Week 5: Patriots 31, Falcons 28 (3-2) (2-1) (0-0)
Whew! Nothing’s gonna be easy this year.
It also looks like they’ll have to win it with offense, since at least for now, the defense appears to be cooked. Sure, there are all the injuries (and Seymour missed the Falcons game, and McGinest reportedly broke his hand during the game), but that doesn’t excuse the lack of physical play and missed tackle after missed tackle. It doesn’t excuse Chad Brown being a waste of space out there. It doesn’t excuse mistakes like Asante Samuel buying a vanilla fake and giving up the tying touchdown. I could go on. Speaking of Seymour, that’s the second time in his career that Seymour’s been injured while playing as a short-yardage fullback. I think Belichick needs to stop the experiment. Put in a real fullback (Pass) or use one of the tight ends. Or Klecko. But it was/is foolish to risk perhaps your best defensive player like that. And it’s happened twice. Please — let’s never see Seymour as a fullback again.
Thankfully, the offense came to play. Brady was on fire. The tight ends were finally given a chance to do something, and WOW. Favorite play of the day has to be Graham’s 45yd TD which included the hurdle over Neal, swatting a safety away, and dragging three people into the endzone. The running game also got going, with Dillon breaking 100 on close to 5 yards/carry. Now we have to hope that whatever his injury was, it’s nothing serious. Even had a couple of hard-nosed runs by Patrick Pass.
The play-calling made a recovery from last week’s debacle, which was nice to see, though Belichick deserves a Football Outsiders Martz Award for having Vrabel call that timeout on Koening’s kick. This is the NFL. Kickers don’t get worn out on a single kick, so why (in effect) give them a warmup/calibration kick?
Anyhow, while I’m glad for the win, this year still has way too much of a 2002 feel to it.
October 12th, 2005 at 02:47
Hi, I have to agree with you on just about everything you have said, except for the 2002 feel. Yes, it feels that way insofar as we are scratching out every win, but then again Brady was not playing as well as he is now in 2002. So, I hope against hope that somehow, someway, Bill can cobble us together a defense so we can actually have a shot of repeating again this year, instead of winning a couple on the back of brady. Btw, I think your blog is awesome!
October 12th, 2005 at 09:00
You’re right that Brady is playing better this year than he did in 2002. But in 2002 we had a defense that couldn’t stop anything, not much of a running game, and had to put it all on Brady’s arm. Sound familiar?
Granted, in 2002 the defense’s problem was that it was just bad. This season we have good players, but all of them are injured :(. And getting blown off the ball and missing lots of tackles was also a 2002 defensive hallmark.
What I’m hoping for is that as people come back later in the season, the defense can gel a bit and get it together and hopefully put us on a nice playoff run. But I don’t think we’ll have the first-round bye this time :(.