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Comparing the 2016 Patriots Quarterbacks

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tom brady jimmy garoppolo

The Patriots have three quarterbacks on their payroll as of this writing. All three of those quarterbacks have a win percentage in games they have started that is greater than 75% in games that count (regular and postseason). All three of those quarterbacks have been drafted by the Patriots, and played for no other professional team (actually, as of this writing the Patriots have never started a non-homegrown, non-drafted quarterback in the entire Kraft-owned era. That’s really cool and will never come up in Trivial Pursuit).

These three quarterbacks have all displayed different strengths and weaknesses to their skill sets. As of next Monday, we will hopefully only care about the skill set of one, singular quarterback from then until at least February…so, before that happens (despite how nice it would be to have one more start from to evaluate the second and/or third guys…), let’s take a look at what these guys all bring to the table.

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Announcing the Pats-Bengals Welcome Back Bus!!

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skedaddle_marketing_patsprop-fb-1

Every season we put something fun into the works for a Patriots home game and the time has come to do it again!

This year, with the help of the new ride sharing site, Skedaddle, we’re putting together a Welcome Back Bus for Tom Brady’s first home game back with the Pats against the Bengals on Sunday, October 16th. And it’s not just me, your faithful blogger Mike D, who will be riding on the bus. I’ll also be joined by none other than Fitzy himself, Nick Stevens, and his Shit Pats Fans Say partner-in-crime George Kippenhan.

We’ll have giveaways and all kinds of fun on the rides down and back from Gillette. What’s better than riding to a Patriots game with a collection of super Patriots fans?!

Here’s how it works. Head over to the Skedaddle event page to buy your seat on the bus.  Prices start at $41.45, cheaper than you’re going to pay to park at Gillette anyway.

The bus will depart at 8:30am sharp on Sunday October 16th from Quincy Center (100 Granite St.), but try to get there by 8:15am as we have some fun planned prior to departure. Public parking is available nearby. And a Dunkin Donuts too!

Just a note that this DOES NOT include tickets to the game, you’ll have to get those on your own.

We’ll embark together for Gillette with plenty more on-bus fun planned, and then after the game, the bus will depart back for Quincy at 5pm. We’ll either be celebrating or commiserating together (but probably celebrating).

Space is limited. If enough people sign up we will add a second vehicle but there’s no guarantee.

It should be a blast and we hope you’ll join us!

One More Week! Patriots Catchup on Stickergate, 53-Man and more

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We’re just one week away from the start of the Patriots 2016 season, making today the last football-free Sunday until February. It’s hard to believe another offseason has gone by and here we stand, ready for one more run at this thing with Belichick and, eventually, Brady.

With all the focus on the 53-man roster over the last two days, it’s a good time to catch up on some things we might’ve missed and some of the more interesting news around the web today.

Here’s some of their stuff, along with some leftover thoughts as we turn all of our focus to the Arizona Cardinals.

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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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Tweets of Note: Patriots Training Camp Practice #8

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The Patriots held an intra-squad scrimmage today and Tom Brady tore it up to say the least. Brady has been as focused and hyped as we’ve ever seen him in training camp this summer. He also spoke briefly with the media after practice, marking his first statements since accepting the four-game suspension for maybe being aware that some of his ballboys probably weren’t running a deflation scheme.

Here are some Brady-centric tweets that stood out today:

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A History of Tom Brady Hot Taeks by Chris Simms

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Simms still pissed about this facemask or something?

Simms still pissed about this facemask or something?

Usually, I ignore the trolls here on the blog. I try to stick to football and educated analysis because there’s an entire market out there for people saying stupid things to get attention. And nothing gets easier attention with the NFL than someone saying something stupid about the Patriots. But when Chris Simms pops up for the THIRD TIME in two years on Boston media to tell us that Tom Brady isn’t a top-5 QB anymore, he needs to be called out.

First, I don’t give a shit about anyone’s rankings. I really don’t. Everyone’s got their top-5 this and their top-5 that and really, none of them matter. It’s all arbitrary opinions and everyone is entitled to their opinion and rankings however they want. My superpower is that I don’t get riled up by other people’s arbitrary rankings. What interests me is football. What happens on the field. Strategy. Not how a random someone stacks individual players in their own mind. You think Andrew Luck is the best quarterback in the league? Great for you.

But Chris Simms is an idiot and maybe if his dumb takes were a little more creative or at least backed up with, you know, facts, I’d have some respect for him. Let’s remember Simms coached with the Patriots for a season in 2012. Not that that should mean he’s pissing rainbows and happiness all over Brady and the Pats all the time, but maybe have a little respect? Or at least put forth some intelligent analysis about them?

Let’s take a look back at Simm’s horrible Patriots takes.

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Silver Linings Playbook: Task list to withstand the first four with Gabagool.

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Jimmy Garoppolo PatriotsFor the first four games, the New England Patriots offense will be helmed by Jimmy Garoppolo and then presumably the rest of the season by Brady (sorry, ESPN trolls I’m not linking to your dumb hot takes). Meaning that the Patriots offense will undergo the largest adjustment of the NFL season simply by obligation (barring Aaron Rodgers being suspended for four games for openly admitting he required his staff to overinflate balls).

