PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Mike Dussault

Pats Posits: The Season Starts Now

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Happy New Year! The Patriots finished off their regular season by beating the Jets in frigid temperatures and improving to 13-3 on the 2017 season. It wasn’t exactly an exclamation point finish, but it was effective and seemingly injury-free. The bottom line? The Pats now have homefield advantage for the third time in four years and the last two times they’ve had it they’ve won the Super Bowl.

I’m not going to dwell too much on the Jets game. I’m sure there are plenty of takes out there extrapolating all kinds of major implications from how the Pats performed in what were some pretty tough conditions. But I don’t think there’s much to take from it, though it does finish off a full 16-game sample and in that broader regard there’s plenty to talk about.

First, we have to start with Dion Lewis, who once again carried the team as you might hope a running back would do when there are tough conditions for the passing game. It’s just such a huge relief that we made it through the regular season without another catastrophic injury. Specifically — Tom Brady, Lewis, Rob Gronkowski and Danny Amendola are just absolutely critical to the Super Bowl chances and it looks like all will be ready to go.

With that group upright the Pats will be a hard out for anyone, no matter how the game unfolds.

Let’s take a moment to catch our breath as the Pats await to see who they’ll play next Saturday night in the AFCDG.

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Patriots Gameplan: Week 17 vs. New York Jets

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Ah, the final gameplan of the season. These are always my favorite pieces of the week to write, and now as I sit here in California on my final day of vacation, preparing myself to return to the arctic cold of Boston, I can’t help but feel a bit relieved that the regular season prologue is nearly behind us.

Let’s be honest, at this point it’s hard to move the needle for Patriots fans. Looking back on 2017 it’s hard to recount much more than the Steeler game and the injuries. Wins are relief. Losses are catastrophic. Then we get to this point, where the Patriots will hopefully wrap up the first seed, and none of it really matters.

So here we are, staring down the barrel of another 13-3 season. A meltdown loss to the Jets at this point would be beyond surprising. Our 5-10 pals from New York adjacent are closing out a disappointing season, but they still gave the Pats trouble back in October, with the Pats getting a 4th down stop at their own 49 yard line to preserve the 24-17 win.

Considering the circumstances now, with the Pats needing a win to assure themselves of homefield advantage and the Jets ready to mail it in to the offseason, not to mention the bone chilling cold which this game will be played in, all signs point to the Pats rolling.

Here’s the gameplan…

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Breaking Down Patriots’ 3rd Down Nose Dive on Offense

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Third down is the most critical down in football and usually the Patriots are one of the best offenses in the league. In the last four seasons they ranked 6th (2014) and 4th (2016) when they won the Super Bowl and when they didn’t they ranked 16th (2013) and 11th (2015).

This season the loss of Julian Edelman loomed large for then third down offense. Edelman was then most targeted and reliable receiver with the game on the line. However early in then season the Pats didn’t fare too badly,

Through the first eight games, the Pats ranked 3rd on third down, converting 45.9 percent of their chances.

But since then they’ve fallen off dramatically, to the point where over the last four games they’ve converted just 30.2 percent of their third downs, second-worst in the league. All of Tom Brady‘s five interceptions in the last four games have come on third down.

These struggles are coming at the wrong time of year. Is this a critical flaw? Is there any hope in sight? Let’s take a deeper look.

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Malcolm Mitchell Back at Patriots Practice

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The surprising end-of-year Patriots news continued today with Malcolm Mitchell showing up in pads at practice. This means the Pats now have 21 days to activate him off of IR, though Mike Giardi reports that he could see game action as soon as this Sunday against the Jets in the season finale.

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Patriots Add James Harrison

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You might’ve gotten the impression that I was a bit concerned about the Patriots defense heading into January after my piece from this morning. For those reasons I welcomed the afternoon’s news of James Harrison signing with the team just days after his somewhat surprising release by the Steelers.

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The 2017 Patriots Defense: Can Patchwork Front, Inconsistent Back Get It Done?

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The Patriots defense turned in another signature effort against the Bills that we’ve seen in recent weeks — early struggles on third down, some big plays allowed, only to see them tighten up in the second half and allow the offense to pull away.

I’m not here to sugar coat it guys, this defense is a shell of what we’ve seen in recent years and obviously injuries are a huge part of it. The other part of it is that the secondary, which is healthy, needed to step up and lead the way for the decimated front seven. At best, they’ve been inconsistent. At worst they’ve been lit up repeatedly no matter who they’re facing. But again, they’ve made the plays they needed to to win games.

But as I look around at the personnel up front I wonder how many stop gaps there are and how many actual building blocks there are.

I’d break it down like so:

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Pats Posits: One More to Go

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Merry Christmas from the West Coast! It was a unique experience for me yesterday as I was on a plane and left with no better option than listening to the Patriots win over the Bills via the Sports Hub radio stream. It’s been a while since I experienced a game only on the radio, but it was fun to finally get to see the big plays later in the day and I thought Zolak and Socci were fun to listen to.

So here we are, the Pats are 12-3 with one game to go, and really all I see is a pile of negativity everywhere I look. I get it, everyone outside of Patriots Nation is so sick of the Patriots. Now, instead of getting excited post-game it immediately becomes about deflecting that negativity.

Bad calls, the Jimmy G situation and the Alex Guerrero thing are the stories driving the Patriots’ narrative these days. It feels like this was the year that the Patriots finally broke the rest of the NFL. Long gone are the “they haven’t won anything since Spygate,” that was such a reassuring crutch for those who hate the Patriots. Now they’re left with no such crutch.

Wins alone are no longer close to enough for even those in our tribe. Wins are boring now. Wins can’t drive the Patriots’ season narrative because it’s just been so played out. So instead it’s all about the secondary stuff and that’s just so frustrating that here in the last few seasons of Brady we can’t really enjoy a win being a win. Now everyone wants to talk about anything but the wins.

More frustrating is the direction it’s all trending, pointing toward how things will look and sound when the Brady-Belichick era is over. We now know that Jimmy G will be hung around our necks for all time. And it will be even worse if Belichick misfires on the second round pick we got for him. I knew it would be bad for Patriots’ fans in the aftermath of the dynasty as everyone lined up and piled on, but the sneak preview we’re getting now makes me realize it will be even worse than we imagined.

But the good news, that everyone has seemingly forgotten, is again that the Pats will be the top AFC seed with a win over the Jets, the bye is already secure and clearly, the dynasty isn’t over yet as much as everyone outside of our fandom want it to be.

Here are the Posits on the win over Buffalo and even some of the ancillary BS.

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