2007 September

Patriots Daily on NBC Sports

September 13, 2007 By Bruce Allen 1 Comment

ESPN.com visitors…welcome! Be sure to sign up for one of our RSS feeds and keep up with our latest content.

It’s not posted on their site yet, but Patriots Daily’s Bruce Allen did an interview with Cris Collinsworth for a new segment debuting this week on NBCsports.com. The idea is going to be for Collinsworth to talk to bloggers each week from cities involved in the Sunday night NBC games.

The camera incident was of course a big part of the discussion. Also talked about was Tom Brady’s legacy in comparison to Joe Montana’s, whether Norv Turner can take the Chargers further along than Marty Schottenheimer was able to, and which fan base gives Collinsworth the most grief.

We’ll be sure to pass along the link when it goes live.

We also have our first Patriots Buffet Table column posted, which we’re planning on doing for each home game this season. Our resident food and beer expert has put together a San Diego-themed menu for home use or tailgating and recommended a number of beers to try out with it.

Filed Under: Media, News Tagged With: Site News

Patriots Buffet Table – Week Two, Patriots vs. Chargers

September 13, 2007 By Chef Leave a Comment

Patriots Daily Kitchen Staff
[email protected]

Editors note: We’re going to try to bring you these columns for all home games, plus any postseason action.

The Patriots Daily guys have kept you up to date on this week’s game against the Chargers. We here at the Buffet Table hope to keep you fed.

San Diego, home of a world famous zoo and 70 miles of sandy beaches. Balboa park and spastic sack dances. Microbreweries and fish tacos. Yes, fish tacos, you won’t find those in New England but they are ubiquitous in San Diego. That’s what we’re about here at the Buffet Table, we bring you a bit of the food and beverages from the opponent’s city. So you can spice up your spread at home or on the tailgate and add a little flavor to the game.

So what is this fish taco? It’s battered and fried white fish (think the fish in fish and chips) served on a tortilla with shredded cabbage and crema sauce. We’ll walk through the simple steps of making the dish. Present some alternatives for the tailgaters, and those scared of the idea. Finally we’ll go over some drink pairings.

For those at home:

Beer battered fish, serves 4
Ingredients;
3 3/4 cup all purpose flour (divide and reserve 2 cups)
2 tbsp chili powder or chile con carne seasoning
1 tbsp chopped cilantro (you can buy fresh or find tubes of pre-chopped cilantro)
1/2 cup beer
1 1/3 cup water
1 egg
2 tbsp olive oil
8 fish fillets, 2 ounces each, cod or haddock .. if your grocery store has scrod, that’s just cod or haddock, any firm white fish will work

For cooking:
3 tbsp canola, corn or vegetable oil
1 tbsp butter

First we’ll need a batter, and what is the point of batter if it isn’t beer batter. Combine the dry ingredients (1 3/4 cups flour, chili powder, cilantro) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl lightly beat the egg, then add the rest of the wet ingredients (beer, water, oil). Mix well. Slowly pour the wet ingredients into the dry while mixing. You will end up with a thick batter, if it seems too wet simply add a teaspoon of flour and mix it in.

Now we’ll prepare our fish. Take 2 shallow pans, in the first pour the 2 cups of reserved flour, and in the second pour your beer batter. Dredge each fillet in the flour and then move it to the batter. It helps to use one hand to handle dredging in the flour and moving the fish to the batter, and your other hand to take the battered fish and place it in the pan. Otherwise your hands will resemble clubs by the time you are done.

If you have a deep fryer great, heat it up according to your directions, and when the fish floats and is a golden brown it’s done. The rest of us will be pan frying the fish. Take a heavy frying pan and add enough canola, corn or vegetable oil to cover the bottom. A few tablespoons should suffice. To this add the tablespoon of butter. Turn your burner to medium and watch the oil, you do not want it to smoke or spatter. As it heats you can drop small amounts of your beer batter into the pan, if they sink to the bottom it isn’t hot enough, if they crackle and rise to the top the pan is ready for the fish.

Take one of the battered fillets and slowly add it to the pan, making sure to do so away from you. If the oil spatters you want it to go away from you, not towards. Once that is in add a second fillet in the same manner. If you have a cast iron or an especially large pan you may be able to cook 3 or 4 fillets at a time, but do not crowd the pan. If there is too much added at once the oil temp will drop too far. Cold oil will be absorbed into your food, leaving you with greasy not crispy fish.

Check the fillets at 4 minutes, you want a golden brown color. Flip the fish, again doing so away from you. Cook for 4 minutes on the other side and remove from the heat. Repeat the process until all of the fish is cooked.

If the whole idea of making tacos with fish has scared you stop right here. Cook up some french fries, and you have some Tex-Mex seasoned fish and chips. If you want to go the authentic route add 2 fillets to a tortilla and top with shredded cabbage and either your favorite salsa or crema sauce. Crema sauce can be found in the Hispanic aisle of any larger grocery store, just heat it in the microwave before adding.

For the tailgaters:

Frying isn’t going to be an option, a pan full of hot oil over the flame of a grill is just a fire waiting to happen. Instead we’ll cook the fish in aluminum pouches. This will also work for those at home who do not like to fry food.

Ingredients:
4 fish fillets, 4 oz each, cod, haddock or any firm white fish.
1 bunch cilantro
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp chili powder or chile con carne seasoning

Serves 4

Coat the fish evenly wih the olive oil. Lay out four sheets of aluminum foil about 4 times the size of the fish fillets. On each sheet of foil place one fillet in the center, top it with 1/4 of the cilantro and chili powder. Fold the foil over the fish and crimp the sides well.

