Best of the Week

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links-12/17

December 17, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

First and foremost, my reaction to “Deflategate 2”:

If a picture says a thousand words, a video must say a million. I’m in one heck of a mood, so in order to sustain that you can take a local sports opinion on the matter (Tom Curran, CSN) and a national culture one (Alex Reimer, Forbes), mix them together, stir, and reach your own conclusion. Throw in a few (dozen) expletives and you’ve got mine. Moving on, let’s get to the important stuff: what happened on Monday night at Gillette.

Boss man Mike D provides his reaction here, with a rightfully so, additional focus on the defense. He opines:

The energy was just different from the Patriots defense in this game. They played hungry, with something to prove. They had just two sacks but the pressure was consistent and disruptive. They worked well in conjunction with each other.

I can honestly say I did not realize they had just two sacks and was quite frankly a bit surprised. It could just be me, but did it not feel like they were all over Flacco the whole game? He certainly didn’t look comfortable back there, never coming close to anything resembling a rhythm or flow. Brady threw for 406, and sans a bad interception, played a very close to perfect game. Blount punished defenders early and often, mostly having his way on the ground. As crazy as it sounds, I’m happier about what we saw on the other side of the football. The front seven were flying around, dropping into coverage, rushing, alternating assignments the next play. Forget the blocked field goal (which was absolutely brilliant), McLellin was cracking people throughout. Brown, Branch, and Valentine were excellent plugging up the middle, Butler and the secondary played with an edge and physicality that we hadn’t consistently seen to this point. Listen, I’m not crowning them the units of the early 2000s or anything, but Patricia’s bunch seem to be getting it together at the perfect time. I feel a lot more confident in this group than I did at this time a month ago, that’s for sure.

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links-12/10

December 10, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

201. 2-0-1. There’s only one place to start this week and that’s giving credit where credit is due. Tom Brady is the winningest quarterback of all time and he damn well deserves it. He surpasses Brett Favre, who reached out and congratulated him via video, and greasy fingered Peyton Manning, who also managed to wrestle out a text right before karaoke night with Papa John. You know who hasn’t reached out to Brady? The commissioner of the National Football League. Yup, the lying, gutless Roger Goodell. Don’t take it from me though, let’s get Jerry Thornton’s (Barstool Sports) two cents on RG:

What’s the oldest cliche in the world about bullies? It’s that deep down, they’re all just self-loathing cowards who fear nothing like they do the idea of anyone standing up to them. From Biff Tannen to Scut Farkas to Nelson Muntz, the second any one of their victims treats them to the bitter taste of clenched-fisted revenge across the jaw, they lose all their fight and become the chickenshit invertebrate they always were. Their spirit broken for good, washing and waxing George McFly’s car in the driveway.

With every game that passes and every record Brady shatters to add to his already unparalleled resume, Roger Goodell looks more and more incompetent, unqualified, inept, floundering, maladroit…should I go on? Even the most destitute of vision Patriot and Brady haters see this guy for the buffoon he is. “First they came…”

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links-12/3

December 3, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

rob gronkowski spike gif

What began as a great week for Pats Nation featuring a massive win at the Meadowlands obviously took a spin for the worst with the news #87 needs back surgery. Let’s get to that a little later and kick off with some good news first. I genuinely don’t care what their record is, who their quarterback is, or how they played the week before. The New York Jets cannot be underestimated and far more times than not, the matches between the Pats and their bitter rivals turn out to be a single possession grind it out bar fight. Although ugly at times, and not without its cons (Gronk, Gostkowski missing yet another field goal, Brady limping all over the field…), it was a well earned win and one the team, coaching staff, and fan base can collectively feel good about. The defense turned the ball over in huge spots, Brady was his surgical self when it mattered most, and Revis was put on not one, but two posters (game winner below).

NFL: New England Patriots at New York Jets

Let’s stay on #24, who must have known this time around, it’d be no fun because the rabbit had the gun. Bill Speros (All 22), fondly known as “The Obnoxious Boston Fan” by his loyal twitter following, wrote on the Patriots/Revis fallout following his departure from the team and how Sunday turned into closure of some sort:

That’s the sort of thing you might hear at someone’s retirement ceremony. Or their wake. And one wouldn’t blame Brady for thinking Revis’ best days are buried in You Tube. A former All-Pro and future Hall of Fame selection, Revis has been bludgeoned by just about every receiver he’s lined up against this season. Two weeks ago, Revis explained his woes this season by saying, “I’m old.” Revis is 31. Brady turns 40 in August.

Speros pulls no punches, and you just have to love it. Looking forward to seeing Revis again in a couple weeks. The way this year has gone for the former all-pro corner, it could be the last time #12 and #24 square off.

