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Coffin Corner

Coffin Corner: What Will This Year’s Shocking Super Bowl Narrative Be?

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As we all know, with the extra week before the Super Bowl there are a lot of pages that need to be viewed. A lot air time that needs to be shouted into. A lot of ‘Tomato Cans’ (read Straw Men) that Need Crushing. That usually means we get an insane, regurgitated, ALL CAPS version of the season’s scandals (unless they involve Peyton Manning’s wife chewing HGH like Pez). But this year, I think we will see something decidedly different. Before we look forward, let’s reflect on the media narratives going into the Patriots previous eight appearances:

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Coffin Corner: The Benefits of Fan Fic and STATS!!!

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Friday’s — well it wasn’t exactly a hit job — what should we call it? I think, Fan Fic? Fan Fiction is basically where people take their favorite show, book or movie and develop their own stories for the characters.  It’s responsible for some really bad writing and lots of gratuitous sex, but it’s also responsible for the billion dollar 50 shades franchise, which was Erika Mitchell’s kinky fan fic for the Twilight series. In this version, the love triangle centers around the principle characters of the New England Patriots for the last 20 years.

No cheating accusations, no conspiracies (really), just palace intrigue and open and juicy unanswered questions and also the new tidbit that Bill Belichick personally awards a Patriot Of The Week award now (good scoop, Seth!). My read on the piece is that it’s generally true without being accurate. It gathers a growing sense that there may be a rift, while suggesting there is evidence without presenting any.  I’m actually shocked, Wickersham never brought up Belichick high-fiving the offense after scoring on Miami late. I mean, what’s more scandalous than that?!

The biggest problem with the piece is that Wickersham never entered the building and likely never talked to anyone of import in the story. Maybe he talked to Guerrero or McDaniels or Patricia or one of the younger coaches, but no one who knows anything about what he’s purporting to know. So it’s just idle workplace gossip and rumor-mongering, which as we’ve learned is sort of Wickersham’s thing.

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Coffin Corner: Who Is This Imposter? and a few Half-Thoughts

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In the last few weeks we’ve heard several notable conspiracy stories about disruptions happening within the Patriots locker room. The coach has reportedly restricted Tom Brady’s health guru, Alex Guerrero’s access to the locker room, which has singlehandedly thrown the Patriot Way out the window. That Brady and Belichick hate each other and the team trading Jimmy Garoppolo only exacerbated it. And the league is concerned with the Patriots ability to Jedi mindtrick Jesse James into not “surviving the ground”. Mike Florio, ProFootballTalk and the local talk shows frequently traffic in these sort of fact-ish stories..

I’m going to put the Mike Florio lens on something that will absolutely reveal a far larger conspiracy sitting right under our noses.

Something far more intriguing than some supposed rift. Something far more mysterious than any use of Ernie Adams’ ESP.  Something far more confounding than any of you ‘sheeple’ realize… and it’s been staring us right in the face. At every press conference, every podium visit and every weekly breakdown with Zo.

Let me start with the evidence:

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Coffin Corner: Greedy Goodell is a Patriots fan for a day

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Numbers are increasingly how we digest and analyze football play: fantasy stats, advanced analytics, workout metrics, pass charts, etc. Even writers describe game narratives differently than they used to, abandoning word salads like “The Catch”, ‘The Drive,” “The Butt Fumble” for numerical idioms: 28-3, 18-1, TB12. But there’s one big, vast, terrifyingly yuge number that defines what it means to be an NFL owner.

$25,000,000,000.00

That number tells the story of why owners stand by the leadership of Commissioner Roger Goodell, despite his objectively horrible performance. It tells the story of the league’s response to President Trump’s anger at the protesting players. It tells the story of ignored CTE research. It tells the story of non-guaranteed contracts. Abandoned fanbases. Tax-payer funded stadiums. It tells the story of everything that NFL ownership is about in 2017. A singular narrative of Greed.

The owners are greedy. They don’t hide it. They want their product to be worth $25,000,000,000.00 and no amount of player protest, early-onset dementia or Thursday Night Football will get in the way. It is their explicit, transparent, shouted from the rooftop aspiration. In this pursuit, they have one problem: The NFL isn’t getting any more popular in the United States. In fact, it appears that the sport is losing eyeballs based on television ratings and attendance. The US market is saturated. Full to the brim. That’s why this Sunday is very important for them.