Heat your grill to 400 degrees, and evenly place your foil pouches with the spiced side up. Check one of the pouches at 12 minutes. If the fish flakes easily with a fork you are done. If not return to the grill and let them cook for an additional 3 minutes. Be careful when opening the pouches as they will release steam.

Time for a drink!

Now that the food is ready what are we going to drink? Wheat beers are light but flavorful and do not overpower fish making for a good pairing. A hefeweizen would be a good match, and there are many on the market both German and American. We have a better choice however: Belgian Wit.

Belgian Wit is a traditional wheat style. Light and spritzy, with citrus and coriander flavors coming from the curacao orange peel and coriander used to make the beer. Citrus is a natural match for fish, I can’t remember having fish when it didn’t come with lemon on the side. The cilantro used to make our fish melds with the coriander in the beer for a simple reason, the cilantro is the leaves, and the coriander is the dried fruit of the same plant. The spritzy quality of a Belgian Wit comes from the high carbonation level of the beer, and that is going to help as well. Carbonation bubbles scrub oils from the taste buds, so our fried fish won’t taste heavy.

If the Belgian Wit doesn’t sound interesting to you, we can approach the pairing in a different way. We can think of what we’re making as a type of fish and chips, and Pale Ales and ESBs pair well with fish and chips. Their maltiness matches well with the batter used to make the fish.

It’s easy to find a good Wit beer, but we’ll have a hard time finding one from San Diego around here. Victory Whirlwind Wit, the original Hoegaarden White Ale, Allagash White from Maine, Brooklyn Brewery’s Blanche de Brooklyn, Hitachino Nest White ale from Japan and even Blue Moon Belgian White are all good choices.

The most famous brewery from the San Diego area is Stone Brewing Company. You should have no problems finding their beer in any of the larger local liquor stores. If you’d rather have a pale ale than the Belgian Wit, they even have a pale ale available here. That would be the complete San Diego experience eating their food and drinking their beer as the Pats play their team. Hopefully LaDanian won’t start crying that we’re disrespecting them by doing so.

I think I’ll have one of those locally available Wit beers while I eat dinner, and when that’s done switch to the Stone Pale Ale or India Pale Ale. Remember this game is an 8:15 pm start, so I’d stay away from the big Stone beers such as Arrogant Bastard or Ruination IPA if you want to be awake when the game ends.

Filed Under: Buffet Table, Uncategorized

Outside Foxborough – Is Michael Turner more LT or Richard Huntley?

September 13, 2007 By Bill Barnwell 10 Comments

By Bill Barnwell
[email protected]

Since the videotape controversy was already discussed in a post on Football Outsiders (and Patriots Daily) this week, this week’s column will be a bit of a respite from Videogate.

The Chargers have been left with a conundrum regarding the redoubling of their skill position assets twice now in the last several years. First, Drew Brees emerged as an excellent NFL quarterback just as the Chargers nabbed the promising Philip Rivers in a trade with the Giants (that also netted them Shawne Merriman, in one of the great draft-day swindles of recent memory). When Brees’ contract expired, the Chargers let him walk away to New Orleans without any compensation. While Rivers has been mostly superb in his time as an NFL starter, Brees was an MVP-caliber performer last year. Had the Chargers dealt him after 2004, they could have recouped at least something for the player. Instead, general manager A.J. Smith decided that there was more value in Brees’ skills for a year as opposed to what he could’ve acquired in return in trade (whether it be draft picks and/or veteran players in addition to cap space).

Another somewhat similar situation brewed this past offseason, as Chargers backup RB Michael Turner was a restricted free agent. As per the rules of restricted free agency, the Chargers were allowed to tender him a contract at one of several levels. Turner received a $2.35 million tender, the highest available and accordingly, the one with the most compensation due the Chargers were a team to sign Turner away from them. The Chargers would have received a first- and third-round pick in exchange for Turner had he signed elsewhere; while there were trade talks around the running back, nothing was consummated, and Turner signed his tender offer and is continuing to backup LaDainian Tomlinson this year.

Now, while people may be aware that Michael Turner is a fine running back, allow me to point out how fine he actually is. Turner’s career numbers through three seasons and one week are astoundingly good; he’s averaged 5.9 yards per carry, exceeding Tomlinson’s yards per carry by more than a yard each full season.

That sort of argument, while a point in Turner’s favor, is a misuse of statistics. Namely, Tomlinson gets the ball in situations where he couldn’t possibly gain significant yardage (e.g. inside the five and in short-yardage situations). That’s where DVOA, our pet stat at Football Outsiders, comes in. DVOA measures how a player does each play versus what the league average is, accounting for down and distance, the yardage between the offense and the end zone, and the defense being faced. In addition, Tomlinson carries the ball much more frequently than Turner, which needs to be accounted for — there’s a benefit to having a back who can carry the ball 300 times at a rate better than a guy like Kevan Barlow. We define “replacement-level” as the level of a player the caliber of Barlow, freely-available talent, and then measure a player’s value on a per-play basis as opposed to that freely-available talent cumulatively over the course of a season.

Somewhat surprisingly, while Tomlinson’s DPAR obviously far outweighs Turner’s, Turner’s DVOA is still better than Tomlinson’s.

As you can see, while Tomlinson was the best back in the league on a cumulative basis last season according to DPAR, Turner was the best back in the league on a per-play basis. It’s, in fact, the best DVOA for a back with more than 50 carries in the eleven years we’ve got DVOA numbers for.

While DVOA is a more accurate indicator of performance than unadjusted yards, again, we see that Turner’s still performing better than Tomlinson on a per-play basis. There’s a second set of reasons for that, none of which are easily quantifiable or even provable. He gets more rest. He doesn’t start, and comes in when the defense is tired. The defense doesn’t prepare for him the same way they do for Tomlinson, and they don’t adjust accordingly. There’s probably some truth in those things, but there’s every reason to think Michael Turner’s a pretty good running back.

