Martyball becomes Martzyball & comparisons to Denver

[chris_in_sunnyvale]

Marty has been criticized in the past for being too conservative and thus costing his teams in the playoffs. That is true if the other team is stacking the line and successfully stuffing the run and Marty still refuses to throw. That wasn't the case yesterday. LT2 should have run 30-35 times. The Pats couldn't stop him, especially when he ran left (I'll take Goff on the Pats any time...he's the next Hutchinson). Yet the Chargers continued to throw the ball, almost as if it was done solely for the sake of "balance". Screw balance. Do what works. We didn't see the Pats run the ball for the sake of balance...they did what they needed to do to win the game by putting the ball in the hands of their best player, Brady. The Chargers didn't do the same and it played a huge role in their loss.

Maybe somebody touched upon this in another post (I haven't come close to reading the bulk of them), but of all three Brady picks, NONE of them resulted in points despite *two* of them resulting in drives starting on the Pats' half of the field (and the third was taken right back by Troy/Reche). This is a huge contrast to the loss in Denver last year where the turnovers set up scores that ended up putting the game out of reach. Major kudos to the Pats' D for rendering those early picks harmless.

Regards,
Chris

P.S. When Marty put on the headset, I actually thought it was a *good* move because I expected him to reign in the passing game. I know Chargers fans were lamenting such a scenario so I thought it was ironic that him donning the headphones might have been a welcome act.