Expanding to $25,000,000,000 hinges on one potential development, global expansion. An NFL Team will be an international market in the next five years. Goodell has expressed this desire publically, despite the many complications it presents. Sunday is his attempt to whet the appetite of someone like Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire.

Ironically, to drum up interest, Roger Goodell needs to champion the team he seems to antagonize the most, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. The Patriots are the best sales tools the NFL can offer. The fact that the Patriots have never given up a home game for an international game confirms their negotiating leverage. The league needs them more than they need to sell a few million more jerseys in.

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Coffin Corner: Five Patriots Quick Hitters And Other Thoughts

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1.Marty Rex Makes The Locker Room and Patriots Twitter Better:

The addition of Martellus Bennett is starting to feel a lot like the Blount/Steelers thing. An unhappy player who wants to win deciding that rather than play out his season being unused, he orchestrates his departure to go back “home”. Marty’s health is a big honking question mark (that I am sure the league is already looking into), but having a guy like that in the fold is exciting. The locker room chemistry misses Edelman, they need some more levity and Marty Rex is a good sport. I’m excited to have him in there even if he’s not playing.  With Cannon out and Waddle on Von Miller, I am thinking this is a Dwayne Allen week, where he will be utilized as a blocker in max protect, but the addition of Marty may alleviate the need for that going forward.

Also, it offers a welcome reminder of how special the guys who joined the Patriots last year were.  Here’s a video of Chris Long trying to cheer up his opponent.

Love that dude too.  Speaking of dudes:

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Coffin Corner: Can Belichick Learn to Share His Roster? *Coughs up a loogie*

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By far, the most amazing thing about parenthood is watching how children learn stuff. Every time, you see a neurological spark that connects a cause to an effect your heart swells: “My kid’s a forking genius.” The kid sees a stopped bus then he sees the red light. Then says: ‘bus stop at red lights’. “My kid’s a forking genius.” Every time he notifies me “I poop”…. I greet the disgusting revelation with “My kid’s a forking genius.”

It’s the most amazing thing to witness. And yet it happens to every parent, for every kid. Language, understanding spatial relationships and even the tenants of physics are innate naturally developed cognitive skills. My son learned Einstein’s theory of gravity the first time he walked down the stairs carrying three trucks, did a “yard sale” and bloodied his chin. “Fork!  My kid’s not a genius.” But one thing that child professionals, teachers and pediatricians tell you is that the concept of sharing is not innate. There is no inherent understanding for humans to share. If you left four kids in a Biosphere, they would likely never learn to share. Sharing is a learned trait, instilled by the teachings of families, parents, mentors, religions and communities.

And as we know Bill Belichick is happy to share… some things. He always shares credit graciously, he shares his personal feelings about how dumb writers are with aplumb, he shares his workplace with his children, his life with a spouse or girlfriend, but there’s one thing that he has had a pretty hard time sharing over the years.  Final say over roster construction.

Everyone does their job.  Brady is the CEO on offense, the Krafts are the CEOs of the company and Belichick is the CEO of the roster. That is the biggest reason that he is in New England in the first place.  He was promised limited owner intervention into the team building aspect, also the fact that the Jets suck donkey butts. And let’s just say that after 5 Super Bowls, 16 going on 17 winning seasons, 14 AFC East titles, it’s been a good recipe for success. Stay in your lane.

But at appears on first blush that Trading Jimmy G marks a huge forking fork in the road.

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Coffin Corner: Matt Patricia’s White Whale – 3rd and 2

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If the Bucs employed my two-year-old at kicker, last week’s “run-it-back” defensive gameplan would have failed. Should have failed. The Patriots didn’t have time to fix the fairly large-scale issues on a short week, so they went with “same but try harder” strategy and eeked one out.  But that was lucky.

The missed assignments, the wide-open receivers, the lack of a consistent pass rush, the poor tackling (Hightower even went for the up high knockout hit instead of wrapping up), all of these things were still there. Nearly two and ½ months from the beginning of training camp and the Patriots Bend But Don’t Break Defense is broken.

Some of the fixes can come from practiced areas: problems of effort, communication breakdowns, and poor tackling technique.  But with the elite play and professionalism that we’ve seen from the players over their careers, it’s my belief that this is becoming a breakdown in play-calling, specifically on 3rd down and specifically in the 4th quarter.

3rd downs in the 4th quarter are the most important plays for any defense, those are the plays that silence opposing crowds, flip fields and end games. And through 5 games, it seems this is the albatross around the Patriots defensive coaching staff’s neck.

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