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Pats Posits: Patriots Minicamp Wrap

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I’m back in the blogging saddle after a few days on Cape Cod celebrating the life of my 90-year old grandma who passed away. Looks like there was plenty I missed from Patriots minicamp, but the good news is that there’s plenty of time to catch up.

Here are a bunch of quick-hit posits about the reports from those who were there watching the action:

— Yes, Aaron Dobson led the team in catches over the three-day period and was saying all the right things in interviews, knowing that the biggest thing for him is stay healthy. This isn’t the first time Dobson has impressed when everyone’s in shorts, so I’m not quite ready to start believing he’s going to suddenly break out in his fourth year. He did show some promise as a rookie, but since then I’ve seen little development from Dobson when everyone has pads on. The biggest problem I have is his inability to make plays with the balls in his hands. Go back and look at any of his catches the last two seasons and I’ll guarantee he falls down right after catching just about every single one. He also seems to always be double catching the ball, often with his arms. Maybe he’ll turn a corner on those things, but until I see him streaking down the field after making a clean catch, dodging would-be tacklers and picking up extra yards, I continue to view Dobson as a long-shot unless Edelman and Amendola are PUP candidates to start the season.

— Maybe the most interesting news to me was that Rob Ninkovich was playing middle linebacker, however I think this is purely a depth move, giving Ninkovich some experience in the spot should he ever be needed because let’s face it, Jonathan Freeny was a liability at MLB last year. The other interesting related aspect to this is Shea McClellin playing with the defensive ends. Since he’s new to the system I don’t think this a depth move. He needs to learn the defense first. But with Ninkovich he can play defensive end for the Pats’ system in his sleep. This does however raise a question of what the Pats “regular” four defensive back package looks like up front, especially at the MLB spot. Still haven’t totally ruled out that McClellin, Dont’a Hightower and Jamie Collins are all chess pieces in regular with no set formation for offenses to key on.

— DJ Foster tweaked a hamstring during camp, but he stood out once again as being the most explosive running back on the field. Makes you wonder how the Dion Lewis (recovering from an ACL tear), James White and Foster can all fit together, and why Belichick seems far more interested in small receiving backs than early-down pounders. Perhaps it relates to the pure size the Patriots offensive front can put on the field — if you have a true Double Y tight end offense with Gronk and Bennett, along with James Develin, the holes should be there, no matter how big the running backs are. Again, all I don’t want to see is for the Pats to be a purely passing team at the end of the season like they were last year. Injuries played a huge role in that of course, but I’m curious how it will all fit together this year.


— Malcolm Mitchell is also off to a good start, a huge plus for a rookie wide receiver even if he’s had limited snaps with Brady. The biggest thing is for him to stay healthy in these early days. So many of the rookie wide receivers that have failed to click with Brady were hit with injuries in their first training camp and/or regular season. If Mitchell can avoid the injury bug this first year, his odds of carving out a role in the offense increase.

— Michael Williams tore his ACL in camp, luckily the only major injury. I had Williams on the bubble, trending toward not making the roster so I don’t think this opens up an unexpected spot on the 53-man roster. But it should mean more reps for guys like Clay Harbor and AJ Derby.

— Kamu Grugier-Hill popped up with an interception. Anytime you’re hearing any rookie’s name it’s a positive sign, even in a teaching camp like this where the rooks haven’t really been thrown to the wolves yet. I like Grugier-Hills to slip into Tavon Wilson‘s old roster spot/special teams role. I don’t like typing “Grugier-Hill”.

— All three quarterbacks impressed and that’s a good thing to see, especially with the improvement that Jacoby Brissett already showing at this early stage.

— Thought this nugget from Andy Hart was interesting:

At the end of every practice, when the team gathers to stretch in position groups, Dante Scarnecchia has returned to his tradition of making his linemen line their helmets perfectly straight on a yard line. He checks it and players have to fix any imperfections, as Marcus Cannon had to today, before they get to their stretching.

— Finally, I must leave you with this…

Is James White on the roster bubble?

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One thing I love nothing more than is debating ProFootballFocus ratings and yesterday they dropped this little nugget about James White.

White was thrown into the first last year in his second season when Dion Lewis went down, but while you might think he simply took over Lewis’ extensive role, he was actually managed far more delicately. The week after Lewis was lost for the season White had just one catch on one target and one carry. The next week, three targets, and the following week five targets.

