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stephon gilmore

How Will Pats Cut Corners?

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The most interesting position group for the Patriots as we head into the final preseason week with cutdowns looming this weekend is cornerback. Between the new guys that have emerged and those who are returning from injury, there’s a logjam of intriguing players with a variety of skillsets, contracts and draft statuses. We’ve seen this happen before, with it often ending up with undrafted players making the roster and others unfortunately making it on different rosters around the league.

The position is oft-maligned but the top-two starters have been entrenched from the start. Stephon Gilmore was arguably the best defensive player in training camp. You might get distracted by the catches he gave up in a preseason game against Carolina, but make no mistake, Gilmore is poised for a shutdown season, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time.

Next to him will be Eric Rowe, who hasn’t let go of the starting spot since last Super Bowl. Rowe is an outside guy with good size, so he’s useful for matchups as well. While the Pats will lean heavily on their three-safety, two-corner package, all five positions feature entrenched veterans. After that is where things get murky.

Let’s run down the candidates.

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Pats Posits: Real and Fake Concerns, Excitement

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I’ve got to head down to Philly for a few days so I won’t be able to jump into film analysis of this game as I’d like to, but maybe that’s for the best because nothing gets overreacted to like the first preseason game. The void of football games since the Super Bowl left the media circus chasing their tail all offseason. Now they’ll effortlessly jump into the attempted analysis of a football game that should be taken with a very big grain of salt.

What’s real and what’s not? There was plenty in the first half to get annoyed about but will those things actually matter next month when the regular season starts? What about the good stuff of the second half? Can we get excited about that stuff? It’s hard to sort it all out in the preseason, with no gameplanning and scrubs often on the other side of the ball.

Let’s break down what’s real and what’s not in some Posits before I hit the road in my Patriots-license plated car, praying I don’t get egged by some unruly Eagles fans.

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Video: Patriots Training Camp Practice #2 Report

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Great to finally see some football today at a muggy second practice! As we try to get Patshow Season #2 going I’m going to try and use my video producer skills to bring some more video content. Let me know what you guys think!

A few other things I forgot to mention in the video:

— Marcus Cannon did leave practice early, walking off under his own power. LaAdrian Waddle slipped into his reps. Hopefully Cannon is back sooner than later, though his injury history is starting to add up.

— Stephon Gilmore had an AFC Championship-sealer-esque diving pass break up over Julian Edelman. Gilmore is on the left side this year and is the a clear-cut number one cornerback.

— As much as I wanted to notice him nothing about Sony Michel really stood out to me. Again, IT’S NO PADS, DAY TWO. All the backs had their share of work, including Burkhead, Gillislee and Hill, and I can’t say any of them really stood out, though Burkhead always looks shot out of a rocket.

— As I mention, Edelman looks like Edelman, and it’s such great news.

— On and by the way, Brady is still Brady. Yikes.

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Tweets of Note from Patriots Minicamp Practice #2

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC1clbWAF88

Another day of actual football to talk about! There will only be one more before we start the long void until training camp, which means it’s time to way overanalyze everything that has been going on at Patriots minicamp.

Here are some tweets that stood out to me with commentary.

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Tweets of Note from Patriots 2nd OTA Week

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After a quiet week, unless you like playing Where in the World is Tom Brady, the Patriots were back in action for the media on Thursday. These brief glimpses in on the team only give us a taste of the excitement to come in less than two months at training camp.

Per the usual disclaimers, don’t get too worked up about anyone playing anywhere at this point. Sometimes it’s just a temporary look at how players fit surrounded by starters than it is necessarily them actually being considered as a starter. This is still a teaching phase.

Here are the tweets of note that keep us going through the May-Jun post-draft void.

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Patriots Should Overstock Front Seven, Not Add Costly Corner

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My takeaway from the 2017 defensive season was that a high-priced secondary isn’t worth much if the front seven stinks, so I was surprised by reports connecting Aqib Talib and Richard Sherman to the Patriots. Yes, the Pats will probably (definitely) lose Malcolm Butler, but with Eric Rowe still there, Jonathan Jones returning and the veteran trio back at safety, maybe it’s best to not make a drastic move at cornerback for a second year in a row?

I know corners like Talib and Sherman are shiny objects, but I’d far prefer my Patriots shiny defensive objects to be defensive end and linebacker types. There was just so much attrition at those spots in 2017, basically losing four veteran edge players who made some of the biggest plays of the last few seasons. The position group needs to be flooded with as much camp competition as possible, to let the next Ninkovich emerge and also find out how good guys like Dietrich Wise, Adam Butler, Derek Rivers and Eric Lee really are.

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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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