Matt Chatham:Defense’s demise more than Aqib Talib

[Brady2Moss]

Wow.

You follow the Patriots and never heard of Brandon Spikes?

Can't deliver a big hit if your never near anyone in coverage

 

[Brady_to_Moss]

Who on the Pats is a fierce hitter? Chung?

really? Spikes? Guy hits like a 10 ton bus

 

[Sciz]

Can't deliver a big hit if your never near anyone in coverage

This is terrible reasoning. When there's a big hit on a receiver, it's not the guy in coverage that's hitting him. The WR is running away from that guy. It's the guy coming from the other direction that wasn't actually covering that receiver who gets to make that hit. That was the case on all three of the big hits on receivers in the game this past weekend.

1. Lewis on Hernandez: Hernandez was lined up outside with Brown in coverage. Hernandez cut inside away from Brown, caught the ball, and got nailed by Lewis who had Woodhead in coverage.

2. Pollard on Welker: Graham was on Welker, who ran down the field and into what I believe was Pollard's zone coverage.

3. Mayo on Pitta: Pitta ran away from Hightower (who had him in coverage) right in front of Mayo, who was waiting to pick up Rice when he came out of the backfield.

And even then, big hits on RBs are legal 100% of the time, where the majority of these big hits on receivers are illegal because defenders seem to not care about the new rules.

 

[cmasspatsfan]

That's the part that I don't get about Chatham's analysis.

Sure, I get that the Pats had defensive lapses on Sunday. Most of those seem to have occurred after Talib went out and they had to move Arrington outside, and the Ravens started attacking. I don't see how Talib's absence isn't indirected related to those lapses.

If adding Talib had a "domino effect" on the defense, losing him - or losing another key player such as Jones - had a domino effect in the opposite direction. We saw that happen recently with San Francisco losing Justin Smith and then experiencing a dramatic decrease in defensive performance, and in Seattle losing Chris Clemons with a similar effect.

Sure there were coaching errors and basic defensive lapses. But saying they were completey unrelated to the fact that the Pats were without some of their key players? I don't understand that.

Bedard says that the Pats' "lack of depth" failed them. But in the salary cap era, what team can afford depth all the way through the back end of the roster? Most teams are scrounging the list of castoffs for depth at this time of year.

Yeah, it was injuries to players in important positions, in some cases one of a kind players (Gronk) where no team would have a back up equal to close.

 

[DocHoliday]

Lack of depth is more important to the Pats because the schemes used depend on rare skillsets owned by once in a generation players.

Gronk out = disaster.

I hate to even think of what would happen if Wilfork went out.

 

[Fencer]

Sure, I get that the Pats had defensive lapses on Sunday. Most of those seem to have occurred after Talib went out

Perhaps not coincidentally, so did most of the game.

 

[TheBostonStraggler]

I don't think Chatham was dissing Talib. I think he was, accurately imho, saying the media's reporting on his effect had been overblown. And that is the media for you....as a collective it is not a place one can expect accuracy in reporting.

His "Big Bad Ravens" sarcasm is spot on too. The Ravens are so big and bad that their normal offense MO of running the ball with that physical approach (a hallmark of physical teams) was losing the game for them. That gameplan had them down 7-13 at half time. So what did this mean, overpowering team do? All but abandon the run/that approach and hand the ball to a sometimes good, sometimes not, historically inconsistent QB. And Flacco made it happen (and probably just secured a very nice contract). They put it on Flacco to put the ball in the air and win the game for them....and that is what he did. IMHO a big part of the epic defensive fail is on BB and the other coaches for not making the needed adjustments. 3 TD drives in a row from a Raven team that was not particularly potent offensively, in the second half of the championship game is appalling! Not to take away from Flacco as he gets due credit but the Patriots repeated ineptness in coverage was making it to easy in too many spots on the field. We can talk about we lacked good enough coverage players but this group had played and won enough games that 3 TD drives in a row should not happen in a championship game against a passing offense that is just not that potent.

On the offensive side, again, such big mean physically imposing Ravens....yet the Patriots took it into or near the red zone repeatedly. A physically dominated team does not move the ball like that. You want to see physically dominated by a big bad opponent? go watch the first half of the niner-Patriot game. They slammed the door on the running backs and were like a jail break going after Brady. The Patriots never got a whiff of the endzone. The AFCCG was not that. While the Ravens were winning the individual battles too often, the Patriots were fighting through it and moving the ball. Offensively This was a collective failure. We needed our best blocking effort and we got an ok performance. We needed a best performance from Brady and it was ok. We needed best performance out of the receivers and running backs and it was ok. We needed the coaches to make adjustments and calls that would exploit the Ravens soft areas....and that was not happening.
Add it up: the Patriots offense not showing up with their A game + Ravens giving their A game defensively + the Raven offense putting the heat on the Patriots offense to score + coaching not adjusting/putting the team in its best place to succeed = the AFCCG results.

This poor soft Patriot guys going up against the big bad mean Ravens? LOL, puhlease.....