There’s a reason to think that he’s not, though, and his name is Richard Huntley.

Some of you may remember Huntley; he was a relatively nondescript running back for a few years in the NFL, playing for four teams. He was drafted by Atlanta in the fourth round in 1996, spent a year there, was waived, and then went to Pittsburgh, where he sat on the practice squad for a season. In 1998, he had 55 carries for 242 yards; decent numbers, but a product of context and full of lots of third-and-long useless yardage, as was reflected in his -35.2% DVOA. 1999, though, brought a new Richard Huntley to the fore. He gained 6.1 yards per carry on 93 carries, became a solid receiver in the rushing game, and put up a 21.9% rushing DVOA, good for fourth in the league. The Steelers responded by giving him a three-year, $4 million contract and a chance to compete with Jerome Bettis (who was in the final year of his contract) for the starting job in training camp. Bettis won out, but as if to prove his 1999 was not a fluke, Huntley’s rushing DVOA in 2000 rose to 30.3%, good for fourth in football. Bettis’ DVOA was significantly lower, at 10.7%, but that was still good enough for seventh in the league.

Huntley was cut after the season and signed with Carolina, where he would challenge the oft-injured Tshimanga Biakabutuka for the starting gig. In traditional fashion, Biakabutuka got hurt and Huntley was the starting back for most of the season. Huntley’s line: 165 carries, 658 yards, a -25% DVOA, and -6.2 DPAR — in other words, replacing Huntley with the best free agent you could find at the minimum salary would have been preferable to actually using him. Carolina went 1-15 that year, George Seifert was fired, and Huntley had three more carries in his career before he was out of football.

Huntley’s an example of something DVOA can’t account for, but a scout or an observer with access to DVOA can: The rest of the offense. As useful as DVOA is, it can’t account for the quality of an offensive line or a quarterback’s ability to put a running back in a good situation more often than not. It’s just impossible to get a first down on third-and-8 running the ball every time. Huntley played with a very good offensive line in Pittsburgh. He certainly did not in Carolina. In Pittsburgh, his quarterback was Kordell Ste…people thought he was good then. In Carolina, his quarterback was Chris Weinke. The situation in Pittsburgh was just more conducive to being a successful running back than in Carolina. DVOA can help strip some of that information out, but not all of it.

So, then, Huntley presents the cautionary tale in thinking that signing a successful backup from a pretty good rushing team is a good way to upgrade your running back spot. Of course, there are positive examples too. What we can do to more accurately ascertain whether the new running back was an improvement on the old one is to judge their DVOA versus that of the starter’s the previous year’s. While Huntley’s -25.0% DVOA was certainly abysmal, Biakabutuka’s DVOA the year before was an even more abysmal -26.1% DVOA. We track a statistic called “Success Rate” which measures what percentage of the time a running back has a “successful carry” — meaning he got a chunk of yardage significant enough to push his team closer to a first down than closer to losing the ball. The average starting running back succeeds about 43% of the time. In 2000, Tshiminga Biakabutuka succeeded 20.5% of the time. That’s astoundingly poor. Huntley got that up to 39%, which is at least remotely close to competency.

Perhaps the best way to see what teams might be getting into if they sign Michael Turner after this season is to look at the performance of teams who have acquired another team’s backup running back (defined as the back with the second-most carries on the team) and made them their starters. We’ll then track their performance the year after and compare it both to how they performed the year prior and how they did relative to the back they replaced. Since we only have DVOA and DPAR for seasons from 1996-2006, this analysis will only include backs from those seasons.

1. Lamar Smith (1997-98 and 1999-00)

Lamar Smith was one of two backs (both of whom were named Smith) to pull this move twice in his career. Starting off his career with Seattle, Smith was an average back by all measures — he averaged right around 4.5 yards per carry, and his DVOA in 1996 and 1997 was right around there: 3.2% and 0.2%. Nothing awful by any means, but not a star about to breakout, either. The Ditka administration in New Orleans brought him in to replace the awful Ray Zellars-Mario Bates hydra of suck, and Smith only made it to 138 carries. His DVOA, a miserable -38.6%, was actually worse than Zellars’ -34.2% the year before, and way behind Bates’ -19.0%. The result? Mike Ditka traded his whole draft for Ricky Williams (who put up a -30.6% DVOA his rookie year), and Smith returned to his backup role for a year.

Smith then moved onto Miami, where Jimmy Johnson was fooling around with Cecil Collins, J.J Johnson, and the last vestiges of Karim Abdul-Jabbar’s career. He made Smith his starter and Smith proceeded to not only bump his DVOA back up to a very respectable -1.6%, he had one of the great out-of-nowhere fantasy season of all-time, with 309 carries for 1139 yards and 16 touchdowns. He improved on Collins’ -18.5% DVOA dramatically. A year later, he averaged only 3.1 yards per carry, and in 2002, Ricky Williams replaced him again.

2. Charlie Garner (1998-99)

Garner’s mercurial career saw him start off as the backup to Ricky Watters in Philadelphia; when Watters left, it seemed likely that Garner would get the starting gig, but he was beat out by Duce Staley. Garner took the opportunity to replace the injured Garrison Hearst in San Francisco, and had an excellent year on a terrible 49ers team (this was the year that Steve Young went down at the hands of Aeneas Williams in Week 3). Garner’s DVOA went from -15.9% to 7.6%, and he kept his DVOA pretty close to Hearst’s 1997 performance of 9.4%. On a significantly worse team (the 49ers went from 12-4 to 4-12), it was an admirable performance and the beginning of Garner’s short career as a starting running back.

