PatsPropaganda

From my perspective, a defensive end is priority number one in external free agency. They just can’t go into 2014 planning on running Ninkovich and Chandler into the ground playing almost every snap again.

Mark Anderson is the perfect model, that third guy who can be your designated pass rusher, but also fill in from time to time at defensive end. Buchanan gives some depth and I like him and would love to see him take a big leap forward, but they cannot rely upon that.

With the higher salary cap there will be a lot of big contracts thrown around, but I think the Pats have to make an investment in someone like Jared Allen or Lamarr Houston. 

It’s a matter of having guys who can win one-on-one without BB having to be overly aggressive with his scheme by sending extra guys on blitzes. Between Kelly/Wilfork and the young guys I think they’ll be okay at tackle one way or another, but they really need to add a third defensive end in free agency as I see it.

This is always how it is on both sides of the ball. Were they better with the best tight end in the NFL in the lineup? Of course. But each season is a story unto itself. 

The Patriots experiment in those early weeks to find out what they have. Sometimes you’ll see a random player getting a huge spike in playing time for apparently no reason. This is to see what his strengths are and if there’s a way to use him effectively. Maybe that player sticks or maybe they’re never seen again, it’s up to how he performs.

After the first four-to-six games they start to get a sense of who they are, again, on both sides of the ball. Who are the clutch players? How are defenses playing us? Can we threaten all dimensions of the defense? Where are our weak links?

Once questions like these start to get answered they will start to play to their strengths and hide their weaknesses as best that they can.

Invariably the Patriots are always rock solid after Thanksgiving, but look at some of their early season losses in recent years. The Cardinals in Foxboro, the Bills, even games they don’t lose that are strangely close.

It boils down to the fact that the football season is a campaign and, as I wrote yesterday, it’s about putting your best team out there to compete in January and that one game in February.

It’s not about blowing the Cardinals out in Week 2. They of course want and expect to win those games, but the early weeks are as much about self-evaluation as it is winning the game.

So by the playoff game against Indy what did they know? That their running game was a huge strength, that they could play man or zone defense, etc. When they played to those strengths and avoided what they weren’t good at, we saw the true 2013 Patriots.

Against the Broncos they just couldn’t hide their weaknesses, especially after Talib went down and they got in a hole. They couldn’t man up and their offense wasn’t explosive enough to come back in that situation.

So, the experiment will start again in 2014 with or without Gronk. They’ll feel it out in early weeks and then start to refine everything once November hits.

I hate that too. It’s just a way to try and minimize Brady or Belichick. People just use whatever fits their argument at the time – either Brady is just a system QB or Belichick stinks as a GM and having Brady has saved his team every season.

What we see with BB and TB in NE is how it’s supposed to be. The ideal. You have a coach and quarterback who are of the same mind. They’re relentless. They see the game the same way. They respect each other. The know how to attack defenses.

Brady is not the perfect quarterback. There are things he does better than others. He’s not going to be a “bombs away” QB, throwing 60 yard darts to deep receivers running free.

Instead, what we see in the New England is an offense that is tailored specifically to Brady. It plays to his strengths – reading the defense and hitting the open receiver quickly. That’s what Brady does well so that’s what they run their offense as.

You can change the parts and it will add new dimensions, but the core philosophy remains the same. Still, football is football and the simplest truth to an attack is that you want to stress all areas of a defense.

Deep, short, the seam, running backs who can run or catch. That is what makes an unstoppable offense. The Pats haven’t always been perfect, and in recent years they certainly would be able to attack the perimeter and deep a little better, but overall they know what they do best and that’s what they model their offense and game plans around.

If someone wants to call him a system quarterback that’s fine. He’s one of the best quarterbacks of all time, playing in a system expertly made to suit him.

But to say you can plug any quarterback in and he’d have the same results/success is idiotic.