PatsPropaganda

You know, I really don’t think it matters who they play or where. It just comes down to the Pats playing 60 minutes of their best football. If they do that, they should beat anybody in the NFL. 

They don’t get blown out, so you know the games will be close, it’s just a question of whether or not they can put together six awesome games now. 

It’s kind of the great unknown. On one hand, you could see a scenario where without Gronk their offense regresses and if their defense doesn’t get better on third downs, they just wouldn’t be able to score enough to keep up.

But this team always seems to rally at this time of year, regardless of injuries. Same thing happened after they lost arguably their defensive MVP in Andre Carter late in 2011.

We’ll see how it plays out, but I think all the potential AFC matchups have their advantages and disadvantages. But if the Pats show up for the whole game, they will make some noise.

Yeah, I noticed that as well and Nick Underhill pointed it out in his Tuesday film analysis. I don’t think it’s a total loss for Amendola yet, he obviously caught the game-winning touchdown against the Browns, but I do think Brady still is more comfortable with Edelman, and really, how could he not be?

Amendola will never be 100 percent this year with his groin injury and I think to some extent he’s missing some of his explosiveness. I think he’ll take some good strides forward next season. But with Edelman a free agent, it will be interesting to see how they handle him with Amendola already due to make a sizable chunk of change.

Given Amendola’s contract they’d take a $6.8 million cap hit next season if they were to cut him, so they’re probably not going to cut him.

But no question, Amendola will have to step up and make some big plays if the Pats are going to make run.

I’m not trying to imply anything, but why doesn’t Brady throw to Amendola here? pic.twitter.com/0i9V51mNml

— Nick Underhill (@Nick_Underhill) December 10, 2013

Full thoughts on the playoff push are here.

As for the Dolphins this weekend, I can’t remember being this excited for a game at the end of the season in a long time. It’s there for the taking, which is really unbelievable considering everything this team has been through.

I re-watched the first Dolphins game last night and I think the Phins know what kind of opportunity this is for them and really, their playoff lives are on the line. We’ll get their best. And if you only watched the first half of the first game, it was Miami that was dominating. 

Their run game is clicking and I expect we’ll see a heavy dose of that. Hopefully Siliga can play up to the potential we saw last week. Pats will also have Talib this time around, they didn’t have him in the first one, so I expect he’ll draw Mike Wallace on plenty of snaps. 

The biggest problem might be Clay, can Jamie Collins matchup with him now? How about Dane Fletcher?

In all, this game has the chance to be one of the crowning wins of the 2013 season. But even a victory over the Dolphins won’t help them next week against the Ravens, we can talk about that next week.

As always, expect this one to go down to the wire. I think we’ll either see one of two storylines: the Pats finally gel on the road and put together their best game of the season, or the injuries finally catch up with them and they fall short.

Either way, this is a defining game of the season, if not THE defining game.