His breakout game came in the fourth week against the Eagles, where he had 10 catches on 13 targets for 115 yards, but that was the high-water mark of the season. And while he slowly became a factor in the passing game the Patriots never handed the ball off to him more than three times in a game during the regular season. In the AFC Championship they handed it off to him five times and he picked up a measly 11 yards.

More troubling, and this is a stat I’ve hit on far more than I’d like this offseason, was White’s performance in the passing game in that AFC Championship, where he was targeted a team-high 16 times and came up with just five catches for 45 yards, the most devastating of which is GIF’d below. A touchdown here could’ve been the difference in the game.

James White

 

For the season White ended up with 40 catches for 410 yards and four touchdowns, but just 22 rushing attempts for 56 yards. It’s painfully obvious how one-dimensional he was. The bigger problem is how much of a key White will be every time he takes the field. Is he a good receiver? Sure. Is he good enough to change the course of a game as a pure receiving back? Nope.

That’s why I am putting White on the bubble. Despite White’s place on the roster it didn’t stop the Patriots from looking at receiving backs this offseason, including Bilal Powell, and signing undrafted rookie DJ Foster, who seems on paper very much like White as well.

It might be too late to give up on White, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have to earn a job this summer and prove that he’s more capable of running the ball than he appeared to be last year.

500 Days of Deflategate

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It takes a lot for me to write about Deflategate. That’s one of the advantages of just having my own place to write — I blog when I wanna blog, and about what I want to blog. Usually non-football topics build and build until finally I feel the need to vent and then you get things like Is Tom Brady a Deflation Scheme Mastermind?

But otherwise I’m fine to leave the daily lifting of Deflategate nonsense to those who are getting paid to write many, many things per day about the Patriots. If you want to see all things Deflategate that have appeared here on the blog click here.

There have been so many ups and downs with Deflategate and it’s hard to believe that it’s dragged on this long. When I started blogging I never thought I’d have to learn what Amicus Briefs are or the finer points of labor law. This speaks to a bigger point that this whole debacle hasn’t really even been about football (or footballs) for a long time.

What is most fascinating to me are those people out there who checked out after taking every word of the Wells Report as fact. Nothing that’s happened since then has penetrated their Deflategate force field that is impervious to any bit of evidence or possibility that Tom Brady wasn’t behind an elaborate plot to take a small farts worth of air out of footballs.

Those people are usually fans of other teams that have lost numerous times to Brady over the years and the best part is their dismissive tone, often accompanied by a number of lol emojis, as if the only people in the world who still think Brady might be innocent are diehard Patriot fan homers with their heads in the sand.

But who really has their heads in the sand?

The battle lines were drawn clearly once again this week when a number of amicus briefs were filed in support of Brady. These briefs covered everything — from scientists saying the balls weren’t even deflated, to huge unions and a respected arbitrator all saying the process was completely rigged and unfair, to the Patriots themselves siding with their own player over the league in a rare move that brings back memories of Al Davis and the Raiders.

Yes, we’re all sick of Deflategate and there are plenty of Patriots fans who’d just prefer to let Brady sit four games and never have to hear about the whole thing again. But as annoying as it is, as much as I prefer to ignore it all now at least here in this blog space, the ramifications for how this was handled by Roger Goodell and the NFL run far deeper than the Patriots having to play four games without the best quarterback of all time.

The amicus briefs this week finally showed in one concise place how much is at stake here and just how deep the support of Brady runs outside of New England. The list of those who have been on Brady’s side, both in the national media and in legal circles, is long and distinguished. People far smarter in all this stuff continue to hammer the NFL at every turn, how they were simply “handing out their own brand of industrial justice” while rigging the process in their own favor whenever possible.

And that’s why even the most ardent Brady haters need to put aside their football loyalties and realize how corrupt their beloved NFL league office is. They know it deep down inside. Of course they do. This is Roger Goodell. He’s managed to screw up every single discipline issue he’s had to deal with. This time was even worse because they were trying to stay one step ahead on everything so they wouldn’t screw up so badly again.

But the Brady haters? This time they’re on Goodell’s side? They think he did a bang up job with this? Of course they don’t, but they cannot let go of wanting to believe Tom Brady wasn’t better than their team, he was just cheating and the only reason he was so good was that  small farts worth of air he got his cronies to let out of  the football.

The lack of that small fart of air made them magic footballs. Easier to catch. Impossible to fumble. That was the secret of the Patriots success.