Luckily for them, the Pats have the “Adjuster in Chief” in William Stephen Belichick and his “Secretary of Offense” in Joshua Thomas McDaniels. This inane lynching of Brady will be no different than his ’08 injury, they will adjust. Sure, not having 12 will hurt a buttload more than it helps, but there are few silver linings.

Does the Brady suspension make the Pats Offense MORE unpredictable? Yes.

Smarter (and lazier) men than I came up with a more nuanced way to approach analysis of the NFL, which is to evaluate it in four-game chunks that form trends. Football at the highest level is just stacks on stacks on stacks of adjustments, like a Mahjongg tile game. When you look at a 16 game season or multiple seasons, the nuances are indecipherable, but if you cut three-quarters of the tiles away, you can register the ways offenses and defenses are adjusting, which makes the areas of strength and weakness much easier to identify.

With four games a piece from two different QBs, this will make this type of evaluation more difficult for opposing defenses. Because after week 8 is the bye week, where the Pats self-evaluate and make adjustments in anticipation of teams exploiting their found weaknesses (Good timing).  It’s worth noting that the Pats offense last year was the best in the league, by far over the first nine weeks of the season. To some extent, that calendar is extended this year (barring injury) through more than three-quarters of the regular season.

But not having the best player on the team, also makes the team much much much worse. Here are ways to blunt the most damage and the ways they could backfire.

Task 1: Build a variation of the offense that suits Garopollo’s strengths.

Phil Simms could have pulled this out of whatever’s left between his ears, but it’s worth mentioning that Josh McDaniels is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good at tailoring an offense to individual players’ skills. It definitely won’t be Cassell ‘08 redux, (always link to the boss’ bomb post) which was like a Tesla being driven by my great grandmother. But McDaniels made Kyle Orton an effective QB (’10-’11 RTG: 87.1), so he will be chomping at the bit to highlight the areas that JG’s effective.

Complication: Jimmy G’s basically Brady but 6’2″ and unproven: he has a quick release, reads defenses well and works quickly, intense, hardworker, strong leader. So the offense probably won’t be that much different.

Task 2: Use wrinkles that you wouldn’t use with Brady under center.

When Brady’s running the offense, the Patriots rarely use gadget plays because the offense doesn’t need to gamble.  But they’re certainly not opposed to it. (SIDENOTE: This is all anecdotal because no one has real statistics in the NFL, somehow the NBA can tell us within an inch where Bill Russell shot from on a Tuesday in 1964, and baseball has a pitch locator that identifies speed, spin, location in less than a second, but no one has ever charted plays in the NFL, despite it’s popularity and lack of a large sample size, good lord, anyway).

With Brady, all they have to do is execute or “do their job” (the most tired but still relevant phrase) at their various positions and they will be fine playing it straight. (INSERT: STAT for gadget plays, oh, right, there aren’t any) As someone who thinks the gadget play design and execution that the Patriots used in ’14 Ravens AFC Divisional round game were some of the most inspired and balls-out plays in NFL history, I am pro-gadget play. And as a football fan, I love things like this video:

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(My favorite is the bounce pass from Presbyterian, note for Indy turf, prepare). In order to win against tough defenses (ari, MIA, HOU, BUF) they may need to take a few chances with the young guy.

Complication: When a new QB takes over, typically you want to simplify not overcomplicate. Also gadget plays can blow up:

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

Seriously go over to Youtube and watch it, I’ll wait.  Okay now watch it one more time. S000000o good. Collinsworth: What the… heck?

Task 3: Create mismatches that are easier to exploit.

I wrote about this last weekend, but the elite two TE packages will make things easier on Jimmy G. Identifying how many DBs vs. LBs on the field is far simpler than individual player match-ups.

Complication: You’re asking a person who hasn’t played a meaningful football game in 3 years to quickly identify personnel and adjust protections. Lot to ask.

Task 4: Create a nickname for this dude, a starting QB needs a solid handle.

Brees, Brady, Rodgers… nowhere does Garoppolo fit into that list. If he’s going to gain trade value or *gulp* be a long-term option for the Pats, this has to happen. Also, it’s exhausting typing Garoppolo, it’s like Belichick, it never looks right however you spell it. JG’s Italian, so my pick is Jimmy Gabagool.

Complication: Gabagool is harder to type.

Task 5: Protect the dude.

With no Brady and Ebner, I think Belichick and Caserio keep an extra O-lineman on the active roster, which should at least give them ample bodies at each position on the front line.

Complication: O-line will improve, but Solder’s coming off major surgery and Vollmer ain’t exactly a healthy doggy. Depth at Tackle isn’t optimal.

Task 6: Stop talking about how handsome he is until he wins a game.

This one is for media members and fawning “hilarious” tweeters, losers aren’t handsome, they’re “pretty boys”. Pretty boys suck.

All that being said, I’m decently optimistic, but first four weeks are gonna suck a little. Maybe he wins ugly, maybe he loses a few, maybe he loses em all, who knows. We know that Brady will be back and ready to go in October, that’s all that matters. Until then, keep the expectations low and keep Brady ’01 in mind. Godspeed.