PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Patriots set to tag Logan Mankins

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In what is probably the must unsurprising news of this young off-season, Ian Rapoport reports that the Patriots will tag Logan Mankins as their Franchise player. So yes, that is why you might’ve heard a guttural scream and things breaking from the general vicinity of the Mankins home region of California.

If Mankins thought the Patriots would allow him to just walk to off the reservation to whatever contract tickled his fancy he was surely mistaken. But he’s smarter than that. He had to know this was coming.

The good news is that it looks like they’re taking a similar approach like they took with Vince Wilfork last year. Mankins still hasn’t been officially tagged yet so perhaps they are talking about a new contract. This could be unlikely due to the uncertainty surrounding the CBA, but it’s nice to at least have a little hope they’re only using the tag as a way to extend their negotiating window before someone like the Jets swoop in and offer a $3 billion dollar contract.

Mankins is exactly the kind of player the Patriots (or any football team for that matter) need. Granted the Pats did okay without him early last season, but there’s no denying the effect he had upon his return. Re-signing Mankins long term would lock up a nice young piece to build around for the next decade.

If a long term deal isn’t reached and Mankins has to play under the franchise tag there’s no doubt he’ll play just as pissed off as he was last year. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe the Pats should just keep tagging him every season just to make sure he keeps up his bad attitude and mauling ways.

Either way I hope he’s a Patriot for a long time.

Logan Mankins Patriots

Patriots’ Patrick Chung still explaining botched punt fake

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You know, I haven’t seen a single second of the Jets playoff loss since the game ended, it slowly awaits a viewing sometime in March if it’s lucky. However it seems like the failed fake punt is still very much on the minds of the media and fans alike.

On Thursday, Pat Chung showed up to read to some kids at an elementary school, and so did, in the words of Mike Reiss:

Reporters from Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Comcast SportsNet, WBZ-TV, Kraft Sports Productions, Fall River & ESPNBoston here at Chung event

Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media Watch pointed out via twitter it was curious that the entire army showed up to an offseason charity appearance. As Bruce said:

would the media crowd be as big if it were James Sanders out there today? I’m cynical.

Just last week even the Sports Guy was still bemoaning the play via his mailbag.

Q: I’ve been playing the Pats-Jets game over and over again in Madden for the past two weeks, and never once have I panicked and accidentally let a special teams player audible to a fake punt.– Brendan, Boston

SG: (Nodding grimly.)

Okay, so clearly every one is hung up on this particular play, which by the way wasn’t accidentally allowed or made by a just a “special teams player”. But I haven’t even seen it since it happened. So I was finally goaded into re-watching it so I could form my own opinion about the call.

The first question: Could he have made the first down if he handled it cleanly? 

Even Trent Dilfer, master of all things football knowledge, and Mr. Factorback Merrill Hoge couldn’t even agree on that, Dilfer told Bill Simmons on a recent podcast. They even called in all their interns and even they were divided. How controversial!

Well let’s have a look:

Pause it at :23 and tell me he isn’t walking to a first down. It’s Chung’s delay on mishandling the snap that allows Eric Smith to beat Sammy Morris’ block. If Chung catches it cleanly, Morris kicks Smith inside and Chung cuts around them with at least ten yards before the double team on the gunner can stop, cut back and tackle him.

So it really should’ve worked. The Patriots had four blockers for three Jets. The call is aggressive, there’s no doubt. Especially in a playoff game. But if successful it would’ve left the Pats just outside field goal range and they had the numbers. You can understand why they called it and why it should’ve worked.

So I guess the question is do you want an aggressive team, or do you want a team that plays it safe?

If Brady had been picked six on his halftime lob to Branch vs the Bears would you have been bullshit at him for throwing it?

Frankly I’m often surprised when teams aren’t more aggressive like the Patriots. The Ravens in particular played conservatively versus the Pats and it ended up costing them.