3. Ahman Green (1999-00)

Very few people, by this point, remember Green starting his career in Seattle. After being drafted in the third round in 1998, he spent two years struggling to get a foothold on any significant playing time, and was then dealt to the Packers for CB Fred Vinson, a second-round pick the year before. Vinson never played a game for the Seahawks. Green gained over 8,000 yards for the Packers. Oops. Green’s DVOA as a Seahawk in 1999 was good (21.4%), but it was gained on only 26 carries and that’s not enough of a sample to be of any reliability. As a Packer, his DVOA was a solid 6.9%, which was a significant improvement over Dorsey Levens’ -13.5% DVOA the year before. It’d be hard to find any way to say this wasn’t an incredibly successful move for both Green and the Packers.

4. Priest Holmes (2000-01)

The big one. Holmes had a strange start to his career. His first year with any playing time, he ran for 1008 yards and gained 4.3 yards per carry. The next year, he was hurt and only played eight games, but gained a ridiculous 5.6 yards per carry, good for a 22.9% DVOA, second in the league. The Ravens drafted Jamal Lewis and won the Super Bowl in 2000; Holmes backed him up and had a 12.5% DVOA, fourth in the league. If Football Outsiders had been around then, Holmes would have been one of the players we championed the way we do Jerious Norwood now.

Holmes went on, of course, to gain 1555 yards behind a great offensive line in Kansas City the next year. His DVOA that season was 20%, a slight improvement over the criminally underrated Tony Richardson’s 18.1% the year before. It was the third-best DVOA in the league that year, though, and Holmes would be in that rarified air until he got hurt in 2005. He’s the inverse Richard Huntley.

5. Terry Allen (2000-01)

The running back who would not die, Allen came back from injuries to have seemingly three careers. He was solid (4.5% DVOA) as Ricky Williams’ backup in New Orleans, and when Jamal Lewis went down for the season in 2001, with Holmes gone, Allen became the starter in what was his last NFL season. His DVOA wasn’t very good at -5.8%, but it wasn’t a disaster, either, when you compare it to Lewis’ 5.5% the year before.

6. Antowain Smith (2000-01, 2004-05)

The other Smith who pulled this move twice, Antowain lost his job to Travis Henry in Buffalo and was one of the thousands of veteran refugees brought in by Bill Belichick for the magical 2001 season. His DVOA stayed remarkably similar to his performance in Buffalo, going from -9.5% to -10%, but it was a ways better than Kevin Faulk’s -20.7% the year before, or J.R. Redmond’s -19.9%. I think everyone here knows the Smith story well enough.

In 2004, he rose again! After being let go by the Patriots, he ended up in Tennessee, where he backed up Chris Brown. He made his way the year after to New Orleans in its Katrina-riddled season, where stats are pretty irrelevant. Again, his DVOA stayed remarkably consistent (-12.7% to -12.5%), and while he was slightly worse than Deuce McAllister had been the year before, there’s no real predicative value to the 2005 Saints season.

7. Richard Huntley (2000-01)

8. Trung Canidate (2001-02)

Canidate was the speed demon and late first-round pick who was supposed to make the terrifying Rams offense even more so, but he never really made an impact. He barely played in 2000 and 2002, although he was fantastic in 2001, when he averaged 5.8 yards per carry and his 24.1% DVOA was best in football. The Rams shipped him to Washington, where he served as the starter in Steve Spurrier’s offense, splitting carries with Rock Cartwright and Ladell Betts. He actually was an improvement on Stephen Davis’ -8.4% DVOA, putting up a respectable -2.2% DVOA, but he couldn’t take the workload of the starting role, Washington traded for Clinton Portis, and Canidate never played again.

9. Warrick Dunn (2001-02)

Dunn wasn’t a backup inasmuch as he was a complimentary back to Mike Alstott. He was the featured back from 1997-98 and in 2000, but was technically the backup by seven carries in 2001 by virtue of missing three games. He went to Atlanta and was a big improvement over Maurice Smith, who also had one year as a starter and never played again.

10. Amos Zereoue (2003-04)

Zereoue was hyped as a good running back while backing up Jerome Bettis, but the numbers don’t show it. His best DVOA was -9.4%, and he was usually closer to -20%. He never had an above-average success rate, and was eventually dumped off to Oakland for the first year of the Norv Turner era. Replacing Wheatley (5.3% DVOA), Zereoue’s -14.1% DVOA did not help the Raiders’ many problems one bit. He made it to three games for the ’05 Patriots and was done.

11. Thomas Jones (2003-04)

Jones is another guy who had a strange career dictated by context; he went from first-round bust in Arizona to backup material in Tampa Bay to successful back on a Super Bowl team in Chicago. He wasn’t particularly effective in Tampa Bay, putting up a -12.4% DVOA while backing up Michael Pittman (-2.8% DVOA), but the Bears acquired him to supplant the A-Train, Anthony Thomas, who had actually put up a reasonably close to average -3.8% DVOA the year before. Jones got all the way up to -2.3% DVOA before really hitting his stride in 2005.

12. Corey Dillon (2003-04)

Another well-known story to readers of this site. Dillon’s -5.8% DVOA in Cincinnati in 2003 wasn’t fabulous by any means. He got it up to 21.2% in 2004 in New England, supplanting Smith, who was also at -5.8% in 2003.

13. Lamont Jordan (2004-05)

For my money, the closest comp to Turner. Jordan put up some extreme DVOAs as a Jet: in 2001, he was at 46.6% on 39 carries; in 2002, -40% on 84. 2003 saw him actually be average, with a 4.2% DVOA on 46 carries, and then back with 93 carries in 2004, his final year as a Jet, his 36.6% was second-best in the league. By comparison, Curtis Martin’s DVOA that year was 20%, good for eighth in the league, but he led the league with 54.9 DPAR.

