PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Tweets of Note: Patriots Camp Catch-up

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Things are about to get real at Patriots training camp next week. With the Jags coming to town for joint practices and then the preseason kicking off against them on Thursday night, the preseason is about to begin. With that comes “real” football and some actual film to break down which will be a welcome departure from relying on camp reports.

The team has gotten a bit dinged up in recent days and as a result Bill Belichick has been pulling back a bit, especially on important veteran starters. I’m sure the entire team is looking forward to competing against the Jags, and those practices should see the intensity shoot back up.

The Pats will be practicing both Friday and Saturday, then will have Sunday off prior to the joint practices that start on Monday.

Let’s take a quick look at the biggest storylines in camp right now…

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A Closer Look at the Patriots’ Roster Bubble

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Today is Tom Brady‘s 40th birthday and it also marks the end of then first week of training camp. While I don’t really have any big Brady celebration plans (because your favorite QB turning 40 isn’t exactly something to celebrate), it’s a good time to take a quick reset on what we’ve learned and how the roster is flushing out.

The headline of week one was Rob Ninkovich‘s retirement, and though that opens up a roster spot, there are still plenty of bubble guys who will be in the fight of their lives to make the team.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the bubble players who have emerged in the first week and weigh their chances of making the roster.

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Coffin Corner: Introducing ** The A-Team ** The NFL’s New Best Secondary

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The Seahawks have the Legion of Boom, the secondary that defines excellence in the modern NFL. The unit helmed by Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman instills the fear of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy on receivers on a weekly basis. The duo of safeties uses solid and technically sound acts of violence to intimidate opposing pass catchers who seek refuge over the middle of the field. It’s an impressive scheme that requires outstandingly athletic and brutal safeties and opportunistic corners to be successful. Pete Carroll has invested heavily in this unit, using almost 1/5 of his cap space on those three players. That may seem like a sustainable allocation of resources on arguably the best three players on your team, but as we saw last year they completely cratered after suffering the Earl Thomas injury because they could no longer serve their mantra “every last blade of grass” without depth at the position.

The Patriots secondary unit are waiting in the wings to take the mantle of best secondary in the NFL and Belichick spends a similar percentage of his cap on their core secondary. Though, because we’re talking about the Patriots: they employ the same amount of money roughly $18 million on FIVE core players in the defensive backfield rather than Seattle’s three stars. This unit is set to make a splash and should rival the best secondary in football and to do that they need a nickname – That’s where – huh? Do you hear that? Wait, what’s that sound?

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5 New Patriots Emerging in Camp

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

There have only been five Patriots training camp practices, and while we don’t want to annoy Bill Belichick by getting overzealous with our analysis just yet, it’s obvious that some young and new players are emerging and could take on significant roles with the team this season.

It’s an annual right of passage — some random undrafted player or veteran free agent castoff suddenly clicks in the system and becomes someone the team leans on. This summer has been no different, and while some of those emerging were more anticipated than others, it’s clear that the 2017 Patriots will have new faces in a number of spots.

Let’s take a look at the five guys getting the most attention early in camp.

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Tweets of Note: Patriots Training Camp Practice #5

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Stopped in for a little bit at training camp practice number five this morning, just long enough to see a little 11-on-11 work. It was a much lighter crowd than I saw on Thursday and Friday last week, with plenty of open spots on the side hill where you could watch.

It was a hot morning and tempers were flaring as Julian Edelman and Stephon Gilmore got into a shoving match and were both ejected from practice. One injury note that popped up — Elandon Roberts went down, had his foot looked at then taped and then hopped right back into practice. Roberts seems like one of those uber tough guys who would need to lose a limb to miss time.

James O’Shaughnessy also had to leave due to an injury.

Here’s some other tweets of note from the dog days of training camp…

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Belichick Hoping for Ground Balance

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For whatever reason Bill Belichick always seems to open up a bit more than usual when talking with Pat Kirwan on Sirius XM Radio and Monday’s show was no exception. Kirwan, who poked his head into then Ninkovich retirement presser, has one of then best books learning how to watch football — Take Your Eye Off The Ball.

This quote stood out to me, as Belichick mentioned they were looking for more balance out of their backfield.

“Hopefully we will be a little bit less of a Blount on first down [and] second-and-short, Lewis on second down, White on third down — that type of [set-up],” Belichick said on SiriusXM NFL Radio.

“Part of that for us was getting our best player to do what he does best type of thing. Hopefully, this year, we’ll have a little more balance between the running game and passing game. Again, LG was primarily a runner. He didn’t have a lot of receiving production. The reverse is true of James White. So hopefully with our backs this year we’ll have a little more balance and be a little less predictable from that spot.”

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A PatsProp Ninkovich Retrospective

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Rob Ninkovich came along roughly the same time this blog really kicked into high gear and thus I felt really attached to him and his incredible emergence. As I’ve written many times, what interested me most in the early days of PatsProp was the defensive rebuild that occurred in 2009, the year Nink arrived.

No one embodied the Patriots rebuild more than Nink and when we talk about Belichick rebuilding the defense from scratch to win two more Super Bowls, Ninkovich will be exhibit A of how they did it.

2009 was the year that the Patriots lost Bruschi, Harrrison, Vrabel and Seymour and began laying the groundwork for a defense that would make critical plays to win Super Bowls just a few years down the road. That leadership void needed to be filled and who better to fill it than a free agent long snapper? It’s so Belichick it hurts.

But it wasn’t an easy progression. The 2010 and 2011 Patriots defenses ranked 21st and 30th respectively in Football Outsiders’ DVOA efficiency ratings, the worst and t-3rd worst under Belichick. From those ashes only a couple players survived to become building blocks, none more impressive than Ninkovich.

The comparisons to the previous #50 Mike Vrabel are apt. Ninkovich was a castoff on his last chance who turned that chance into two Super Bowl trophies.

I thought a fun way to look back would be to pull my commentary from the early days of the blog, to track Ninkovich’s progress through the eyes of your faithful blogger. I was always one who believed in Ninkovich, even if I called him Ninkopoop, which was a term of endearment.

Let’s take a look back, and if you’d like to see all the Ninkovich posts from the old blog, including media and lots of quotes from coaching and analysts about him you can CLICK HERE.

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