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links – 11/26

November 26, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

tom brady gif

After a stint at WEEI as a columnist/co-host (with Dale and Holley), one of my very favorite sports writers Jerry Thornton has re-signed to Barstool, with a presumably Von Miller-esque deal. He gets us going this week with a rant within his “knee-jerk reaction” piece that makes me want to blast “Crazy Train” and run into brick walls:

Yet (Brady’s) ability to leave the pocket and throw on the run is the best of his career. But you Deflategate Truthers keep telling yourself it was always about air pressure. If there was a drop off in Brady’s performance, we’d never be hearing the end of it from you anti-science Flat Earth shitbags. But now that he’s playing some of his best football ever with allegedly untampered footballs, the silence is deafening.

Is it Sunday yet?! Absolutely love it and really couldn’t be more true. Proof is in the pudding with another ho-hum AFC player of the week award to add to the TB resume. If you don’t read Jerry’s “knee-jerk reaction” series after every game, start now. You’re genuinely missing out.

Okay, enough with the fun and games. Let’s refocus our efforts on continuing to fix the defense, which suffered an enormous (literally) loss this week with the suspension of defensive tackle Alan Branch.

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links – 11/19

November 19, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlRLVUrdouw

Step 1 of exorcising the demons that penetrated our collective eyes and hearts last Sunday night was this commercial. We all know TB can slice up a defense like a pizza pie, but this acting job had Leo DiCaprio taking notes. Just magnificent. Unfortunately, Tommy’s acting reviews were stronger than the team’s performance against Seattle. Is the sky falling? No, of course not. But is it okay to be upset with the gameplay and execution? Absolutely. And if you watched a series of Sunday’s bout, you know exactly where we have to start for this weeks’ links. Hint: it’s not on Brady’s side of the ball.

Let’s break the ice with one from boss man Mike D, who broke down the defensive effort here after an All-22 film review. It’s a very nice breakdown of some critical plays/drives, stats, and X’s and O’s. I’m not going to get deep in the weeds of how and why the Pats defense struggled like Mike did, but I want to specifically note his concluding paragraph on the Patriots’ defensive unit:

Over the bye I called for more simplification of the roles on defense to let the guys focus on winning their battles. That’s the opposite of what they did here, spinning the dial between zone and man and picking their spots with rushers. I wonder how they’d change things up in a re-match, because this wasn’t the 2014 Seahawks team. This was a spread team that did to us what we usually do, pick the right matchups and sling it.

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links-11/12

November 12, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

tom brady bill belichick

“Seattle…Seattle…Seattle…Seattle…Seattle.”- William Stephen Belichick, 11/09/2016

Eloquent. Articulate. Expressive. On that note, let’s get to some links. Ben Volin (Boston Globe) offers his game preview, opining that the Seahawks haven’t changed all that much since Super Bowl XLI. Other than a banged up Michael Bennett, this Seattle defense is mostly the same. Earl Thomas flying around the field, Wagner and Chancellor manning the middle of each level, Sherman running his mouth and locking down a side, and Cliff Avril getting after the passer. They aren’t overly big up front, but they’re explosive. The linebackers can do it all, on every down. And the corners are big, strong, physical, and effective. Scheme wise? Unlike the Pats, who are game plan dependent, the Seahawks are what they are. Volin writes:

“You know this defense. They don’t do much to confuse you, but still use their exceptional athleticism and talent to overwhelm and shut down the opposing offense…Up front, they play a basic four-man front, and they can create a lot of havoc…The Seahawks’ linebackers are active and will blitz frequently…On the back end, the Seahawks still play the same coverage — either press man-to-man or Cover 3 (in which the two cornerbacks and the free safety cover the deep thirds of the field).”

In other words, there are no secrets here. Line up and beat them. Period.

Best/Worst in Weekly Patriots Links-11/5

November 5, 2016 by Nikolas Davos

bill belichick GIF

Wow. And here I thought we’d be getting a nice, relaxing bye week. Talk about a roller coaster of emotions. Morale couldn’t have been much higher coming out of Ralph Wilson Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Sure, the defense wasn’t great (more on this later), but the offense looked flat out unstoppable with Brady continuing to light the world on fire every 7 days. Plus, save for a handful of teams, the quality of play in the league is down (Exhibit A: AFC East). As nit-picky as we can be, and as flawed as we perceive them, the reality is the Pats are the most well rounded team with the greatest top to bottom talent in the game. Locally, Chris Price (WEEI) summarized the Patriots first half of the regular season in his “What We Learned Sunday” piece:

“It’s still pretty early, still,” cautioned Tom Brady when asked about reaching the midway point with a 7-1 mark. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

Yes, but with apologies to Yogi Berra, when it comes to the AFC East, it’s getting late early. The Bills are starting to fade. The Dolphins are wildly inconsistent and the Jets are just lucky to be 3-5.

In other words, rinse and repeat. Don’t be the guy that picks against the Pats in the AFC East before the season starts. Until proven otherwise, the division goes through New England, no matter what the circumstance.