The salary cap-strapped Jets had no way to keep Jordan to backup Martin, even though Martin was old and likely to breakdown the next year (which he did). Jordan moved onto Oakland, which gave him a five-year, $27.5 million deal. As you might remember, he was not the best back in football again. His DVOA dropped down to 1.5%; this, however, was still an improvement on Zereoue’s -14.1%. He was hurt for almost all of 2006.

14. Chester Taylor (2005-06)

Another Raven who flew the coop. He was no Holmes, as his -8.1% DVOA as a backup in 2005 was by no means spectacular. With Minnesota needing a running back after Whizzenation, they signed Taylor and gave him the bulk of the carries behind their restructured offensive line. Taylor wasn’t particularly great for a guy who gained 1,216 yards. His -9.4% DVOA was worse than he’d been in Baltimore, and was a step down from Mewelde Moore’s 1.9% DVOA the year before. Taylor was more durable, though, which is why he got the rock.

So, then, combining empirical judgement of the results along with some of my own opinions, I count eight improvements, five declines, and three relative washes. Of course, a back with the success of Turner isn’t really comparable to the failure Ahman Green was thought to be, or the starter Warrick Dunn was. In more likelihood, you can classify Turner in a group of elite backups alongside Jordan, Holmes, and Huntley. Those players went to three teams with very different offensive lines and played accordingly. Turner’s career, and his future as a star back, depends upon the same.

Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: Outside Foxborough

We’ve All Been Cheated

September 12, 2007 By Dan Snapp 71 Comments

logo 912 by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

What the hell is going on?

The Patriots did play Sunday, right? Because suddenly I’m not so sure. Is it even September? Did they even start the season?

We should have been three days into a post-blowout celebration, but we’ve been cheated of that. The rumors that the Patriots are guilty of illegally recording Jets defensive signals, and the mass media fallout that’s resulted, have left us all feeling a little hazy.

It’s still early, and there’s only smoke so far (lots and lots and lots of smoke), but that’s not stopping people from yelling “Fire!” Some are way out ahead of themselves, like Terrell Davis on the NFL Network suggesting a two-year playoff ban. Mike Florio ponders whether Coach Bill Belichick will be fired or merely suspended. And LaDainian Tomlinson, already on record last winter as calling Belichick “classless”, is shooting his mouth off again.

“I think the Patriots actually live by the saying, ‘If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,’” opined Tomlinson, sharing the results of his exhaustive investigation. You know LaDainian, he’s classy. Just ask him.

There’s still nothing definitive from the league yet, only reports from ESPN’s Chris Mortensen that Commissioner Roger Goodell has already determined the Patriots guilty. Mike Reiss, and Shalise Manza Young , however, have league spokesman Greg Aiello saying no decision has yet been rendered. And Mortensen’s sources have left him dangling recently on stories about Michael Vick and Eli Manning.

Nonetheless, Patriots fans should brace for the worst. Goodell’s the gunfighter hired to clean up Dodge, and neither the team’s reputation nor Robert Kraft’s influence will stop Goodell from making an example of them. Plus, they might just be guilty.

The damage already done to the Patriots reputation may be worse than anything Goodell could mete out.

There was an old novel, “The Good Soldier”, in which two couples enjoy the best of friendships over a nine-year period. The narrator comes to learn his wife’s been cheating on him with his best friend over that same span. He wrestles with the question of whether this news negates all the good times enjoyed, since every memory has now been corrupted.

This is what Patriots fans have in store for them, whether they themselves will be rehashing the authenticity of the Super Bowl wins, or whether it’s being zealously done for them by pundits and opposing fans alike. It took the 2003 and 2004 wins to quell the “tuck rule” clarion calls, but now there’s gristle for the masses to call those into question as well.

Yeah, we’re never going to hear the end of this.

So are the Patriots victims of some breach of unwritten NFL etiquette? Everybody steals signals, everybody knows about it, but nobody says anything until some maverick whistle-blower decides he wants to take down the league’s elite? That sort of thing?

Even if there’s truth to the “Everybody does it” argument, it doesn’t wash here. The Patriots were so amazingly, arrogantly brazen with this, it’s almost as if they were trying to get caught.

We never thought we’d ever be saying this about Belichick, but how stupid can he get? The same assistant videographer got nabbed in Green Bay, they’ve been warned by the league about the practice, and oh yeah, his old assistant coach – a guy who knows how the operation runs - is on the other sideline. Ya think they might be looking for it?

The punishment is going to leave somebody unsatisfied. Execs like Bill Polian and Bob Harlan smell blood in the air, and are going for the jugular. Will the loss of a second- and fifth-round pick (The speculation from Sports Illustrated’s Don Banks) appease them? Or will the sway of public opinion force more forfeitures of picks, a forfeiture of the game, or like Florio predicts, a suspension for Belichick?

The events of the last few days have also revealed the league-wide contempt for the Patriots. Remember the days of the Cowboys with the “America’s Team” crap, and how reviled they were for it? That’s the Patriots now.

Whatever Goodell’s decision, the Patriots should follow Rodney Harrison’s lead, cooperating with the league, accepting the punishment and moving on as best they can. We should have little doubt the first thing we hear out of Belichick’s mouth is, “I’m just concentrating on the next game.”

Here we thought it might actually be easy this season. Big free agent signings, huge trades for premier players, and nary a storm on the horizon, save for Asante Samuel’s contract talks.

We should have known better. The Patriots are at their best when facing adversity. Here’s hoping they’re at their best now.

Adversity’s here.

Filed Under: Columns

Pats Probe Continues

September 11, 2007 By Scott Benson 9 Comments

by Scott Benson
[email protected]

ESPN’s Chris Mortensen – citing ‘league sources’ – reports tonight that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has decided that the Patriots violated league rules on Sunday by stationing a cameraman to videotape the defensive signals of the New York Jets.