So while the call was an aggressive one, it’s what we’ve come to expect of Bill Belichick. Especially in a situation like that where the Jets might’ve been sleeping. Tactically I can understand why the call was made. However it went completely wrong, and the mistake was compounded when the Jets scored a touchdown (I think, right? Again, still haven’t re-watched this travesty yet).

As for Chung it was a confident call, and one that I hope he continues to be willing to make. He boofed it. He admitted he boofed it. So let’s move on.

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It was more training camp than a game,” said McCourty. “Lining up against Randy (Moss), I want to say probably the first five or six times Randy went deep he caught all six of them. So it was ‘all right, am I really going to be good in this league? I think Randy Moss is great, but I’ve got to be able to stop him at least once if I’m going to play in the league

Devin McCourty on his first “rookie moment”

https://www.patspropaganda.com/it-was-more-training-camp-than-a-game-said/

An NFL blogger fans’ take on the CBA circus

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The NFL owners and players cancelled their negotiations on a new CBA today, and with a March 3rd expiration of the current CBA looming large, fans are obviously starting to feel a little pessimistic. If we get to March 3rd without a new CBA it’s seems likely that, in the words of Peter King, “football games will be lost”.

I find the whole situation to be pretty disturbing so I’ve avoided commenting on it. Of course negotiations of this nature, when so much money is involved, are always difficult. These entities are on a level of trying to make billions into trillions while most of us are just worrying about thousands.

Frankly what bothers me the most has been the rhetoric coming from the NFL and owners. Orwellian terms like “Enhanced season”. Ironically for me it’s real propaganda that has been coming out of Goodell’s NFL for the past year. 

Last summer, when fans would logically ask why negotiations hadn’t already started we were told that they needed the hard deadline of March 3rd to make things get done. Well here we are three weeks from that deadline, and there’s no more progress today than we had last summer. We’ve known for over a year where the two sides stand on the issues. 

How do you push for 18 games and still say you’re concerned about the players health? How can you continue to say fans are for the “enhanced season” when there’s clearly a great majority of knowledgeable fans that I see every day who are dead against it? I have yet to see a fan argue for an 18 game season. I really wish the NFL would stop speaking for the fans and let the fans speak for themselves.

I believe the fans are clearly on the players side. At least the fans that are paying attention. Fans who aren’t paying attention see two more opportunities to get drunk and watch football and say “hells yeah”.

The real issue isn’t about the rich owners versus the rich players like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. The real issue is about the average NFL player whose career lasts just a few seasons. It’s about the people who put their well-being in jeopardy every Sunday and will never have a million dollar contract. It’s about being responsible and taking care of the people who put life and limb at risk for our entertainment. That should be priority number one! 

What has been apparent for the last couple years since Roger Goodell took over is that his goal as commissioner is to take the NFL to another level. He made the draft a primetime event, they’re want to make a game in London a yearly event. They want to take the NFL brand worldwide, and now it seems like they don’t care if it’s at the expense of the players or the fans.

You can agree or disagree with that philosophy. This is American capitalism, and they have the right to grow their business however they see fit. But such a philosophy is not without risk.

You’re betting that fans will still want to attend regular season football games in mid-January. You’re betting that the rest of the world has the same taste for violent sport that Americans have. You’re betting that the teams that play for the Super Bowl in mid-to-late February won’t just be the teams that won the battle of attrition. 

In the age of HD, and a coming age of 3-D television, and the current difficult economic times that are a reality for many of the fans, I think the NFL is about to leave a lot of us behind.

Given the choice of watching a meaningless regular season game on January 20th with weather in the teens, at a cost of over $100 per ticket, $50 for parking and whatever else you have to pay for beer, or watching the game in HD or even 3D, from the comfort of my own couch, with my car freely parked in my driveway and a store bough twelve pack for $10, well… the choice is pretty clear.

We can only hope that negotiations resume quickly, because a lockout is not in anyone’s interest. But the old adage “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” remains true and the NFL seems hell bent on fixing what isn’t broken.

The only thing that truly appears broken to me is how the NFL treats their players and fans, on whose backs the NFL dynasty was built.