure a "franchise quarterback"? Nope, not yet, at all. Does it mean they should now sign him to a long-term deal enshrining him as our can't-fail qb for the next 20 years? Nope. But he had a good game, which certainly suggest he has more potential than the haters have said. Add to what we saw Sunday that he has had the most ill-managed opportunity to show what he can do I can remember any rookie qb ever having, that he has been the victim of gross incompetence on the part of his GM, arguable of his HC, and there is a legitimate basis for optimism.

3) My take on the whole Belichick issue is unaffected by this game. Bill has been, over the past several years, a fireably incompetent GM. He must be deprived of this position's responsibilities immediately, entirely, and in perpetuity. If that means we lose his services also as HC, I don't much care. I am firmly of the opinion that he has shown significant decline in that area of his responsibilities as well, not only re Mac, but with respect to in-game decisions, inconsistency in the quality of game-planning, unaccountably weird and self-defeating personnel decisions, etc.

4) I have been open to the possibility that we might keep Mac another year both to give him a more full and fair evaluation, and to have him around possibly as a transitional qb should we draft a qb who needs time to develop. Yesterdays game only makes me more comfortably with this view.

All in all, yesterday;s game was genuinely, solidly encouraging, particularly with respect to Mac, whatever the I'm-such-a-hardo naysaying poseurs may assert.

 

[PATSYLICIOUS]

They're not back but it was a great start.

The thing that's scaring me at the moment is Mac's lack of feel for pressure. He did fumble but we recovered. He reminds me of Drew a bit.

As for penalties, it seems like all the games I see have the same play being called in different ways. The Pats have had some doozies.

Agreed, he has to do better at getting rid of the football when the plays not there. The guy has his shortcomings that we mainly have to accept, but i feel like this is one of the fixable things that needs to happen. Learn to throw it at a wr feet, or out of bounds in the general area of someone when the pressure is coming and nothing is there . He’s been taking pretty bad sacks since his rookie year. Sometimes coming back to 2nd and 10 or 3rd and whatever without being back another 10 yards is a win.

 

[Sam Bam Cunningham]

Julian Edelman Asks Question After Patriots' Wild Win Over Bills

Julian Edelman posed a question on social media after the New England Patriots' dramatic Week 7 win over the Buffalo Bills.

nesn.com

Jules asks a good question... Are we back?

The short answer is no...

The long answer is No, we are a 2-5 team approaching the mid-season mark... This weeks game, and even last weeks game to a limited extent, are a step in the right direction... but its going to take a bigger step forward to erase the lingering taste of 3-38 & 0-34 back to back thrashings by the cowboys and saints respectively...

The line showed promise... Kicking Onwenu out to the RT spot, combined that with the return of Cole Strange to the line-up & the line had the best game of the season so far... But I temper those thoughts with the knowledge that the Bills D-Line was without Ed Oliver, who had been wreaking havoc behind the line all season long... By far he is their best d-lineman... Yeah I get it, you can't make excuses for injuries, but given the spate of injuries we have had this year, we all know missing pieces can alter a game... so not an excuse, but an acknowledgement that its part of the game... However, it takes none of the shine off this game... We went out there and played well for the most part...

One thing in particular that was a noticeable improvement was the play of Sack Jones... I suppose he's earned the right to be called Mac this week... he didn't make any stupid, boneheaded plays, stepped into his throws for the most part, and was decently accurate... The continuing emergence of Pop Douglas will only help that moving forward... The most critical factor in Macs play this week was he didn't turn the ball over... No pick 6's... no fumbles or interceptions on bad sacks when things mattered most... Amazing how much more competitive a team can be when you don't start the game in a 10-0 hole... And he legit lead this team down the field in the last few minutes and scored a TD ( btw, nice catch Gesicki! ) to seal the win... Good on him... More of that in the future please...

The lone turnover was a fumble by Bourne... That was just good play by Buffalos defense... ball security is usually not a problem with Bourne, so I will take that as a one-off play... By limiting the turnovers, what we saw was a more balanced game... b32/ne28 top of possession split... while I would like to see a little more ball control to balance that out, or even tip it onto the positive side, the defense was better rested... they still gave ground in the 4th quarter, but they were not gassed this week... the TOP game vs Dallas & New Orleans gassed the defense in the back half of the games... I attribute that, at least partially, to limiting the turnovers... The Vegas game had basically the same TOP split as this weeks game, but remember the raiders first drive that game chewed up a full 15 minutes... an entire quarter... that's not how you want to start a game off...

Okay, so we had better play from offense... Going to shift gears here and talk about a bad trend that continues... We were flagged for 8 penalties this week... 6 defensive penalties, 1 short bus penalty and 1 offensive penalty (Vederian Lowe, Inelligible receiver)... Thats got to stop... This weeks series of blunders didn't truly hurt us, but the penalties easily could have... Got to be better fellas...

So, with that... Are We Back? No... not yet... Do what we did this week next week & the week after then we can think about starting to talk about being back... One game at a time... Lot of football left in the season, but we still have a tough road ahead of us... this years schedule is brutal, no doubt... But this win was a huge step in helping this team gain a little bit of confidence that they can build from...

Go Pats!

Not going to win consistently in this league if you can not complete passes of longer than 8-9 yards. So the answer is no

 

[The Trickster]

@archstanton543 ahh, another dislike... I see you are not a fella who is generous of nature, demonstrating poor sportsmanship in a "win"... nothing but a full debasement would be good enough I suppose...

But, screw that. **** Sack Jones til he proved otherwise. One game is not enough to do that.

Sack has played one good game in one and a half seasons. He hasn't earned the right to get any benefit of the doubt.

You can hate on Jones all you want.
Lots of people do.
The point here is that "decently accurate" is not accurate.
He was very accurate yesterday.

 

[Pape]

Not going to win consistently in this league if you can not complete passes of longer than 8-9 yards. So the answer is no

I am perfectly fine with dinking and dunking if it puts points on the board.

If that turns out to be Macs game, so be it... Would rather have a 6 yard reception x 10 vs 1 60 yard bomb over the course of the game.

 

[sb1]

Even Cam is saying they're baaaaaaack!