 

While the amicus briefs show just how badly Brady was railroaded and how much support he has, it’s no guarantee the court will re-hear the case with all of their judges. The odds seem better now than they did a few weeks ago, but this still might be the end of the line, or the second-to-last stop before taking a final shot with the Supreme Court.

No matter how it ends the Deflategate Truthers will never believe those footballs weren’t deflated. No matter what scientists tell them. No matter how many times an experienced legal mind points out all the terrible and unfair ways the NFL handled the whole thing from the get go.

It just speaks to how willing people are to buy bullshit if it makes them feel better about their worldview. And usually those people have very large internet muscles while they hide behind keyboards and ignore any shred of evidence that might contradict what they want to believe.

 

But one way or another they’ll get theirs, whether it’s another crushing loss to Brady or when the NFL turns it’s inept and vindictive legal eye on their team.

Deflategate has been bad for everyone and is only a sign of things to come unless the NFL is finally held accountable.

Patriots OTAs Access Today!

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Patriots OTAs

Wes Welker at 2010 OTAs five months after an ACL tear.

Today the media gets access to the Patriots OTAs so we’ll get some pictures and observations to help quench our thirst for football here as we prepare to enter the worst part of the offseason, aka The Void.

It’s important to understand that as much as I’ll be ready to dissect every minute detail, at this point it’s about teaching, not competition. So as much as we’ll want to read into who’s playing where and when, jobs aren’t being won or lost at this stage of the offseason. If anything it’s a chance for everyone to get on the same page and get a fundamental understanding of how business will be done when training camp opens in two months.

However, it will be interesting to see who is participating. If there’s one thing we will get a good sense of, it’s who’s still in recovery mode and not quite ready to make it onto the field, even for light practices.

Some injured guys to be on the look out for:

Dion Lewis – Wes Welker was at OTAs in 2010 after tearing his ACL just five months earlier and while he was still managed into training camp and the regular season, it was an incredibly positive sign that his recovery was quickly headed in the right direction. Dion Lewis is almost seven months removed from his ACL tear, and with reports coming in that he’s on schedule to be ready for the season opener, his presence on the field would be a big step forward.

Julian Edelman – Edelman was spotted in a walking boot just a couple weeks ago after having a “cleanup procedure”. It seems unlikely that he’ll be on the field so soon after, especially since everyone knows what he’s capable of and there’s no need to push him.

Dont’a Hightower – Hightower had knee issues that bothered him last season, reportedly a sprained MCL that he hurt against the Broncos, then re-injured against the Titans. Hightower should be fine but with his physical style of play he could be one who has a lot more going on that we know. It’ll be reassuring to see him back in the mix, especially after his extended recovery from a torn labrum last season.

Nate Solder – Solder tore his biceps last season, but has popped up in various team photos in recent weeks. I’d expect him to be a near lock to be back at his starting left tackle spot, a welcomed site indeed.

LeGarrette Blount – Blount’s 2015 season ended with a hip injury but avoided surgery. However the Pats must be concerned with his durability as his new one-year deal includes a split if he gets injured. If he didn’t need surgery, Blount should be out there.

Aaron Dobson, Trey Flowers, AJ Derby and Darryl Roberts are other interesting players who ended their seasons on IR and worth monitoring for their attendance. Of course, there’s always a surprise injury absence or two as well. Guys who had surgeries that were never reported. That’s just how the Pats roll.

But at least it will be nice to see the team back on the field, a small nibble that will have to help get us through the upcoming worst part of the offseason

New England Patriots RB Dion Lewis (ACL) on track for season opener – Reiss/ESPNBoston

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The Patriots will take a patient and conservative approach with running back Dion Lewis’ recovery from a torn left ACL, but things are going well.

Source: New England Patriots RB Dion Lewis (ACL) on track for season opener – New England Patriots Blog- ESPN

Obviously this is good news for a player who came out of nowhere to be a critical element for this year’s Super Bowl hopes. I can’t help but imagine how differently 2015 would’ve unfolded if Lewis didn’t go down in Week 9. You need to look no further than James White’s stat line in the AFC Championship — 16 targets, five catches for 45 yards. That was the game where the drop off from Lewis to White was crystal clear.

We’ve seen it plenty of times with past ACL injuries, the Pats will bring him along slowly just like they did with Welker in 2010 and Gronk in 2014. The hope would be the same as it was with those two players in those two seasons — that by December they’re ready to go.

