Patriots Have to Figure Out How To Make A Lost Season Productive

Wouldn’t this be great if this were a head session on how the Patriots can nail down the one or two seed.

But let’s get real. The only one or two seed the Patriots need to worry about these days involves the 2001 NFL Draft. And if things do come down to that (Cincinnati’s off the schnide, don’t forget), Bill Belichick will rue the day he ever became HC of the NEP.

The Belichick Era needs to lay down roots and grow. Okay, so he won’t win a Super Bowl in his first year like George Seifert. But he won’t go winless like John McKay did, either. It just might not be what he expected here, and a tad below where his old team projects to finish this year.

That said, there are some pressing chores that Belichick needs to really work on in this much easier second half of the 2000 season.

Teach Your Children Well

The kids need work. Lots of it. Get ’em in and let ’em play.
J.R. Redmond should be given the chance that he can really play in the NFL, and he’ll get that chance barring injury. His 97-yard effort against the Colts offered some hint of promise of what lies ahead, but one game is no indicator of what Redmond is really capable of. He needs to show that he is durable, he needs to learn how to hit holes, and he needs to learn how to get yardage when holes aren’t there.

If Tony Simmons is truly a bust, then Belichick needs to give serious playing time to Shockmain Davis, Sean Morey and Dane Looker. It’s about time that these guys who light up the fourth quarters in August get a real shot at NFL glory. If nothing else, at least you’ll know what you have with these guys. Given Simmons’ uneven and frequently abominable output, taking a chance with the young wideouts is a gamble well worth taking.

Start Greg Robinson-Randall at right tackle and let him get his baptism. Play him lots. When Adrian Klemm is healthy, ditto. Let Bruce Armstrong pass Julius Adams, and let Grant Williams give those young’uns a blow now and then. Otherwise, Klemm and GRR should get as much PT as possible. If this season is truly lost, what a better way to shore up the tackle positions for 2001.

One has to wonder about Tony George. It looks like he is fourth on the free safety depth chart, behind Larry Whigham, Tebucky Jones and perhaps cornerback Otis Smith. George showed way too much promise last year to let some diabetic coma in August keep him out of the lineup. If Belichick still has misgivings over George because of training camp drills, he should forget them and give George a chance to win the free safety job.

Football players play football

This is a great time for Belichick to find out who his real warriors are, especially if more losses pile up.
One thing Belichick will look closely at is who plays hard in December versus who doesn’t. A great sign for the 2001 Patriots is whether the men who come under the “play hard” category include such names as Terry Glenn, Chris Slade, Damien Woody, and Max Lane.

Glenn has been very little trouble this year, and his output bears that out. Slade has slipped considerably in his overall game, and has been prone to several missed tackles. Woody had a bad rap at BC for not working hard on conditioning. And Lane would do himself very well to shut up his detractors and improve on his “fringe” status with the team.

The rest of the team will be watched closely as well. Guys who pack it in when the weather gets cold should get a chilly response at season’s end. It will give Belichick a great indicator of who to build the 2001 team around, and who will be the men who learn the quickest how to close out an opponent, a quality this team lacks greatly right now.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but if it is…

The Patriots would greatly help themselves by removing just a few plays from their playbook. Not most of them, just a few.
If Charlie Weis still insists on using Michael Bishop on third down, they should quit running the option. especially towards the short end of the field. As stated in this column a while back, the NFL is no place for the option. The defensive team speed is just too much to cope with. Colleges run it because the team speed of the defenses they face seem like snails and turtles when compared with the cheetahs and jackrabbits in the pros. In three words, it doesn’t work.

But we’ll go further. How about canning the idea of Bishop on third down all together? You may not believe this, but Drew Bledsoe has shown that he can get short yardage on keepers. Furthermore, Bledsoe has also shown this year that he is tougher running the ball than previously given credit for. He takes tough hits, and actually prefers hard contact over sliding into a first down. Go back and watch the 1996 clash with Arizona, and you’ll see that Bledsoe has been laying his body on the line for quite some time.

The empty backfield has got to go. Bring it back when, and only when, the Patriots can do both of the following: block better and run better timing routes. When defenses see the empty backfield, they’ll send in at least six pass rushers, and often seven. Oh sure, someone will be open, but chances are Bledsoe will be flat on his back before he ever sees who is open. For this offense to work, it has to be bang-bang, with at least some protracted effort to slow the pass rush down. Bledsoe can make the bang-bang throw, but his receivers have to run the routes correctly, and he has to have more than eight-tenths of a second to get the ball off.

It hurts to say this, but deep post patterns should also be a no-no. It’s not a question of can Bledsoe throw it deep, the problem is deep and accurate. Most of the time Bledsoe overthrows his deep man, even Glenn. Most of the time Glenn is double-covered, and it’s the other wideout who can’t run fast enough to catch up with Bledsoe’s rockets. Still, Bledsoe has never really shown a propensity to throw long. What he needs is for the Patriots to deal Otis Smith to Buffalo, then have Wade Phillips put Smith in single coverage on Glenn. Then I’d throw deep on every play. Until then, just keep it short to medium.

Belichick prefers zone defenses. That’s great, except the Patriots give way too much cushion in their coverages, and Ty Law isn’t being allowed to play the way he knows best. It would be nice to sit here and tell Belichick to allow Law to play his men tight while everyone else drops back in zone. But that won’t happen. So, what will happen?

If Law must play zone, then let’s hope that the Patriots stop putting Smith on the other team’s best receiver. Seeing Smith burned once by Marvin Harrison was bad enough, but being burned twice was pure stupidity. Fans everywhere screamed “Where was Law?” Good question. Make sure that he’s there in the second half.

Sometimes easy is anything but

There is a potential problem with this “easy” second-half schedule. Eight “easy” games could turn into eight “trap” games.
You don’t think a 2-6 team could ever encounter “trap” games? Just watch what happens if the Patriots take Corey Dillon and his Bengals lightly. Can you say 300 yards rushing? It’s never happened before, but a complacent team with an ailing Chad Eaton might be real appealing to Dillon in a few weeks.

The games against Cleveland and Cincinnati are the two easiest on the schedule, with Chicago right behind. Tim Couch is out for the year, which makes the Browns significantly weaker. Dillon is pretty much it for the Bengals, who have benched Akili Smith. Chicago is a shell of its old self from the Ditka Era.

But the Patriots could stumble in any of these games if they get lazy in the preparation. The game last year at Cleveland was touch and go. Any team can win on any given Sunday. The last thing the Patriots should be thinking about is “Aaaah, here come the cupcakes, let’s relax!”

Belichick will not allow that to happen, or at least he’ll try. He must sell this point, something he failed to do for the second Jets game. Some pundits actually labeled that Jet game a “trap”, and shucks, they were right. The Patriots can go 6-2 if they play hard every game.

Right now, the focus starts with Buffalo. A sure bad sign is if the crowd cheers louder for the Bills quarterback over Bledsoe. Of course, the Chestnut Hill faithful will probably never root for the Patriots over Doug Flutie.

Ah, the pride of Natick. Who said that Boston isn’t a college football town?

About Bob George

Covering Boston Sports since 1997. Native of Worcester, Mass. Attended UMass and Univ of Michigan. Lives in California. Just recently retired after 40 years of public school teaching. Podcasts on YouTube at @thepic4139

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