PatsPropaganda

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Dion and Malcolm Go to Tennessee

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As expected Dion Lewis and Malcolm Butler signed big free agency deals outside of New England, and with both going to Tennessee and joining Mike Vrabel‘s team, the Titans will have a distinct “land of misfit former Patriot toys” feel.

These were two of my favorite players of the last few seasons, but for whatever reason, the Patriots just could not figure out how to best use Lewis’ dynamic ability, even as he put up a career year in 2017. Meanwhile, no one had a more rapid ascent and descent than Butler, whose career was bookended by two of the most dramatic Super Bowl stories ever.

I do always love it when former Patriots all get together on another team. It gives me another side team to keep a close eye on. To be honest, Vrabel has always been on my wishlist for eventual Belichick replacements. Now the Titans will have Butler and Logan Ryan starting at cornerback and will see if they can find a way to just make Lewis a more central focus of their ground game than he was here.

Lewis was a monster when he was the featured back down the stretch. Yes, I held my breath every time he carried the ball because of his injury history, and that’s something that has to be considered, but the more touches the guy got the more efficient the offense was. I thought the 2017 Patriots offense was its best when Lewis was the guy.

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Patriots Over Investment in Secondary Didn’t Pay Off

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I started blogging about the Patriots around the time that the old dynasty defense was dying. The 2007 defense squeezed the last bit of life out of Rodney Harrison, Tedy Bruschi, Richard Seymour, Mike Vrabel and other supporting members who helped define the Pats teams of the 2000s. Then the retirements and departures began and I realized that if Tom Brady was to ever get four or more Super Bowls, Bill Belichick would have to build him a new defense, mostly from scratch.

It was fascinating to see them emerge from the depths of the 2010 defense that needed turnovers to survive, to the 2014 and 2016 Super Bowl-winning squads that made huge key plays under the most pressing circumstances. But there’s no denying that 2017 was a step backwards. Yes, injury attrition had a lot to do with that, but it was just as much a string of missed draft picks and decisions to cut ties with the picks they did hit on.

I really don’t want to kick a dead horse, but I can’t help but need to vent about how this all unfolded over the past few seasons. How did the Patriots go from having the most promising young defense in the league in 2014 to what’s looking like another rebuild in less than three seasons? But is this even a rebuild this time around? Let’s dive in.

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Pats Posits Tuesday Edition: The Aftermath Continues

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So much coming at us here in the early days of the offseason it’s hard to keep a handle on it, so I’m going with a Pats Posits Tuesday Edition so I can chime in on all of it. For those of you braving the waters of ESPN and sports radio bless your hearts, I’ve been in mostly a bubble since Sunday night and I’ve really quite enjoyed it. Every now and then I’ll see something stupid they’re talking about and am reminded why I’ve been abstaining.

— Matt Patricia has officially been named the head coach of the Lions and it appears he’s taking Patriots special teams coach Joe Judge with him. So this will be a hard reset on all three coordinator spots and I wonder if Belichick holds back with the actual coordinator titles as he promotes from within. It was how he protected McDaniels and Patricia in their early days and could make sense here for Brian Flores and Chad O’Shea. Still rumors of Greg Schiano joining the staff, which would be another Belichick reclamation project. I think it would be good to get another perspective like Schiano in an assistant head coach role.

— I still can’t get over the game Tom Brady had in the Super Bowl. I’d bet that the Brady Cliff Gang has been mostly quiet these last couple days and if they’re not quiet they’re just doubling down on stupidity once again. All things considered this might’ve been Brady’s best overall Super Bowl game. Yes, the fumble at the end was a crappy button on the end of it, but outside of that what more could you ask from Brady in a game like this? As we hit 2018 there’s no question we’re in the twilight of his career and each game he QBs here on out is a gift. If that was his last Super Bowl I think he put another feather in his Patriot hat despite the loss.

