Hunter07 wrote:

Greg Bedard, Boston GlobeI actually think the Patriots have good players in the secondary and stand to improve. But there’s reason to doubt they will. Just look at the track record. Why does it seem like players always regress in the Patriots’ secondary?The list goes on and on: Brandon Meriweather, Terrence Wheatley, Darius Butler, Leigh Bodden, Chung, McCourty, and Ras-I Dowling.Where’s the ascension?
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Where’s the excellence? OK, how about we settle for a turn of the head and making a play on the ball when the receiver reacts to the ball being in the air? There is much to be disappointed about with the Patriots, especially in the secondary. Without a Giants-like pass rush, the Patriots are going to have to cover better in the back end to win games.It’s going to have to start with the coaching. The players are who they are. Belichick, Patricia, corner-backs coach Josh Boyer, and safeties coach Brian Flores must do a better job.What we saw on Sunday wasn’t good enough.And it hasn’t been...
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Original Story: http://www.nepatriotslife.com/2012/10...
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Credit: Yardbarker/ndpatriotslife

tedyboy wrote: You've got to start wondering if BB is starting to lose his incredible focus on the details needed to be at the top of the league.

  Maybe he likes to go home a little earlier than he used to.

  Maybe he's not a good delegator ? of what needs to be done!!

dokgonzo wrote: BB refuses to hire from outside the organization. So the team is stuck with ex-personnel guys or scouts as position coaches. He got lucky a couple times with Mangina and McD ... to one degree or another ... but other than that it's been a disaster. 


The only newspaper which seems to primarily blame the players for this mess is the Herald. The theory I've read there is that the players over-achieve their first year and then settle into their natural level of mediocrity. And that explains why things keep getting worse.

Which would mean that in the Pats secondary there's a harmonic convergence of suckitude that is affecting 6 or 8 players at the same time. And I find that kind of hard to believe. Logically, statistically, biorhythmically, you name it - I can't see that many performance curves decaying in unison without some external force being applied.

Such as ... coaching.


A couple of us here have been ranting for years about the lack of depth in the coaching staff. Once you get past Pepper, Ivan, and Dante ... what do they have for position coaches?

dokgonzo wrote: I'm looking at the coaching staff of the Pats over on Wikipedia for the SB years. It's interesting. Mangina was secondary coach for that 4-year span where they won 3 SB's.  I can't believe I'm saying it, but maybe BB *should* give him his old job back. Secondary coach, not DC. He'd probably take it as otherwise he has no chance to climb back into the coaching ranks. And no way he'd ever cross BB/RK again. 

BB rehiring Eric the Rat would be such a massive "WTF?" moment for the NFL.

dokgonzo wrote: And you know it's bad when you're watching the game and the Pats get a sack on 2nd down and you're disappointed because you know the upcoming 3rd-and-13 will likely go for 25 yards.

I have a hard time buying that it's talent.  Yes we had Ty Law, Rodney Harrison, Assante Samuel and James Sanders, but there were very frequent injuries that we successfully overcame against playoff teams.  Also, using the pure law of averages, we should have gotten lucky with either Brandon Meriweather, Patrick Chung, Darius Butler, Devin McCourty or Ras-I Dowling who were all 1^st and 2^nd round picks. 

I think that the rules that were put into place to increase scoring and the evolution of the spread offense has changed BB’s view on defensive strategy; DB’s can’t make contact after 5 yards anymore meaning that the receiver is free to run a perfect route after this point, DB’s have to be careful about how they hit a receiver as they can’t launch or lead with the helmet (something that frequently extends drives and makes crossing receivers feel more at ease and DB’s more hesitant) and there are much stricter rules with hitting the QB which certainly extend drives and reduce a pass rushers ability to knock down the QB.  It’s also worth noting that there are strict rules in place to protect QB’s and WR’s while there are few rules protecting defensive players from injury…see Brian Cushing.  Investing big money in offensive players right now is safer.  BTW, I’m not saying any of this is fair, it’s just reality.

With spread offenses and QB’s like Brady, Manning, Manning, Brees, Rogers, Ryan (etc.) sending WR’s in motion and reading the stretched out defenses, it’s difficult for a defense to be as unpredictable as they were when offenses were tighter and it’s also harder to do things such as surprisingly drop a faster DE into coverage while blitzing a LB since the receivers are farther away from the LOS.  I think that BB saw the writing on the wall and would rather develop a bend but don’t break defense (in theory), increasing the number of plays for the other team to make a mistake, assuming that Brady will win in a battle of mistakes.  There are still some great defenses, Giants, Pitt, Ravens, Jets (w/ Revis) and San Francisco, but they all have hall of fame bound players and are still susceptible to getting schooled by a spread offense in any given game.  Additionally, the ones that actually win have some very good offenses (see Pitt’s D w/o a healthy Ben in last year’s playoffs and Denver’s D with Tebow last year). 

