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Observations: Day 2 of Tampa week – New England Patriots Blog – ESPN Boston

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Observations: Day 2 of Tampa week – New England Patriots Blog – ESPN Boston

I’ve remained intrigued by Bolden and these two bits from Field Yates’ observations below only reinforce that. He’ll need to make some plays in these next two games.

As they do each day, the Patriots got receiving work in for their running backs. After taking stock of the six backs on the roster, we’d rank them like this in terms of receiving ability: Shane Vereen, Leon Washington, Brandon Bolden, Stevan Ridley, LeGarrette Blount and George Winn. The top four are particularly comfortable handling the football in the receiving game, with Bolden getting the slight edge over Ridley due to route-running ability. Speaking of Bolden, he remains a player of interest for us. He doesn’t have any glaring deficiencies to his game, and we saw in small doses last season that he can be an effective runner. Whether or not he’s shown the coaching staff enough since his suspension in the middle of last season to take carries away from Ridley and others is a big question entering the season. He appears to be behind Blount as things currently stand, but with as much talent as Bolden has, he should have a chance to earn some carries back with a strong rest of his preseason.

Get your Pats tickets!!

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Vince, he’s certainly anchored our defense since ’05 really. In ’04 he was kind of a rotational player. He’s been a solid guy there for us. He’s played wherever we’ve needed him to play. He’s played nose, he’s played defensive tackle, he’s played defensive end. Yeah, as well as being a great player, he’s been a great leader. He does a great job with the younger players. He’s certainly one of the most respected players on the team, particularly along with [Jerod] Mayo – two of our most experienced defensive players – they provide a lot of leadership to the entire unit, as does Devin [McCourty] but Devin is a little younger and it’s more in the backend. As far as the front goes, Vince and Jerod, they both do a great job of that.

Bill Belichick Press Conference Transcript

https://www.patspropaganda.com/vince-hes-certainly-anchored-our-defense-since/

Defense remains the concern for Patriots

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Been beating this drum for a while, but with each passing day I’m less concerned about the Patriots offense and more concerned about the defense. Between the three rookie wide receivers, the running backs, Zach Sudfeld and Jake Ballard (and eventually Gronk), the offense is going to be just fine.

But in both the game against the Eagles and practice today against the Bucs, the Pats continue to get shredded through the air. Now, I realize it’s just preseason, and I never overreact to preseason, but I am concerned.

Injuries are mounting at cornerback where Alfonzo Dennard and Ras-I Dowling are still just watching practice. Logan Ryan has been thrust into a major role and we’re not even two weeks into August. Kyle Arrington is back on the outside. McCourty has moved back to corner for significant periods of time. Rookie Duron Harmon is getting a long look at safety.

What does all this add up to? A lot of uncertainty and inexperience in the secondary. For all the talk of continuity on the defense this season, things are starting to look a lot less continuous.

Now the good news is that the front seven is still intact, and despite razor-thin depth behind Vince Wilfork and Tommy Kelly, they should be able to ease some growing pains on the back end of the defense.

But it is critical that Chandler Jones, Rob Ninkovich and Marcus Benard are able to bring consistent pass rush pressure.

It’s an exciting time for the offense. There are a lot of new players making big plays, and consistently standing out. However, the defense has been sidetracked by injuries, and the results have lately looked a lot like the last two seasons.

There’s plenty of time for the defense to get healthy and gel, and obviously, the strength of a Bill Belichick defense is in their game planning and disguise; things we won’t see in preseason.

But the next two games will be critical for the defense to make some strides.

Tweets of Note from Tuesday’s Pats-Bucs Practice

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Always enjoy the reports from practices against other teams…

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Kenbrell Thompkins: The newest nightmare for AFC East defenses. 

From Tuesday’s practice with the Bucs:

https://www.patspropaganda.com/kenbrell-thompkins-the-newest-nightmare-for-afc/