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5 Burning Questions for the New England Patriots Entering Training Camp
New one up on Athlon Sports, taking a broad look at the five most intriguing spots headed into training camp. There are always questions each and every new year and this one is no exception, with the cornerback turnover leading the way.
The PatsPropaganda 2015 Patriots Season Preview Magazine is now available for $4 here!
My favorite time of the summer is when the NFL preview magazines start hitting the stands. Inevitably I buy all them, turn immediately to the Patriots page and find myself disappointed. The coverage is never as accurate or in-depth as I hope, so this year I decided to do my own book.
Inside you’ll find over 30 pages of pure Patriots – Statistical and scheme analysis for both the offense and defense. Depth charts and write ups on all of the Patriots players headed to training camp.
In addition to that is a breakdown of the Top 5 positional battles for training camp as well as a game-by-game preview of the regular season.
I don’t think you’ll find a more in-depth season preview out there and for a mere $4 (one dollar for each Super Bowl) I think it’s a pretty good bargain considering what you’ll pay for a magazine with maybe two pages of inaccurate Pats stuff.
https://www.patspropaganda.com/the-patspropaganda-2015-patriots-season-preview/
There really has been no offseason this year. Between the off-the-field controversies and OTAs being spread out, the Pats have been in the new constantly since winning the Super Bowl. Some of that is good, some of it obviously is not.
The important thing is not to read too much into OTAs, like who’s playing where, who looks good, etc. This is a teaching phase. Guys are getting reps all over the place, sometimes they’re not even on the field. So I’m not pencilling anything in anywhere just yet.
With that in mind here are some things that I think are significant from the last few weeks of open access to OTAs.
– With Spikes getting cut, Mayo/Hightower and Fletcher all out, and Collins in and out of practice, the linebacking crew has some real issues right now. Getting healthy there, at least with Collins and Fletcher, is a big priority in the next seven weeks until camp opens.
– I was surprised by the release of Tim Wright. Really thought he could blossom with a full offseason in the playbook, but it appears he did not. Despite Chandler’s size, I do think he’s a little more of an “F” tight end and between him, Fred Davis and AJ Derby, the Pats had enough depth there to move on from Wright. I thought Wright’s lack of action in the post season was more due to the game-planning, but I guess it was more of an overall referendum.
– Everyone is so curious about how the running back situation will play out and I wish I had a crystal ball, but it’s going to be all about competition and injuries. For early down carries I think we’ll see a rotation between Blount and Gray with Gaffney being the wild card. Remember there’s no Blount in Week 1, so that could be a good chance to audition both Gaffney and Gray.
– As for the passing down back, James White’s size does concern me a bit, he’ll have to be Kevin Faulk-like with pass blocking and reliability to nail down the job. However Cadet has really good size and that would be an exciting new twist in the backfield. Mike Reiss thinks we shouldn’t dismiss Dion Lewis, but we’ll have to see how the journeyman looks in live action.
– The Brady-Gronk-Chandler trio have been seen working off by themselves plenty of times in OTAs, reminiscent of past private sessions with Brady-Gronk-Revis last year or Brady-Moss a while back. This new tight end duo has incredible size and should be quite the force in the red zone. Teams planning on focusing primarily on Gronk in the red zone are in for a surprise.
– The general sentiment out there seems to be that Brady’s appeal will convince the commissioner to reduce his suspension to two games, then it will be up to Brady whether he wants to take that or drag the fight out into possibly training camp. Let’s face it, Goodell won’t absolve Brady completely. It’s more likely (and certainly possible) he’ll uphold all four games.
So the question is, if Brady never implicitly said, nor implied he wanted the balls deflated to an illegal level, should he accept any punishment? I have a hard time believing he will if he truly never expected and was aware of anything nefarious going on with the balls before games.
Still, the time frame and attention this will continue to draw will go into August at least if Brady continues to fight the NFL on it and I think it’s a safe bet that if it goes to an independent arbitrator he’ll win. So I hope Brady ignores the distraction it may cause and fights down to the wire, because really it will be his lawyers doing the heavy lifting. All Brady and the Pats have to do is not answer the questions they’ll be asked every media session after every practice.
New England Patriots Have Never Invested in Cornerbacks
Digging deep on the history of the contracts the Patriots have given to cornerbacks here. Paints a clear picture of how the Patriots value cornerbacks in their system, relying mostly on guys on rookie deals, vets on one-year minimums and the occasional one-year high-priced elite. But long-term, big money deals? Never.
Massarotti: Why America Hates The Patriots, Part II
Know what this makes Patriots fans? The nouveau riche. The toothless goobers who struck oil in their backyards. The Beverly Hillbillies. (Tom Brady was a sixth-round pick, after all.) And so now Patriots fans think they have it all figured out, that they will be great forever, and they want their owner to crush the league as simply as Belichick and Brady have crushed the competition.
Usually I try to stay above the fray with guys like Felger & Mazz, Dan Shaughnessy and the rest of them who care more about stoking the fire than actually analyzing football. That’s why I started blogging about the Patriots almost eight years ago, because the reporters actually following the team and providing insight about the most complex and violent sport on the planet were few.
