Ah, the bye week. That two week mid-season lull in between games when we the fans are forced to take a mini-football break before the stretch run.
For the players and coaches however it’s a time to get healthy, look at what’s working and what isn’t and set the course that will Hoodie-willing lead to the promise land.
Here are the top five things I’m hoping for over the bye week.
1. Get Healthy – the most obvious one so we’ll lead with it. Along with the significant injuries (Jerod Mayo) there have been plenty of dings through the first six games and this should be a time to get healthy. Guys we most need back at 100%:
- Jerod Mayo
- Albert Haynesworth
- Julian Edelman
- Sebastian Vollmer
- Ras-I Dowling
Getting Josh Barrett, Patrick Chung, Leigh Bodden, Aaron Hernandez and Matt Light some time off to get over their lingering injuries should also provide a big boost.
2. Devin McCourty get your mojo back – I’m not sure if McCourty is suffering from a sophomore slump because he’s just not playing well or if teams have a sense of how to pick on him that they didn’t have last year. I hope it’s the former and not the latter because that’s correctable. McCourty didn’t really start to come on until late October last year anyway, let’s hope the same thing happens this year. The Pats need him to step up in a major way.
3. Extend Wes Welker and/or Jerod Mayo – why not take the extra time to lock up some of the vital pieces of the puzzle. If not Mayo or Welker how about Andre Carter, who’s only one a one year deal, or Benjarvus Green-Ellis, who should be a fairly easy deal to get done now before he breaks 1000 yards again. Of course knowing the Pats they’ll probably start the contract extensions with Gary Guyton. Ugh.
4. New tweaks for offense – Call it an off game for Tom Brady but not counting the final drive it seemed like taking away Wes Welker for the most part was a fairly effective way to slow down the Pats offense. Teams will see what the Cowboys did, and granted they might not be able to execute it, but the offense looked very much stoppable for much of last Sunday’s game. I’m not a huge “blueprint to stop the Pats offense” guy, but they cannot become over-reliant on Welker. The Patriots must stay one step ahead and figure out how to better protect Welker from coverage, while also incorporating their running backs more into the pass game. Kevin Faulk could provide a major boost in this area.
5. Figure out a way to get Chad Ochocinco more involved in the offense before the Boston sports media combusts – Who cares if the offense has consistently moved the ball and put up points without Chad, he’s a big name and if he doesn’t have a break out game soon he just might overtake the Red Sox as the lead story on all sports programming.