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5 Patriots Defensive Fixes for the Bye Week

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The bye week is a time to take a step back and reflect on what the team needs to do better moving forward into the second half of the season. Never has that been more true than with the Patriots defense, now that they’ve traded away one of their key contributors. There are holes to fill and improvements to be made.

Aside from replacing Jamie Collins from a personnel perspective, it’s also worth taking a look at the scheme and what things haven’t quite been working out the way the Patriots coaching staff might’ve envisioned them.

Here are five moves for the Patriots defense that should help them moving into the winter months.

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Patriots Special Teams Report – Week 5 @ Cleveland Browns

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Patriots Special Teams 16wk5

What a return it was for the greatest quarterback to ever live. Having to watch Jacoby Brissett for two and a half games really makes one appreciate the greatness of Tom Brady even more, and it seemed to elevate and motivate the entire team as a whole. Special teams had another solid week, with the lone hiccup being Stephen Gostkowski’s third miss on the season.

Gostkowski started the season off on the right foot, nailing all three field goals (at distances of 47, 53, and 32 yards) against Arizona in Week 1, and was named the AFC Specialist of the Week. However, it’s been all downhill from there for the highest-paid kicker in the NFL since: Gostkowski has missed three of his next seven kicks in the past four games (keep in mind, he missed three total last season).

He missed a 39-yarder wide right against Miami, pushed a 48-yarder to the right of the goalposts against Buffalo, and most recently hit one too far to the right on a 50-yarder on Sunday. Notice a trend on his misses? All wide right. All of his misses have had plenty of distance, but each time his kicks have sailed too far to the right. Seeing as Gostkowski is the fourth-most accurate kicker in NFL history, Patriot Nation should be confident that he will correct whatever flaw is ailing him at the moment. Be sure to watch how Gostkowski does in the coming weeks, even on the ones he makes.  

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The Best/Worst of the Week in Patriots Posts – 9/3

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So every Saturday morning during the season, I’m going to be dropping this “Patriots Weekly Links” piece. To be frank, I haven’t yet decided how to shape it, what angles to attack, or what to prioritize.

Ideally, this piece will bring to light some of the more significant (mostly) Patriots related articles of the week, but at the same time, offer well-deserved scrutiny to some of the dumber ones. Hopefully, the local and national media alike can offer up a handful of thoughtless, nonsensical hot off the grill takes to be added to the weekly bulletin board. Today marks the first go at it, so let’s get the test tubes and graduated cylinders out and start experimenting. Before that though, I need some help from Gronk, you know, to break the ice.

https://vine.co/v/5iZPDAL7Zxp

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A Closer Look at Barkevious Mingo’s Patriots Debut

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Barkevious Mingo Patriots

Barkevious Mingo’s Patriots debut in the final preseason game of 2016 was an exciting one. Mingo has always had potential, that’s why he was the sixth-overall pick in 2013’s draft, but could never find a role on Cleveland’s defense and was playing more special teams than defense by 2015.

But now Mingo is in New England, where he’s surrounded by a loaded defense and under perhaps the best defensive coach of all time. While there were certainly a fair share of bright spots against the Giants, what is Mingo’s ceiling in New England and how might they employ his superlative quickness within their defense?

Let’s take a closer look with some GIFs courtesy of PatsProp contributor Pete Smith.

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Pats Posits: Time to Get the Jimmy Thing Over With

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2016, here we go.

That’s my biggest takeaway from Thursday night’s win/loss (?) over/to the Giants. Yes, there were some injuries to talk about, because those can affect the regular season and there were some interesting performances to consider, but otherwise let’s put a nice little bow on the 2016 preseason and get the Jimmy Garoppolo 2016 Four-Game Tour over with.

On paper, I’m not sure I can remember being more excited about a squad headed into a season. What 2007’s offensive promise was, 2016’s defensive promise is.

I’d put this defense up man-for-man against the hallowed 2003 and 2004 defenses. All are deep, versatile and talented all over.

Now injuries can quickly change things, but going in they have mostly players in their prime, most of them homegrown. And that’s at every position. There’s a sprinkle of hungry and/or misused veterans, who bring just a little of that outside hunger that staves off complacency.

Put it all together and oh boy.

The starting offense is almost as talented on the frontlines, but have their holes and a frightening lack of depth along the offensive line.

So will this be one of those years where the defense has win ’em? Well, unless you’ve been asleep for the Patriots’ last four Super Bowls, it almost always comes down to the defense having to get a stop.

We just hope that Tom Brady comes back in October looking like Tom Brady and Dante Scarnecchia can work his magic one more time and nobody on offense, especially Nate Solder, goes down along the way. Dion Lewis comes back and peaks as we hit the playoffs and number five here we come.

But let’s face it, despite whatever holes we think the Pats have, I promise you every other team has holes that are just as significant, if not bigger. And they don’t have Tom Brady starting Week 5.

All things considered, the Pats are locked and loaded to kick some ass in 2016 so strap in.

Here are the Posits on the preseason finale.

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6.5 Patriots Things to Watch vs. Panthers

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Yes, most football writers only do five things to watch for each game, but for this preseason contest I’m taking my blogging game to the next level. That’s right, you not only get an extra thing to watch, you get a half of one too!

The third game of the preseason is always the highwater mark of the summer before the real bullets start flying. We should see Jimmy Garoppolo into the third quarter, along with the starting defense. Though there won’t be any gameplanning (thanks coach), it’s still a chance to see (most of) our best versus (most of) someone else’s best, so it’s an intriguing game.

Just one reminder, even for this kinda-important third preseason game, all that really matters tonight is that no one gets a season-ending injury. I’ll take Garoppolo looking terrible and the defense getting lit up over anyone (on either team) going down with a major boo boo. That’s really the only thing that can stand between the Patriots and another deep playoff run — a key injury.

So let’s get through this one, stay healthy, wrap things up with a meaningless game next Thursday against the Giants and get the train rolling for the regular season.

Here are the 6.5 things I’ll be watching closely.

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Report: Patriots Trade for Barkevious Mingo

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patriots barkevious mingo

Big trade today as the Patriots acquired 2013 6th-overall pick Barkevious Mingo for a 2017 5th-round draft pick.

Mingo hadn’t lived up to expectations in Cleveland, like so many before him. This offseason he bulked up, adding 20 pounds, getting up to around 260 pounds. That extra weight should help, and at least shows some dedication. Cleveland didn’t pick up his fifth-year option this offseason, so he’ll be a free agent next year.

He had five sacks as a rookie, but just two in 2014 and none last year. He ended up playing mostly special teams in 2015 which of course adds to his value in New England.

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