Game Day Thread Official Post Game Thread- Bills beat the Pats

[RobertWeathers]

No. But out of character for Bill. We let Jones walk because he was a sack specialist who BTW can set the edge and has the most tackles for losses too but I digress.

No. Bill signed AD and Colvin which were big ticket OLBs so not out of character. The Jones situation was not the same as the 2021 off season. That team had cap issues and needed a minor reset.

In an off-season where the offense needed the most work, Bill spent the most money on Judon which IMO kind of speaks to his team building approach. I say this to help temper expectations that Bill will go out and sign a bunch of #1 skill guys.

They signed, HH, Smith, Agholor and Bourne. To say they spent more money on D is not accurate.

 

[Ring 6]

Pats are stuck in the 6 seed unless some craziness happens. Bengals hosting the Chiefs next week is in all likelihood gonna determine who the Pats face in the wild card round. If the Bengals win they will be the 3 seed and be the Pats opponent.

Raiders beating Indy is all that needs to happen for the Patriots to be able to be the 5.
Buffalo losing 1 game is all that needs to happen for the patriots to be able to win the division.
Not really craziness.

 

[Bill Lee]

We are getting exactly what HH has done throughout his career. He'll finish with 50+ catches and 500+ yds and double digit TDs. If you want to call him an overpay fine but he has met his typical historical production this year.

Smith has been a colossal disappointment. No debate there. Zero catches on zero targets in the biggest game of the year. Good lord.

Bourne has exceeded expectations.

Agholor has done a less than what I thought he'd do here. I figured 50 catches 700yds.

Who cares about Asiasi and Keene. Mid round picks...Whatever.

What I'm not seeing is the coaching staff making mid course corrections based on what you are saying. Play Bourne more and Harry less. Target HH more since he's the hotter hand and maybe the only inside threat we have. Try to find some plays where you can target the inside so the outside opens up more. Need to find a player somewhere/somehow who is tough enough to deal with the kind of hits you get playing in the slot.

Yesterday's most effective formation seemed to be when we had the FB on the field and even an extra OL. Problem was we'd put them on for a play, get a solid gain, then keep it on the field, run a similar play, and get nothing. Seems we gotta mix things up better.

 

[amfootball]

No. Bill signed AD and Colvin which were big ticket OLBs so not out of character. The Jones situation was not the same as the 2021 off season. That team had cap issues and needed a minor reset.

They signed, HH, Smith, Agholor and Bourne. To say they spent more money on D is not accurate.

I was saying their highest paid player was Judon. He also spent money on Godcheaux and Mills too. But overall, I believe more money in FA was spent on O with both TEs making 12.5mil.

 

[RobertWeathers]

What I'm not seeing is the coaching staff making mid course corrections based on what you are saying. Play Bourne more and Harry less. Target HH more since he's the hotter hand and maybe the only inside threat we have. Try to find some plays where you can target the inside so the outside opens up more. Need to find a player somewhere/somehow who is tough enough to deal with the kind of hits you get playing in the slot.

Yesterday's most effective formation seemed to be when we had the FB on the field and even an extra OL. Problem was we'd put them on for a play, get a solid gain, then keep it on the field, run a similar play, and get nothing. Seems we gotta mix things up better.

I think they kept Bourne on a pitch count yesterday.

Smith isn't a fit here. For whatever reason...

Neither is Agholor.

You can't make adjustments when players can't execute the adjustments.

 

[Toofy]

His next deal will not be anywhere close to what the Raiduhs paid him.

He should be back for 7 or 8 million plus incentives. He was essentially out for 8 games this season. You don't pay starter money for that durability.

Brown has said he loved the team make up and atmosphere here. So he should be taking a team friendly deal and nobody is going to pay him guaranteed money .

My bets are we try out best to retain Phillips, brown , Meyers and Jackson in 22 with around 30 million and in 2023 cut agholor and use it to sign the next bonafide star.

