Patriots Fanatic

At what point do I allow myself to think that it might be better for the Pats to miss the playoffs and leave Brady and Belichick’s playoff records intact than to make the playoffs and be bounced in the first round?

I’m losing faith that the team can get it together to do anything meaningful in the playoffs. As I said below, I’m coming around to believe there’s a problem beyond just the injuries (remember the “malaise” that Brady and Troy Brown referred to a couple of weeks ago).

Coming into this weekend, I was unsure on whether to root for or against Pittsburgh on Monday night. The case for rooting for is to want to see Indy lose for all the obvious reasons. The case for rooting against is to drop Pittsburgh into a tie with NE.

But with the Pats losing today and Denver and SD squeaking by their opponents, and Cincinnati also winning, the Pats are pretty much stuck with the #4 seed (let alone having any chance left of the bye). So with respect to NE’s playoff chances, the Monday nighter is pretty much irrelevant. So that means rooting for Indy to lose, lose, lose!

One or two times a year, every year, Brady has a meltdown game. Looks like this one was it. Too bad it didn’t come against an NFC team. Of course, that still doesn’t excuse the lack of a pass rush and the secondary being burned deep again and again.

I’m starting to come around to Felger’s view that we can’t keep blaming the injuries. Sure, losing Rodney was big in the secondary. But in the front seven the only people gone from last year are Ted Johnson and Keith Traylor. So I don’t buy injuries as a complete excuse for the execrable pass rush and the bad run defense.

Over the past few years of watching ESPN’s NFL Primetime I’ve realized that they always use the same background music for Buffalo Bill’s highlights (it happens to be my favorite piece of music on the show). I haven’t noticed any other team having a signature piece. So, people, how long has that piece been used with Buffalo and why does ESPN do it?

Reiss’s blog reports that Patrick Pass was seen at practice.

As expected, Koppen was put on IR today, though it was a separated shoulder rather than a broken arm. A quasi-surprise addition to the IR list was Gay. The decimation of the defensive backfield continues.

Looks more and more like Koppen broke his arm. It had that look during the game, was rumored after the game, and when someone today asked Koppen point blank if his arm was broken, he started to answer, then stopped himself, then said “you’ll find out on Wednesday.”

Not good…not good.

Pats have announced that Givens and Ashworth are out for the Phins game.

The one potential bit of good news about this game is that Seymour made the trip down.

Some disturbing remarks from retired lineback Ted Johnson over at patsfans.com.

According to the Globe, Duane Starks was placed on IR today. Good riddance.