An Independent Patriots Blog
Patriots-Bengals Twitter Ticket Giveaway!
I’ve got a pair of tickets to the Pats-Bengals game to give away thanks to nrgenergy. Retweet the linked tweet (also here) with a funny (or sad) caption. The three that make me laugh the most get posted here on the blog at 6pm EST and then everyone can vote for the winner!!
Poll closes at 8pm EST. And I’ve got another pair to giveaway tomorrow!
Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 4: Pats vs Chiefs Barstool Sports: Boston
As always, on one sums it up better than Jerry Thornton. On the bright side, it’s already Tuesday afternoon. We’re about 18 hours from it being all Bengals. Which is a good thing, I think?
Hot Rod dropping truth bombs. The one that stood out to me most was:
“This was a case of the Patriots going into a situation and you’d think the players just showed up and said, ‘OK, I’m part of the Patriots, we’re going to win this game.’
I’m not really going to kill any specific players this week. The whole offense looks broken at the moment and I think it’s impossible to pull out one element and say this is the cause of it all.
The protection problems have certainly snowballed, to the point where Brady doesn’t seem to trust his pocket even when the protection is okay. And even when it is okay it looks chaotic. So I do think this is the place to start, but all of them have been problems.
So I think the first part to fixing the offense starts with establishing trust for Brady. I’d do it by sticking with a starting five as long as possible until performance problems absolutely demand someone sit and even then we just need to find the best combo and stick with it asap.
Then I’d rededicate to the running game. Let the OL go forth and hit someone. They’re all huge, try to use that size. I’d rather go three-and-out on a run-run-pass series than a pass-pass-pass series.
This isn’t the pick your poison offense of 2011 anymore. They can’t go from power to a spread. They need to find what they’re good at and just be good at it. Stop with the cutesy, overthought game plans. This isn’t that team anymore.
Time for Patriots coaches to reassess – New England Patriots Blog – ESPN Boston
Good read from Mike Reiss on the coaching and gameplanning. The season hangs on finding an identity now. They’re no longer the same offense that can do anything pretty well. They just need to find one thing.
It’s going to be a rough week Patriots fans. Everyone will have their theory about what the root of the Pats problems are.
Tom Brady doesn’t have enough weapons. There’s no deep threat. Belichick the GM isn’t helping Belichick the coach. They shouldn’t have traded Logan Mankins. The play calling. You’ve heard them all by now and it didn’t take a blow out to make any of them definitively true.
On defense it was pretty simple, they weren’t ready to play. They were out-coached. Blown tackles started them off on the wrong foot, over compensating with over-aggressiveness just made it worse, and things snowballed from there.
Offensively the protection was a bit better but the blocking still looks messy and out-of-sync. The running game is all but ignored. And in a recurring theme, teams are just stacking the line of scrimmage because they don’t think the Pats offense can beat them beyond seven yards.
Thus the box is stacked for the running game, and any receiver who catches a short pass is immediately killed if he doesn’t get immediately to the ground.
The defense still has potential. They were way to sloppy last night and that is a concern – not that they don’t have the talent, but it seems almost as if they think they don’t have to earn it every game. Once they start playing like they have to earn it every down, they’ll be pretty good. There’s too much talent for them to be as bad as they were last night.
Offensively, the concerns are real and have been for a while. It’s as if they just can’t get our of their own way to get this offense to where it needs to be. Everything seems overthought on offense. They can’t put two good plays together at this point.
The hard part is that after a quarter of the season you should know to an extent what you have and I can’t say for sure what the Patriots have on either side of the ball.
I tend to think the defense can and will be okay, but I have real concerns about the offense that run deep and have for a while now. Pointing out individual players seems like a waste because everyone is at fault.
My only prescription? Find the best OL combo and stick with it. Establish a level of trust from Brady because he doesn’t have that now. Lean on the running game more. Get Dobson in there and do whatever they can to pull some coverage away from the line of scrimmage.
Ignore the noise this week. There’s plenty to be excited about this weekend with an undefeated team coming to town on national TV. Things look bad right now, but one thing I’ve learned is to never count the Patriots out until their season is over.
The season isn’t even close to over.
Tom Brady Cannot Stop – NYTimes.com Epic Brady read, with some insight into his early-season calf injury. The good news, he feels great and is ready to go for the Super Bowl.