2022 sunk costs are agholor, Smith and Wynn. Harry is a low cost option. So unless we hit a home run in wr draft , Harry will be there for next year. Wilkerson has a great chance to unseat Harry next off-season if he can improve blocking and his catch percentages . Can gunner become the next amendola so that gunner and Meyers become the amendola - Edelman twins And Bourne can stretch the field . We can possibly trade agholor for peanuts while absorbing maybe 3-4 million of salary.

Jonnu Smith seems to be a disaster this year but I am hopeful it will turn out to become like amendola contract .

 

[RobertWeathers]

I was saying their highest paid player was Judon. He also spent money on Godcheaux and Mills too. But overall, I believe more money in FA was spent on O with both TEs making 12.5mil.

So? The D sucked last year. They needed to spend a ton there as well. I don't understand your concern?

 

[amfootball]

So? The D sucked last year. They needed to spend a ton there as well. I don't understand your concern?

You missed the context. If you go scroll back a few pages, you will see what I was responding to.

 

[Bill Lee]

The Pats are about where most people probably thought/hoped they would be right now; a winning record and a wild card spot in the playoffs. The 7 game winning streak raised the bar on expectations but, in the end, this is a good team that can win most games as long as they are hitting on all cylinders and play mistake free football. There is very little margin for error. That said, progress was definately made from 2020 to 2021 and, with another good draft and a step up in the learning curve from Jones, further progress should be made in 2022.

Agree, I was thinking we'd get 9 wins and a WC spot, we're tracking a bit ahead of where I thought we'd be.

I agree we should make progress next season. It'll be interesting to see who is kept and who is let go. IMO it'll tell us a lot about if the team leadership is really on their game or if they are treading water. As per the last post I'm starting to be disappointed with the commitment they are showing to players who aren't earning it IMO and aren't seeming to be making good course corrections.

The real problem is that BUF won the AFCE last year, and are likely to win it this year, and have a legit #1 QB signed long term. They too have their holes, but IMO Mac will have to make a big leap forward to close the gap to Allen and we'll need a lot of improvement across the board to catch up and surpass BUF in the next season or two. Bill ain't getting younger, and Josh's blind spots are becoming a bit more apparent, IMO.

 

[Rob0729]

It’s the selective endpoint issue which people with agendas try to do with statistics in general.

He played 5 games in those 6 weeks. Week 11 at Atlanta he was 22/26 207 with 1 TD and a pick. Week 12 against Tennessee he was 23/32 for 310 with 2 TDs and 0 picks. I’m curious as to what his PFF scores were those weeks; they may not have been great (dropped int maybe, not enough ypa maybe), but they couldn’t have been bad. After that was the 3 pass attempt game and the bye as you mentioned.

Mac wasn’t good the last 2 weeks. We all know it. But someone with an agenda is trying to get attention and show it as part of a longer trend. It’s not. But he definitely needs to step it up going forward if we expect the Pats to succeed.

Last week, he was only bad for a half. He played pretty well in the second half. But his overall PFF grade was probably not great.

 

[RobertWeathers]

You missed the context. If you go scroll back a few pages, you will see what I was responding to.

I read it.

 

[VectorPrime]

If you count the Covid year for much, I don’t know what to say. This year the Pats are 1-1 v. the Bills. Frank Reich has coached one game against the Pats (10 days ago) in the last couple of years. Not exactly dominance.

Why would anyone not count the quote unquote Covid Year? Let me guess, it’s because of the fake narrative everyone started throwing around mid season when we sucked that this was meant as a throwaway year despite the earlier offseason narrative being that Bill and the Pats would have an advantage over other teams during an unpredictable year? After the Seattle game people including ME said to extend Cam ffs.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

I can see you desperately want to sidetrack this into a Brady discussion, where you foam at the mouth to criticize your ex-crush. It isn’t at all relevant to the Patriots. I’m discussing Mac Jones and using Brady’s recent struggles only to highlight a point. Maybe Ian and Ashley can create a separate sub-forum for you where you can obsessively troll by yourself.

says the guy (girl) who brought up Brady in a patriots thread...