The league has not issued a statement on the controversy, which arose in the wake of the Jets embarrassing loss in the season’s opening game.

Mortensen’s sources – who chose to remain anonymous – claim that the Patriots will have until Friday to respond to the charges. Goodell, according to Mortensen’s sources, could impose “severe sanctions” that may include “multiple draft picks”.

The sources go on to allege that the Patriots are also being investigated due to questions – presumably raised by the Jets – about audio communications equipment used by the Patriots during their one-sided victory over New York, which had been touted as the Patriots’ immediate successor as divisional champions.

Mortensen’s report does not indicate whether the league’s Competition Committee – which includes Colts President Bill Polian – has conferenced on the matter, or made a recommendation to the Commissioner. No committee member has commented for the record on the Patriots controversy.

Patriots Daily will continue to monitor this developing story. Full commentary will follow in Friday’s Patriots Roundtable.

Filed Under: News

Inside Gillette

September 11, 2007 By Christopher Price 7 Comments

logo 911 by Christopher Price
[email protected]

At the start of the second half on Sunday when Ellis Hobbs started out of the end zone eight yards deep, almost every Patriots fan from Bridgeport to Block Island — as well as most of the New England sideline and coaches box — had the same thought: Good Lord, what is he doing? Anyone who has ever played football knows that you never think about doing something like that.

“It was one of those things where it was like, ‘No, no, no,’” said wide receiver Wes Welker of his reaction when Hobbs started out of the end zone.

But Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick knows that when it comes to returning kicks and punts, things aren’t always what they seem to be. You can’t get caught up in the traditional hard and fast rules of special teams — like automatically taking a knee if the kick is received in the end zone, or not calling for a fair-catch inside the 20.

“Every kick is different,” cautioned Belichick yesterday when recalling Hobbs’ return.

That’s why, when the Iowa State product started his 108-yard trek into history, Belichick was maybe the one New England follower who didn’t wonder what was going on. Much is made of his background as a defensive mastermind, but that discussion often shortchanges Belichick’s history on special teams. Few head coaches have the special teams background that Belichick does. Among his other duties, he was a special teams coach from 1976 to 1982 with the Lions, Broncos and Giants. Seven years — longer than anyone else who is currently an NFL head coach, other than Cleveland’s Romeo Crennel. And more than most head coaches, he knows the importance of special teams — some would argue that his special teams unit was almost solely responsible for winning the 2001 AFC Championship Game against the Steelers.

And while many teams have hard and fast rules on special teams play, Belichick said yesterday he’s frowned on such an approach. That not only goes for the personnel asked to work on special teams — the Patriots remain one of the few teams in the league who use a healthy number of starters for most special teams formations — but for on-field decisions on punts and kick returns. You can give a returner some general guidelines and a solid phalanx of blockers, but in the end, there are too many variables to use a dogmatic approach to the kicking game.

“I think if you’ve been around the kicking game in this league long enough, you know it’s hard to have a hard and fast rule and be right every time,” Belichick said yesterday. “You could have a rule, but I don’t think you’re going to be right every time.”

According to Belichick, there are simply too many possibilities.

“Hang time is involved, which I’d say is a big factor. You tell me whether you’d rather handle a ball that is three yards deep in the end zone with a 3.7 hang time or handle a ball that comes down on the goal line with 4.2 hang time. It’s not the same,” Belichick said yesterday.

“You can say don’t catch the ball inside the 10-yard line, but if there’s a five-second hang time and you have four guys standing behind you on the goal line and the ball comes down on the six, I don’t know how smart it is to let it hit and bounce down to the two,” he added, referencing Kevin Faulk’s decision to take a fair-catch on a first quarter punt at New England’s nine-yard line.

So when Hobbs came churning down the sidelines into history, Welker — as well as everyone else who had a flying Elvis on the side of their helmet or front of their shirt — quickly changed their tune from “no, no, no” to “yes, yes, yes.” And New England had its latest special teams hero.

“I think Ellis made the decision that he thought was the best one at that time,” Belichick said. “ It worked out OK, so that’s good. I think he was trying to make a play. What I always encourage the players to do is try to make a good play and it turned out good.”

FIVE THINGS TO LOOK FOR THIS WEEK

1. How the New England offensive line handles the San Diego linebackers. The Charger LBs can bring the pressure like few other teams in the league — last year, only one other team had a higher percentage of sacks come from their linebackers than San Diego. On the heels of their effort against the Jets (when they held New York sackless), it’ll be another stern test for Patriots’ offensive linemen Matt Light, Logan Mankins, Dan Koppen, Stephen Neal, Nick Kaczur and Ryan O’Callaghan.

2. The Randy Moss/Quentin Jammer matchup. Jammer isn’t the shy retiring type — on his Web site last year, he wondered how many picks he would get against Moss — even though a Los Angeles Times story recently named him the league’s worst corner in coverage (by their count, he was targeted 126 times last season and gave up 72 receptions, a league high). Moss is coming off one of the best performances for a wide receiver (nine catches, 183 yards, one TD) in the history of the New England franchise. It’s likely the two will spend the bulk of Sunday evening going head-to-head.

3. The continued maturation of Laurence Maroney. For the first time in his professional career, Maroney had a game where he got 20 or more carries. As he starts to develop into a full-time featured back, games like this week’s contest with the Chargers (who were a Top 10 team against the run last season) will go a long way toward defining his career as a No. 1 running back in the NFL.

4. Special teams showdown. Can Ellis Hobbs turn in another solid return performance? Can Matt Cassel regain his role as holder after botching a 43-yard field goal attempt by Stephen Gostkowski? And will Chris Hanson get a chance to punt in a pressure situation?