The hard part is assuming Lewis can be just as electric as he was through those first seven-plus games in 2015. Never before has a castoff journeyman stepped in and looked like an all-star quite like that. How did a guy who hadn’t played an NFL game since 2012 slip through the cracks like that? And can we just assume that that’s the player he’ll be once he’s fully healthy? Whatever level Lewis can get back to will determine just what the ceiling for the 2016 Pats offense will be.

 

Flip Side of the Coin: Brady’s Suspension

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Let me start this post off by saying Tom Brady should not have to sit any games for the whole charade known as Deflategate. There’s no scientific proof the footballs were ever deflated. There’s no evidence Brady was the mastermind of a Deflation scheme. The whole thing was just an excuse to finally get back at Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, Brady and the rest of the Patriots for both winning too much and the previous charade known as Spygate.

Boil it all down and you have shoddy science supported only by select text messages and the NFL’s skewed slant they did everything they could to sell to the public by any means necessary.

Brady having to sit out games for what the NFL put together in The Wells Report would be an injustice and a travesty…

But…

…if Brady were to sit out the first four games would it actually be in the best long-term interest of the Patriots organization?

I’m just asking the question because at this point, is anyone’s opinion on Deflategate going to change? If the courts finally rule he must sit and he does, will that suddenly mean he really was guilty? Or if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court and they throw the whole thing out, will that mean Brady was innocent?

Nope. Nothing that happens from here on out, no matter how long Deflategate continues to drag on, will change anyone’s mind about what did or didn’t happen. And really everything in the courts now is about process anyway. So if that’s the case is it okay to root for what’s best for the Patriots and (perhaps) Brady?

The benefits are easy.

The Patriots get four manageable games to see what Jimmy Garoppolo’s got. 2017 will be the last offseason the Patriots could move Garoppolo and get compensation for him. Let’s remember that even with Tom Brady, the Patriots aren’t world beaters in September. It’s just as easy to see a 2-2 start with Brady as it is with Garoppolo.

And though the first four games are against teams with some excellent defensive pieces, three of the four (excluding Carson Palmer and the Cardinals) are going to be adjusting to new pieces or new coaches. With the Patriots returning almost everyone on defense we should expect them to exert their will in these games and make them all winnable games for the offense.

The second thing is keeping Brady fresh (and pissed off). Giving Brady the first four games off will not only ensure that he’s rested and healthy come October, but chomping at the bit to get back out there and take his job back.

Brady knows how this works and what can happen when a young “fill in” quarterback seizes his opportunity and leaves the coaching staff with no choice but to stick with him. I’m not saying Garoppolo has that in him, but I’m sure Brady doesn’t want to leave it to chance.

But let’s ponder for a moment, what if Jimmy Garoppolo plays out of his mind? Benching Bledsoe was one thing, but keeping Brady on the sideline? That would be difficult to say the least, but it would be fascinating to see where Patriots nation falls between their beloved TFB and their franchise that will continue on long after TFB is gone. That might be a problem we don’t want to face yet.

I’m hoping Brady never misses a game for the Deflategate nonsense, and it sounds like chances are good he won’t have to, but if things break badly for him in his next appeal attempt it won’t be hard to find some silver linings that should benefit the Pats long term.

Edelman and Amendola Recovering from Offseason Surgeries

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Edelman SurgeriesFor some reason, bad injury news always seems to come in bunches and that’s been the case in the last week with reports that both Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola going under the knife during the offseason. Edelman had a “cleanup procedure” on the foot he broke against the Giants last year while Amendola had surgeries on both his left knee (that he sprained last season) and on his ankle (bone spurs).

Word is that both should be fine for the upcoming season, even if it potentially means opening training camp on the PUP list. I try to avoid the doom and gloom here on the blog, but it’s hard to just shrug off our two best receivers going under the knife. Amendola will be 31 this winter while Edelman turns 30 this coming Sunday.

This is just a reminder that just like Troy Brown and Wes Welker before them, inside receivers in New England are a good time for not a long time. The mileage adds up quickly after thirty and the end often comes before you know it. Troy Brown said he was never the same after knee surgery in the early 2000’s.

Not saying this is the beginning of the end for Edelman and Amendola, but it illustrates just how important it is to keep the receiver pipeline fresh. Malcolm Mitchell and Chris Hogan are really important pieces and it’s reasonable to think that to avoid last year’s offensive slowdown that happened without Edelman last year, one of those two newcomers must emerge as a trusted target.

The insurance is the lethal tight end combo of Gronk and Martellus Bennett. Bennett should not only give Brady another good target working the middle of the field, but also take away some of the attention that Edelman and Amendola get inside.