 

[archstanton543]

Seems to me optimism bias is controlling your thoughts. The D didn't get a stop IMO because the O was so inconsistent all day long and left the D on the field too long. The O can't keep relying on the D for just one more stop, the O has to keep producing back-to-back grind-it-out drives for this team to win. That's what all that ball control offense talk is all about.

Seems to me negativity bias is controlling your thoughts. The D did, in fact, get a stop yesterday.

 

[50-yard-line]

The discussion has not been at all overly critical and not whiny at all. Posts like these are the problem. No one has said anything remotely close to this.

"This guy sucks!" "That guys sucks more!!!" "Why aren't we getting all-pros for 6 million/year?!?!?!?????"

And for those saying "trade this guy!" trade that guy!" "get DeVonte Adams!!!!!!" - quit listening to Felger. Cap ain't crap, sorry.

You should stay away from football discussions…what will happen is the Patriots will bring in a high-impact impact skill player next year, and you’ll wave your pom poms and act like you didn’t whine whenever anyone here suggested they do so.

Christ…look at Brady last week against the Saints with no playmakers. Then look at the difference against the Panthers. Having just one guy - AB - creating all those mismatches completely changes the game. As we saw in 2019 and last week, no QB can expect to succeed consistently without an elite receiver or TE who can be the focal point of the offense. The team struggled often in past years due to this: 2005, 2006, 2013, 2019, and at times when Gronk/Edelman were injured. And that’s with Brady, not a developing rookie.

This thread isn't filled with that? Read it again. it's ridiculous. Bourne and Mills were "bad" signings? Really? Look at what they paid those guys, same with Godchaux. If you think those are big contracts, you should spend a few hours with Sportrak. They were building a core - and yes, they need to add talent around it (Barmore is a good start)

I'd love to see the Pats get that high-impact offensive skill player. They almost certainly won't. They don't have a ton of cash next year (year after, yes), and that's really not Bill's philosophy, at least not through FA. They lucked out on Gronk, they spent years developing Edelman, and Moss was another lucky break.

You don't like my contributions? Put me on ignore.

 

[ashley]

Jonnu Smith seems to be a disaster this year but I am hopeful it will turn out to become like amendola contract .

To me that's been the biggest surprise of the offseason....we haven't found a way to get Jonnu more involved in the passing game and to find a better way to utilize his talent.

 

[Bill Lee]

Smith isn't a fit here. For whatever reason...

Neither is Agholor.

You can't make adjustments when players can't execute the adjustments.

Then the adjustment is to sit the player and then cut the player in the off season and take the salary cap hit.

Unfortunately I'm not sure the staff is all that willing to walk away from mistakes.

We saw Harry ask for a trade in the off season and make himself a distraction, which usually gets a player a ticket out of town.

Instead we see him on the field a lot this season without playing at a level IMO to earn that time on the field.

It must be upsetting for players like Meyers and Bourne to see Harry get so many chances without earning them.

 

[RobertWeathers]

2022 sunk costs are agholor, Smith and Wynn. Harry is a low cost option. So unless we hit a home run in wr draft , Harry will be there for next year. Wilkerson has a great chance to unseat Harry next off-season if he can improve blocking and his catch percentages . Can gunner become the next amendola so that gunner and Meyers become the amendola - Edelman twins And Bourne can stretch the field . We can possibly trade agholor for peanuts while absorbing maybe 3-4 million of salary.

Jonnu Smith seems to be a disaster this year but I am hopeful it will turn out to become like amendola contract .

For the amount of production, Smith's contract is brutal. Thank Christ the cap is going up so it waters down the impact.

With his salary I can live with 4 catches for 40yds a game and TD here and there at it would pretty much be his average year.

But ZERO targets in the biggest game of the year? Unacceptable.

 

[VectorPrime]

Also stop using PFF grades they have always been complete opaque nonsense.

 

[50-yard-line]

We didn't have any salary cap money to spend with Chandler......do you think if Bill had a choice he wouldn't want Jones on our team? I don't know BB very well, but I'm guessing no.

Jones also got more money than Judon - and that was in 2017!

There was also a naked visit to the police station right before the playoffs...and I seem to remember a lot of people here upset every year about his last-season fade.