5. Playoff hangover. Even though most of the bad blood stemming from the post-playoff histrionics was supposedly settled at the Pro Bowl and during the offseason, there’s still enough history between these two teams to make one think that it’s not completely in the past. If things get out of hand for either side, this game certainly has the potential to get ugly fast.

STAT OF THE WEEK

10. The Patriots had the ball for 12:30 in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win, an astounding 10 more minutes than the Jets.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I always try to find that sixth or seventh gear, the gear they don’t even make.” – Kick returner Ellis Hobbs on one of his goals as a return man.

Christopher Price is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the Patriots since 2001 for Boston Metro. He’s served a contributor to ESPN.com, SI.com, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The Miami Herald. His book “The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower” will be released in October by Thomas Dunne Books. He can be reached at [email protected].

Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: Inside Gillette

Grand Opening

September 10, 2007 By Scott Benson 34 Comments

logo 98 by Scott Benson
[email protected]

The 2007 New England Patriots opened for business on Sunday and instantly began crushing competitors like a gridiron Super Wal-Mart.

The first Mom and Pop operation to go belly up was the New York Jets, who fell to the Patriots 38-14 in a game that was, and I say this without a trace of sarcasm, not as close as the score indicated.

The Pats slaughtered the Jets from pillar to post, owning the line of scrimmage and every square inch surrounding it, emphatically denying any claim New York may have laid – prematurely, it seems – to the AFC Eastern Division.

One can only guess which ancient prizefight film Eric Mangini showed his team to prepare for this game. Emile Griffith and Benny “Kid” Paret?

Score over the last eight quarters played between the two teams? New England 75, New York 30.

Randy Moss was sensational in his Patriots debut, threatening the team’s single game receiving record and threatening the rest of the American Conference with his explosive presence in New England’s lineup.

Ellis Hobbs, quite combustable himself, broke an NFL record with a 108 yard kickoff return for touchdown to open the second half. That, and Moss’s 51 yard score from Tom Brady just moments later, also broke the Jets.

New York quarterback Chad Pennington was forced from the game with an ankle injury in the third quarter, to cheers from the Jets faithful.

It all started, though, with the Patriots utter dominance of New York’s offensive and defensive lines. When Brady took the field, he did so with complete immunity from the Jets pass rush. When Laurence Maroney and Sammy Morris lugged the ball, they did so through seams and alleys made clear by the physical, yet athletic New England front. There have been few days where all elements of the Patriots offense have meshed better.

This was never more true than on New England’s first possession. After being pinned inside their ten by a Jets punt, the Patriots offense worked free of their own goal line by handing the ball to Maroney, who carried three times for 21 yards. When the Jets moved up to defend, Brady calmly went over them, hitting Wes Welker and then Moss (alone, in full stride in the center of the field) for easy first downs. It was Welker, set in a formation that left him one-on-one with a single defender, that finished the 91 yard drive with a nifty catch, cut and run for the Patriots’ first score of the season.

On the other side of the ball, the New England defensive line immediately took away Thomas Jones and the Jets running game behind the push of Vince Wilfork and Ty Warren, while Jarvis Green and Mike Vrabel collapsed the pocket around Pennington.

It was only a subsequent series of relativetly minor New England miscues that gave the Jets any hope, and Pennington eventually took advantage, driving the Jets 66 yards with short passes to Laverneus Coles and Jericho Cotchery to tie the game at 7.

But Brady took the game right back for the Pats, leading the offense on another balanced drive that again featured thrilling contributions from Moss, and again ended in the New York end zone. The two time Super Bowl MVP first went right (on a perfectly thrown loft that netted 33) and then left (an overhand fastball for 22) on consecutive plays to Moss, which set up a big-league TD catch by Ben Watson on 3rd and Goal from the Jets 5, as the tight end worked himself free along the back line while Brady whistled one through the Jets for the score, and the 14-7 lead. New York went to the locker room with none of the momentum it had so temporarily held.

Nor would they ever come close to recapturing it, even after the break. Thanks for this goes first to Hobbs, who opened the second half by returning a kickoff from eight yards deep in his own end zone. Which come to think of it, is probably not the best idea. But Ellis Hobbs is no shrinking violet, and so he took it left up the sidelines, where Watson stepped up again with the crucial block that set Hobbs free on his record-setting run. What did I tell you about Hobbs? How can you not have him return kicks?

After the defense again made quick work of the Jets, knocking Pennington to the sidelines with a Jarvis Green sack, Brady went back to Moss for 19 more before sending him deep through a morass of New York defenders, where he took in an on-target Brady bomb to the left flag for the controversial veteran’s first touchdown as a Patriot, and a two touchdown lead.

Pennington and the Jets fought back from his ankle injury to drive again, as Jones began to find open running room for the first time. He ran 4 times for 26 yards (half of his total for the day), and two Pennington strikes to tight end Chris Baker set up a second short touchdown by Coles. The lead was back to 7.

But it was all the Jets had. Brady and Sammy Morris made sure of that, as they both took the Pats on a drive that ate up 75 yards and more importantly, nearly eleven minutes from the clock. It ended with a 22 yard Stephen Gostkowski field goal, and Clemens began warming up for mop up duty.

Heath Evans added a short touchdown plunge with two minutes remaining.

It’s just one game, but it was a victory so complete that surely someone somewhere will lose their head and declare the division race over before it begins. I won’t go that far, yet, though the Patriots appeared so omnipotent on offense that I hardly recognized them. What a juxtaposition from last year at this time, when passes went awry and body language made headlines. This year, though there are even more new faces than in 06, the Patriots offense moved which such precision and ease that even the most ardent fanboy had to rub his eyes in disbelief of what he was seeing.

