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.

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

Ick. Ick-ick-ick-ick-ick-ick-ick. Ick.

It pretty much went the way I had predicted it would.

I really wish I had been wrong.

If the Colts can’t win the game Monday night, they don’t deserve to ever beat the Patriots. I’ve been a Pats fan since 1976 and I still expect the Colts to have an easy win:

• The rumblings in the press are that Seymour still won’t be able to play. Bye-bye any hope of a pass rush.
• It’s looking more like Dillon and Pass will be out. Can re-signing Mike Cloud be anything other than an act of “my god, we need to have at least one theoretical running back” desperation?
• To sign Cloud, they cut safety Arturo Freeman. Ought to be interesting to see who plays alongside Wilson.

So let’s see — the Pats will have no running game, will have no pass rush, and won’t be able to blitz because there’s no way their secondary will be able to cover the Indy receivers one-on-one.

I never bought into any of the hype the past two playoff seasons of how the Patriots had no chance against the Colts, because the facts of how the team was playing didn’t support the hype. But it’s different now — the Pats D is clearly and unrefutably much degraded. Now add two rookies on the left side of the OL and that the starting RB will likely be someone signed a couple of days before the game…

The most likely result is a Colts win by at least two touchdowns (something remiscent of the San Diego debacle). The only way I can see the Pats winning this game is in a shootout. Now, from what we saw from STL before Bulger went down, the Pats certainly could win in a firefight, but, sad to say, it’s not likely.

Hey — I fervently hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard to ignore reality.

In addition to Seymour, I think another thing the Patriots have to get back for this game is the big play. I don’t mean long scoring strikes (though those would be nice). I mean things like getting INTs or forcing fumbles at key times, getting big punt and KO returns, etc. All of that has been sorely missing so far this year.

To win the Indy game we really need to get Seymour back. One of the keys in the past wins has been to get pressure on Manning and make him move, preferably without blitzing him. Since Seymour has gone down (and, to be fair, sometimes even before) the Patriots have gotten no pressure on enemy QBs. Manning cannot be allowed to have all day back there or the results will be disastrous. Blitzing isn’t the answer, either, as our secondary isn’t good enough to lock up the receivers during a blitz.

And then there’s Starks.

It appears he has two styles of play — attempt tight coverage and be beating long, or give a 7-10 yard cushion. If I were Dunghill, I’d tell Manning to throw for Starks’s man every time until the
Pats proved they could deal with it.

Bruce Allen over at Boston Sports Media Watch has an awesome piece on the garbage that is Boston sports coverage.

ThunderThumbs has a very interesting way to rank teams — by looking at their “beat paths”. I don’t know that I’d say it necessarily ranks them well, but I do find the graph intriguing. I’m also trying to figure out how does the beatpath method handle things like: NE beats PIT, PIT beats SD, SD beats NE?

(via)

UPDATE:
Never mind — I found the earlier ThunderThumbs post that explains how cycles are dealt with. As TT himself says, his system is inferior to FO’s DVOA, but I really do like it since (a) it is a fresh way of looking at rankings, (b) does give some new insights into how teams relate, (c) is still way better than usual power rankings, and (d) appeals to the math geek :-).