PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Mike Dussault

New England Patriots 2011 Opponents

by

Welp in keeping with the theme of turning the page to next season, here’s the list of who the Pats are going to playing with some observations.

Chiefs – Cassel, Vrabel and crew return to Foxboro.
Chargers – SD comes to NE for the first time since the Pats last playoff win. Ugh.
Cowboys – Pats fans get to see a 3 down OLB up close (Demarcus Ware)
Giants –  Eli should have a lot of fun playing in NE.
Bills – Pats win.
Dolphins – Phins taking half step back, hope this game is in Dec/Jan. 
Jets – this game won’t be hyped or anything.
Colts – Peyton Manning should have his weapons back.

Broncos – games in Denver have not been kind to the Pats in recent years.
Raiders – this could be my road trip game of the year.
Eagles – exciting match-up against a Vick and company.
Redskins – Pats win.
Bills – Pats win.
Dolphins – always a battle in South Florida. 
Jets  – Pats haven’t won there in 2 seasons.
Steelers – another battle against two top AFC teams.

Cutting a Welker report off at the knees

by

If you haven’t heard it yet I’m sure it will pop up somewhere so this is a preemptive attempt to provide some perspective on the twitter personality known as “Incarcerated Bob” and this tweet that he made this morning:

**BREAKING NEWS** Patriots are looking into shopping WR Wes Welker this off-season : Pats believe they can get a 2nd RD pick or early 3rd

I can’t say that I definitively know that this is untrue, but I do know that Bob reports a lot of stuff that never happens. His tweets surrounding Jim Harbaugh were pretty comical, he had Harbaugh as a lock to multiple places multiple times.

It’s also worth mentioning that Bob is a Jets fan, so we can’t rule out him just trying to drive a stake between the Pats and Welker after his first series benching.

Finally, and most logically, the season ended three days ago. Are we to assume that the Patriots, namely BB, already sat down, decided that they’d be better off getting either a 3rd second or third round pick than they’d be with WW coming into year two after an ACL injury (usually the year they get back to 100%)? Not only did they decide all this but they told people who then somehow leaked word back to Incarcerated Bob? Highly doubtful.

Perhaps Bob or his sources (likely Jets related) saw a small rift between BB and WW and wanted to try to up the stakes. The fact is that players have had rifts with BB before, but once it’s over with it’s in the past. So I find it unlikely that there would be residual tension based on Welker getting benched for one series.

Welker is signed through 2011, so there could be some contract discussions with him about an extension this offseason. But right now his cap number is manageable so there’s no reason to think it would be a salary related move.

So all in all, if/when news of this “report” catches on take it with a grain of salt and consider the source.  

ProFootball Focus: Patriots Pass Protection Not Problem

by

Here’s a little nugget from Pro Football Focus that I found interesting:

Frankly this appears to be getting to the point of obsession for some Pats fans. Who comes up with this stuff? “no pressure should get through on a 3 man rush”. Why? One person is always single blocked and for any line-man to hold a 1 on 1 block for more than 4 seconds is good.

Let’s look at the raw numbers: Brady was pressured on only 18% of his drop backs (9 of 50)Of the 512 games played by QBS this year how many times do you think a QB dropping back 40 or more times was under less pressure? 11; that’s right just eleven times! So this was in the bottom 3% of pressure anyone had all year.

Of the 9 plays in which he did get pressure only one in my book did come on a 3 man rush; that was the second and here the thing which caused Brady to step into Ellis (who was reasonably well blocked) was Light 1 on 1 with Taylor off the edge.For the remainder every pressure came from 4 or 5 man rushes against a single player block and even some of those (in hindsight) were harsh. The only really sub-optimal pieces of Protection were Crumpler’s block on Pace (1 on 1) which allowed the sack, the first sack where Ellis badly beat Connolly outside( 1 on 1) and a later pressure by Ellis (through Connolly 1 on 1) which led to a sack.In my view, all of the o-line, other than Connolly, did a great job in pass protection and to blame them really is clutching at straws the purpose of which I couldn’t even guess at.

Playbook breaks down what Jets did on D vs. Patriots

by

Playbook breaks down what Jets did on D vs. Patriots

Playbook is the only show that I’ll be able to watch on TV for the next few weeks and segments like these are the reason why. There’s no rhetoric, it’s just game film and insight into what was going on inside the chess match up.

As you can see the Jets had a great game plan and executed it flawlessly. I wish that I had the football knowledge to know what the Pats could’ve done differently. I think it probably has a lot to do with just not being ready to play, Deion and Wes both have the quickness to get off jams and get open, but not on Sunday.

PFT: Patriots off-season needs

by

PFT: Patriots off-season needs

It’s so hard to really know for sure what’s going to happen with the offensive line between now and next summer. Is Vollmer really the LT of the future? Because if he is the time would probably be now to move him there. But Light is such a leader of that group, replacing him cannot be gone about lightly (no pun intended). Can the bridge with Mankins be mended? And how does Nick Kaczur fit in? He can play almost any position on the line so it’s a good bet he could well be back in a starting spot somewhere, be it for Mankins at LG or replacing Vollmer at RT if Vollmer goes to LT.

Offensive line is by far the most interesting area to watch on that side of the ball. There and running back.

by

I think the biggest thing Bill Belichick has to consider is whether he’s willing to use a late first-round pick on a pass-rusher who might project to play only on third down. Ideally, a team wants its first-rounder to be able to play all three (or even four) downs, but I think those standards can be loosened if you think you have an explosive edge rusher who could help your sub packages. The Patriots were in sub packages more than 50 percent of the time. The way I look at it is that the Patriots were willing to pay Tully Banta-Cain a generous contract to fill that type of role, so why wouldn’t they consider a first-round pick in that type of role?

Mike Reiss, echoing something I posted yesterday…

https://www.patspropaganda.com/i-think-the-biggest-thing-bill-belichick-has-to/