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Pats Posits: Relief, Bewilderment and Frustration After Pats’ SB52 Loss

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The Eagles made one of the only big defensive plays of the game and beat the Patriots in Super Bowl 52 for their first championship last night. Before we get too heavily into the “what the hell happened” of it all, I think it’s important to say the Eagles played the perfect game. So few teams can put together the flawless 60-minutes of effort required to take down Tom Brady and steady strangulation of the Belichick Pats but that’s what Philadelphia did on the biggest stage and for all the bickering about what the Patriots did or didn’t do, Philly deserves full credit for what they did.

It’s also important to remember that despite one of their worst defensive performances in recent memory (which is saying a lot) Tom Brady still got the ball back with plenty of time to win the game. That’s where it felt like this one was heading, until it wasn’t because Brandon Graham made the clutch play that the Patriots defense could not.

So yes, there’s plenty to unpack from this one, and most of it will take an entire offseason, but in this single game the Eagles were the better team and for whatever reason I’m not finding it all that hard to swallow. It’s been a while since I’ve been in my Patriots cave of misery. The last time I was here was January of 2016 after a frustrating  loss to Peyton Manning and the Broncos.

There were some cobwebs in the cave, some dusty pictures of SB42 and SB46 and Peyton Manning as a Bronco, but there’s a strange comfort in the cave of misery. This is where most NFL fans exist full time, and we’ve gotten far more reprieve than all of them. If anything, this eighth Super Bowl trip was just a reminder of how hard it is to do what the Patriots have done. A better team got them this time, but I think there’s at least enough ammo in New England Patriots Football Weapon for another strong run next season.

Of course there are tons of questions as to what that weapon will look like exactly, but we’ll dive into those in the coming days and weeks.

First, let’s just vent about the Super Bowl…

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Patriots Film Review: Defense vs. Broncos Edition

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The Patriots’ defense has finally settled in and is back to playing their good old bend-don’t-break style of defense. This isn’t the ’85 Bears, but they’re doing what well-coached defenses do — playing within the system, limiting big plays and getting stops in the red zone. As maddening as it can be to watch, we should all know by now that it’s a winning formula.

Despite their improvements I still have my concerns about the defense. The last two games have pretty much unfolded perfectly for them so I can’t get too high on them at this point, but improvement is improvement and there’s no question the product on the field has looked far superior to what we were seeing early in the season.

The truth is against the Broncos the defense turned in one red zone stop and they were already up 14-3. That’s the context of this game, which is important.

So yes, it’s okay to feel better about the defense, but there’s still a ways to go and some good offenses to stop.

Here’s what stood out in reviewing the All-22 game film.

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Pats Posits: The New England Football Machine Rolls On

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After showing brief glimpses that they were a good team through the first six games of the season, the 2017 New England Patriots finally turned in their first consistent performance in a 23-7 win over the Atlanta Falcons. Yes, rumors of the Patriots demise have once again been exaggerated.

Simply put, it all worked against the Falcons. The four-headed running back monster finally showed how well it could power the offense, and most importantly, close games out. The much-maligned defense turned in one of their most impressive performances in recent memory, and they did it without Stephon Gilmore. It was a total team, total game win, the first of its kind this season and it was incredibly refreshing.

I’ve been saying there was a good defense inside there somewhere, and against the Falcons we saw what they were capable of. This is where the bar is, and it’s now set pretty high. Way above the worst defense in the league, but maybe not quite the all out domination we saw on Sunday night through the fog.

It looks like the 2017 Pats finally realized the season had started and that’s bad news for an NFL loaded with parity.

Here’s what I think in the Posits.

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Film Review: Three Terrible Third Downs From the First Drive

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The Patriots defense was supposed to have turned a corner after winning in Tampa Bay. Instead they came out ten days later and had one hell of an ugly drive to start the game against the Jets. Yes, they partially righted the ship and came through on the final drive so it wasn’t as bad as we’ve seen this season, but it’s hard to play much worse on third down than they did on that opening drive.

With any more drives like this one the Patriots betting odds for the next game will drop like a rock facing last year’s MVP Matt Ryan. Third down is where games are won or lost and in this contest, especially out of the gate, the Patriots were out of sync and overthinking.

Let’s take a look at three of the third down conversions on that opening drive and try to figure out what was going on out there.

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