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Archives for October 4, 2016

MUST READ! ESPN: An Oral History of Bill Belichick

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Call Bill Belichick what you want, but these accounts of his uncompromising life — from prodigy to professional ballbuster — reveal why history might one day call him the greatest.

Source: New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is the greatest enigma in sports

Every once and a while an amazing piece on Bill Belichick comes along and today might be one of the all time bests of those days. This oral history is fascinating and is a direct companion to David Halberstam’s Education of a Coach.

This is the real Belichick. Not the caricature the media creates because he doesn’t give them much to work with unless they ask him hard core football questions. That he’ll scoff at stupid or probing questions.

Us fans get a kick out of that, because most of the time those stories the media feels like they “have to ask”, no one really cares about. And many times the reporters themselves are just trying to gain some recognition for themselves by trying to prod Belichick “in the name of journalism.”

This is the Belichick that fascinates us Hoodie Heads. It boils down to his “Be Here Now”-esque mantra and focus on total preparation.  And let’s face it, the guy was basically incubated as a football coach from the moment he was born.

Such a great read, one to hold on to for a long time. Favorite quote from Heath Evans:

“I never had greater admiration for a man besides my father than I had for Bill after the Super Bowl XLII loss. To the 53 men in that locker room and the coaching staff, he delivered a heartfelt apology. He felt like he had really let us down. Despite 18-1 being the most bitter pill I think you can swallow in sports, when I walked out of that Super Bowl locker room that night I still left with kind of a shining moment in my mind about Bill Belichick, how a man that everybody swears is so arrogant and so self-centered is really the exact opposite.”

Patriots Special Teams Report – Week 4 vs. Buffalo Bills

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What a disappointing effort by the Patriots Sunday. While it is hard to find silver linings in a shutout beatdown at home by a division rival, I chose to look at the fact the Pats managed to go 3-1 without the greatest quarterback of all time. And hey, special teams played pretty well yesterday, save for a few small plays, so lets get into it.

First, I’d like to give a nod to the tremendous work Matthew Slater and Jonathan Jones have done as gunners on the punt team thus far in the season. The pair shone in a game lacking much of anything positive, continuing their trend of incredibly strong play. While we all know just how good the five-time Pro Bowler Slater is, it is also important to recognize the undrafted rookie Jones, who has yet to receive any snaps at corner, but has had a standout start to his career on special teams. Slater and Jones both beat their men down the field on the first punt, with Slater making an excellent tackle for no gain off Ryan Allen’s 47-yard punt.

In addition, twice Allen’s punts resulted in fair catches by Tate, and both times Tate had Slater and Jones converging on him, allowing no room to run. Tate returned Allen’s third punt for 10 yards, with Slater bringing him down, but Jones was illegally knocked out of bounds on the play, resulting in a 10 yard penalty on Stephen Gilmore that set Buffalo back to its own 10 yard line. The duo has been incredible thus far, consistently beating opponents on the way down the field and not allowing positive returns off punts.

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Patriots-Bills Film Review: Defense Edition

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Yes, it’s time to take a look back at the car crash that happened on Sunday, when the Bills beat the Patriots pretty much across the board. And where else would I start than with the defense?

Now the common refrain I’ve heard over the past couple days is THEY ONLY GAVE UP 16 POINTS!

Well, this is true. And overall the Patriots defense is fourth in the league in points-per-game. That can’t be overlooked and as maddening as the Bend-Don’t-Break can be, it’s a proven game winner.

But from there just about every other defensive stat is bad. Real bad. They’re 29th in 3rd down defense and 28th in red zone defense. We’ll see how far they’ve fallen in DVOA on Tuesday.

So yes, the number of points allowed is certainly an important stat, and when you combine that with how the bad tackling, lack of edge setting, and overall sloppiness should all be corrected and there’s certainly a valid argument to be made that the Patriots defense will be okay.

But don’t ask me to feel good about how they’ve regressed in some of the most important aspects of the game since last year. Hopefully this game was just a stinker they needed to get out of the way.

Let’s take a closer look at the All 22 to get an emotionless look at what went wrong.

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