Pats Posits: Is this just fantasy?

Last night I had the chance to sit in the Draft Kings luxury box for the game and well, this was a night that may never be topped in my Patriots fandom. I was able to bring my wife to her first game and let’s just say the bar that was set will be near impossible to top for her. Free food, free drinks, free programs and the best seats I’ve ever watched a game at Gillette from. I’m still processing the night and hence, a delay on the posits about the game.

Stack this one right up there with my best live game memories — 2006 AFCDG in San Diego, the 2009 opener, 2014 vs Broncos and now this one, 2018 vs Packers. Wow, a huge night on and off the field!

The game itself was another nice reminder that the Patriots are on an insane sports run. They’re stepped outside their box on defense. Gave Cordarrelle Patterson a bunch of carries and watched Josh Gordon put up his best night yet. I don’t want to call it Gordon’s breakout game yet because even at five catches for 130 yards and a touchdown I’m not quite sure we’ve seen the ceiling with him yet.

The Pats were undermanned, didn’t play all that great without Michel and Gronk, but they did what they always do. Execute the gameplan. Play good fundamental football across the board. Don’t beat themselves. That was enough to beat another historically great player, Aaron Rodgers.

Here are some quick posits as I remain in recovery mode from a perfect evening. Thank you again to Draft Kings!

— So now everbody’s like ‘respect the defense’ now eh? I don’t know how many years in a row some need to get it bashed into their head, but defense isn’t about stars, it’s how well they execute as a team. I don’t care who you’ve got, if they’ve got a great gameplan, play good fundamentals and execute it they’re going to be competitive. Anyone can acquire talent, but there’s a reason only a handful of teams are consistently competitive. The Pats defense does start slow, but they get fundamentally better almost every week and soon they morph in this defense we saw last night and everyone acts surprised like the same exact thing hasn’t happened for a decade now.

— It was awesome to see the Pats really go all out messing with Rodgers before the snap. Even watching through a jack-and-coke squinty eye I was excited to see them putting all their safeties down and really muddying the reads. Usually, the Pats are pretty straightforward presnap, but not in this one and it had just enough effect to get the key turnover and stops. The secondary was on point all night long and continue to play as a seven-deep squad even without Eric Rowe. Jason McCourty has been a quieter but more effective corner opposite Gilmore. Gilmore has been shutdown. McCourty, Chung and Harmon are in sync. Jones is feisty and competitive in the slot and JC Jackson continues to get his feet wet. There’s a lot to love here and Duke Dawson will have a challenge seeing snaps if he’s activated.

— At a certain point I just said screw and let’s just run Patterson all night long and that’s what happened. He has no power, but if he gets a seam he might bust one soon. And to that point, I’d just rest Michel this week and give him the bye to heal up. Of course, that’s not what they’ll do, they’ll probably give him 20 carries against the Titans. I’d rest Gronk too.

— After last week’s weird incident it appears everything is on track with Josh Gordon and obviously, they wouldn’t have won the game without him. He’s made Phillip Dorsett an afterthought and he’s such a difference maker between the team that came out of training camp and the team we’re seeing here in November. I get the feeling from now till January will be all about waiting and wondering if and when we’ll see a fully operational Brady-Michel-White-Gronk-Edelman-Gordon-Hogan-Patterson offense.

— This game erased any doubt in my mind if this team has “it”. They didn’t have “it” in 2009 and we all kind of knew it. But the 2018 are definitely a team that can play the way Bill Belichick needs them too. And that makes them very dangerous no matter how banged up they are come playoffs.