I think it’s unfair to stereotype any fan base. There are Jets fans I like better than some Patriots fans to be honest. But now Mazz wants to lump all Patriots fans together and certainly he’d have no love for a blogger like me regardless of what stance I’ve taken on this issue or the integrity that I try to maintain with no oversight from any editor or corporation.
The unique problem with what happened yesterday with Mr. Kraft is almost entirely related to how much he’s stoked the fires ever since he first stepped in front of the microphone in Arizona and said he would demand an apology if the Patriots were found to have done nothing wrong.
That set the tone for this entire thing and the sides were only more galvanized with the Wells Report Context website and then Mr. Kraft’s lengthy conversation with Peter King this week.
Had Mr. Kraft played the role he usually plays, quietly working behind the scenes, most of Patriots Nation would not have been quite as whipped into such a frenzy.
At the very least they would not have been looking to Mr. Kraft as the leader in this episode of us against the NFL.
I know what Mr. Kraft has done for this franchise and what he has meant to the NFL, especially what a vital role he played in 2011, when we might not have had a season if not for him.
But Mr. Kraft’s complete about-face and what is being spun as an admission of guilt pulled the rug out from under a Patriots fanbase that had rallied behind him and taken his lead. That is what stings.
I believe most Patriots fans understand why Mr. Kraft did what he did and I’d even venture so far as to say some of us respect him for it despite disagreeing with it.
But painting the entire fan base as entitled crybabies is just Boston Media Trolling for Dummies 101 and it’s why I don’t listen or read any of these guys. What have I ever learned about football, about team-building, about scouting, about strategy from Felger and Mazz or Shaughnessy or Ben Volin or any of these guys who write about the Patriots like they were the Kardashians?
I refuse to respond exactly how they want me to – with outrage and discussion that will only drive more traffic to them. That I even linked to Mazz’s article should be surprising.
Regardless of the reason why, a lot of the NFL, it’s employees, pundits and fans do hate the Patriots. Some might just hate them because they’ve been on an unprecedented run of success. Some of them hate Belichick. Now some of them hate Brady too. True or not, their reputation is that of a team that pushes the boundaries, and perception is reality. That’s the reality Patriots fans have lived with since 2007.
But what are Patriots fans supposed to do? Yes, we get to watch the best team in the league win a lot of games and championships, but we also have to be called cheaters and “toothless goobers” just because we refuse to abandon a team that has been with many of us since we were kids in the stands of the shitty old Foxboro stadium watching the Patsies get smoked just like Mr. Kraft used to do.
Should we abandon our team? Give the NFL the benefit of the doubt this time that the glaring holes in the Wells Report don’t really matter because well, we’re cheaters and if it wasn’t deflating balls they must’ve been surely doing something else that deserves punishment?
Most of us with an online voice have been “Defending the Wall” ever since September 2007. Spygate galvanized Patriots fans unlike any other fan base in the NFL and now Deflategate has pushed it to another level.
We are attacked by the other fans, the national media and many members of Boston’s own media. How else do they think we will respond?
I respect the hell out of Robert Kraft, but yesterday hurt when the man who was leading the charge against the big, bad NFL suddenly changed his mind and sided with them. Now the Boston media trolls can pile on the Patriots fans and say how silly we looked for following Mr. Kraft’s lead. We’ve been through this stuff before and yes, it will eventually be behind us and the community of true Patriots fans will never have been stronger.
It might take a few months but eventually we’ll be able to go back to just rooting on our favorite team and favorite quarterback and hoping they win football games.
As the saying goes, “winning cures all”, unless you want to listen to Mazz.
Robert Kraft says New England Patriots won’t appeal Deflategate punishment
Well that’s that then. Hard to feel good about it when all the Patriots haters will simply use this as an admission of guilt. What most are speculating is that this boils down to “fine, here’s $1 million, a first- and fourth-round pick even though you can’t prove we did anything wrong, just knock the Tom Brady suspension down”.
I get that Mr. Kraft is one of the most influential owners in the game, and no matter how Pats fans or haters feel about it, this decision was made for the good of the game. It’s leadership and I’m sure that the other owners appreciate Mr. Kraft falling on his sword to finally put a major piece of this to bed.
Now Brady’s appeal remains and really that is the heart of the entire case. Does Goodell simply reduce the suspension to 2-games or could he even wipe the entire thing out? Either way it’s going to look strange because the NFL will essentially be admitting the Wells Report wasn’t the slam dunk the original punishment made it out to be. And if that’s the case then Mr. Kraft really bit the bullet when he didn’t necessarily have to.
The fact is that the Patriots were implicit in blowing this up the way it has since the Wells Report was released. Had they not released a full website designed to counter each and every point, or talked to Peter King or leaked how furious Mr. Kraft was, then they might’ve pursued an appeal with a little more grace.
Once they started escalating there was no other way to put the fire out than either publicly relenting (like they did) or taking it to the highest court necessary to get a fair ruling which would unquestionably be terrible for the entire NFL.
Now all focus turns to Brady’s appeal and just how Roger Goodell plays it. If there is a secret agreement that the Pats would relent if Goodell reduces Brady’s sentence, the end might just be in sight. If not, the fight will get ugly and the Patriots could come out looking even worse for not pursuing an appeal when a higher court finds no evidence they did anything wrong.
This is just the latest unexpected turn in a saga that has dragged on far too long. As Mr. Kraft said, that is the only thing we can all agree on.