Re: NESN's Jeff Howe "25 Things That Need To Happen For The Pats To Win The Super Bo
Though I think the premise is silly, he makes some good points, then kind of fades away with a bunch of individual nonsense like Moss needs 95 catches, not 83 and everything will work perfectly.
Premise is silly because this is a young team. They should worry about what they need to see in the first game, then the first three. They need a very solid one game at a time foundation. If they are correcting mistakes and playing together by the half way point, there should be plenty of energy and hopefully playing their best at the right time. If not, hope the lightbulb goes on, or change the approach or personnel for next year.
Moss's success will be judged by how all the receivers get open and make plays. If the last ten catches are forced into coverage and the other receivers never get into synch, I'd rather he catch 85 than 95. what counts is big plays, consistent passing, with guys involved, open and making defenses scramble.
Yeah, we need to run, we need to use the TEs and we need to use the whole field and multiple receivers. Easier said than done.
What we need are complete offensive game plans that force the defense to think, leave holes and be confounded. If our play calling forces defenses to adjust in a way that gives us big plays later and our passing makes them pay for every overplay with a wide open option, that's success. sorry, I feel we had that with Weiss and not so much since. Play calling should cause you to succeed in crunch time, not pile up points early, then be diagnosed when it counts. Nothing wrong with putting up 50 in the first half, but who can do that once the league has had 16 games to study you? Consistent winners set teams up for big second half plays. I have no faith O'Brien is that creative and hope he proves me wrong.
I think we'll have good depth in the line and use a lot of people at guard. We won't have a bull without Mankins, but we have a lot of depth and a great line coach. Many teams go into the season much worse at line than we'll be. People forget how we rotated fringe UDFAs at line early season then ended up strong near the end. We'll play a bunch of guys at guard and someone could emerge. Hochstein played a lot with less native talent than a number of our guards.