Honestly, we were an incredible TE catch and a dropped pass by Welker away from 2 more Super Bowls, so the strategy hasn’t bombed.  It’s starting to bomb now that Brady is making mistakes and our defensive backs break frequently to the point where we are losing shootouts.  I just think that building a great D like the Ravens and Giants requires a huge investment, some luck (like drafting a Revis) and some patience and Brady doesn’t have that time right now. 

dokgonzo wrote: The offense has been inconsistent for a few years now. And that contributes a lot to the problem because you never know how big a hole they'll dig themselves or if they can maintain a shoot-out in the second half. I'm all for the "gameplan offense" but you still need to be able to run and complete passes in the last 20 minutes of a game, and this bunch only managed that against Buffalo after playing a horrific first half.

The O leaves buckets of points out on the field.

So the D gets hung out to dry a lot.

I can dig the bend-but-dont'-break approach. But you have to play the ball if you're gonna do that. You're trying to stretch out the opponents drive so they eventually make a mistake. If the DB's aren't even looking at the friggin' ball, how can they make the INT? And how many times did we see passes hit the DB's right in the face almost and they didn't come up with the ball?

Anyone remember Ray Berry's Pats? Remember how all of a sudden they got INT's and FF"s all over the place? Remember how it turned out that Berry drilled the defensive players on stripping the ball and reading the QB? They went from nothing to a turnover factory in a season.

What happened to all that?

Oh yeah - good coaching by a Hall of Fame player. We won't have none of that in Foxboro, gawdamnit! There are all these guys from prep-school who need coaching jobs after playing friggin' lacrosse for 4 years or whatever.

I agree with a lot of this but I’m not sure that I agree with the Patriots offense being inconsistent for a few years.  They were 13-3 last year and were 14-2 the year before that and this record was all because of our offense.  There are games when we made it closer than it should have been (Dolphins last year comes to mind) but I don’t expect perfection.  I also thought we were inconsistent during the Moss years that weren’t 2007, but that also includes Brady’s injury and his first year back.  You can certainly point to the playoff losses, but the Jets were playing great and had a fantastic gameplan and the Giants are a great and balanced team.  If Vinatieri and Giant receivers weren’t so clutch in the final 2 minutes of Super Bowls, we’d be talking about how the Patriots finally won because we finally put money into receiving talent.  Point being, we could have won with just our offense last year.  Also, the SB winning teams were not that consistent – in 2001 I was sure that the Pats had been kicked out of the playoffs in their first game until I learned what the Tuck Rule was on Live TV.  After a 9-7 season with no playoffs, they squeaked past the Titans in ugly fashion in 2003 with 17 points and I’m sure you remember the post-game comment by Titan Zach Pillers "I thought it sucked. It'd be a shock to me if they were holding the trophy at the end of all this."  However, despite inconsistency, the Patriots always got it done somehow when it mattered.

So far this season, I like that our Dline and LB core seem to be progressing and even coming up with key plays when they need to, such as Sunday’s sack/fumble and what could have been a fumble/win if our kicker hit that field goal or if Gronk didn’t get called on that holding penalty.  I don’t like how our Defensive backs haven’t improved one bit from last year and any quarterback with time can complete a pass at will to the point where running the ball on us seems pointless since 3 shots at 10 yards is almost certain.  I rarely even see opposing QB’s making tight throws or our DB’s going for picks and missing, rather the receivers are usually wide open.  I also agree with you that long passes frequently go right over our DB’s heads…I’ll take whatever happens if they turn to the ball late and give up a big play if they can just break up a few of those it would be better than what we have now.  What bothers me more is that our offense isn’t closing out games anymore in the fourth quarter and it really starts with Brady.  We’ve lost all of our games by a total of 4 points, so regardless of our defense, we were in a position to win them all.  What happens in reality is that the offense can’t maintain a drive against the Ravens while up by 9 with 10 minutes left, after the Cardinals fumble the offense can’t get the team into closer field goal range and in a final drive with 1:20 left down by 1 the Patriot offense barely scrapes the 50 yard line before going 4 and out.  All of these games could have ours with a little Tom Brady magic but we fell short each time.  This ignores the fact that all of these games could also have been put away with a sustained drive topped off with a simple field goal in the 4^th quarter.  Our DB’s stunk last year but we were still in position to win the SB.  Our offense failing this many times to either put the game away with 10 minutes left or to scrape up a win in the last minute is what really troubles me about the team because that’s how we’ve been designed to win for the last 5 year and there's no quick fix to that. 

dokgonzo wrote: It's easier to hire an experienced position coach than to draft a rookie player. You have years and years of track-record to go by. But instead, the team keeps putting untried and inexperienced people in as position coaches.

Odds are Romeo and Charlie will be looking for work next season. Odds are they won't be back in Foxboro. That sucks.