As for Moss, there are few superlatives that can adequately describe his immediate and stunning impact on the Patriots attack, so I won’t bother. Except to say that regardless of his well-publicized and well-earned foibles, New England has never had a receiver that was his equal. His route on the 51 yard bomb was stunning; bracketed by three men, Moss simply glided past them to an open area across the field, where he easily gathered in Brady’s accurate toss.

Brady finished with a 22/28/297/3 td (now at 150 on his career) line, and it’s unlikely he’s had a smoother or more tranquil day at the Pats controls. He’s found a fast friend in Welker, who worked quick routes to safe completions and first downs throughout. He and Moss combined for 15 catches and nearly 250 yards.

Maroney and Morris played a solid, albeit secondary role, but it was their steady hand in the early stages that set the Pats on their way. Ryan O’Callaghan joined the Pats offensive line often as a third tight end, and played well as Dante Scarnecchia’s unit had one of its better days.

On defense, Vrabel and Green were the leaders, combining for 4.5 sacks, while Wilfork and Warren ate up the middle. Adalius Thomas played an under-stated role, but proved valuable as a pass defender as he covered a lot of ground in the intermediate middle. He nearly picked off a Pennington pass on the Jets first possession. Asante Samuel and the Pats secondary played off the Jets receivers and, while Pennington had an efficient day, he could generate none of the big plays that vexed New England last season.

Returning vet Eugene Wilson led all Patriots tacklers with 8.

If any Patriot had a rough day, it was Matt Cassel, who as holder flubbed a Lonie Paxton snap that derailed an early field goal attempt. He was later replaced by Chris Hanson (who held Gostkowski’s successful 22 yarder), and when New England needed a backup quarterback to take the final snap, the coaches turned to Matt Gutierrez instead. Ouch.

With week one now satisfyingly under their belts, New England’s players and coaches will turn their attention to the San Diego Chargers, the other team who left the field for the final time in 06 grousing about the Patriots. They open the home schedule at Gillette Stadium next Sunday night.

Filed Under: Games

The Sunday Links for September 9, 2007

September 9, 2007 By Scott Benson 12 Comments

by Scott Benson
[email protected]

How long have you been waiting for this day?

Ever since the 2007 schedule was first released, I suspect. It’s not hyperbole to say this is one compelling opening game. Let’s face it, the Patriots could be opening in someplace like Glendale, AZ today. Better they finish the 2007 season there, and start it here, where familiarity has bred contempt. Here, in most hostile New Jersey, with the bitter rival that would love nothing better than to disabuse New England of the divisional title it has held since 2003.

Hard to top that. Let’s see what the local papers have to say about it.

At the Globe, Christopher Gaspar cautions the Patriots to expect the unexpected in the usually-tricky opener, even though it will be the fourth meeting between the teams in their last 20 games. In his weekly Scouting Report, Jim McBride promises the Pats a favorable result if they will only hand the ball to Laurence Maroney. Jackie MacMullan chips in with a closer look at new arrival Donte Stallworth, who hopes he’s finally in the right place at the right time in New England.

Be honest – did you keep expecting Stallworth to demand a new contract somewhere in this piece? Claim he had been disrespected? Reveal a menacing tattoo that says something like “Remit Payment Upon Receipt”? I mean, a Jackie Mac column on the day of a big Pats game…..it’s okay, he doesn’t do any of those things. I know, I looked.

Mike Reiss then talks to some blood-draining psychopath in his weekly Football Notes, about the NFL’s HGH-eruption on the eve of a new campaign. Now, I don’t want to make light of this issue (even though I still don’t know if I should care about it), but did you check this guy’s credentials, Mike? He’s ranting and raving about draining blood from players and freezing it. What kind of madman are you, ‘doctor’? In the immortal words of Susie Greene, you sick ****.

Seriously, a typically solid job by Reiss, who later notes that, since 1978, teams that win their opening game are twice as likely to reach the playoffs as the teams they vanquish.

Over at the Herald, John Tomase declares this Patriots team as the most talented the franchise has ever put on paper. I suppose, but I’m dubious as to the value of this to the new Patriots Hall of Fame/Discount Warehouse and Tire Center the team is building. Anyway, John has compiled expert opinions on several of the Pats’ key players, a thorough piece befitting today’s occasion. There’s also Tomase’s Five Things to Look For this afternoon.

Tomase also submits this week’s Patriots Beat, in which he declares that pupil Eric Mangini has proven that he is now able to match wits with his mentor, Bill Belichick. Now, I grant John, the Jets are a much tougher matchup under Mangini than they were under HBO breakout star Herm Edwards, but Mangini proved he can ‘match’ game plans and adjustments with Belichick by losing two of three games to New England last year?

The headline writers at the Herald didn’t do Tomase any favors either, adding in “Mangini the only rival able to outwit Belichick”. Well, that’s one way of looking at a .333 winning percentage. Two words, folks: Mike Shanahan.

Karen Guregian has the notebook this morning, noting a series of roster moves yesterday that left Tory James and Marcellus Rivers cut, and Asante Samuel, Corey Mays and Santonio Thomas on the 53 man list. Also, would you have ever guessed that Reche Caldwell was once one of the loudest guys in the Patriots locker room?

Tony Massarotti pens a football column today. He must have lost a bet or something. “I’ll bet you that Manny is faking.”

In the ProJo, Shalise Manza Young gets the opening day jitters, and talks with Belichick about the unknowns of the season’s first game. Did we know that Belichick’s first game as an NFL assistant was also Walter Payton’s first game as a pro? Have we talked about this before?

Shalise also goes Up Close with safety James Sanders, who reveals a background in health science and physical therapy. What better place to have these skills than in the New England secondary? Versatility!

Jim Donaldson says that the Pats will feel the loss of Richard Seymour far more than the loss of Rodney Harrison. I may agree, but jeez, Jim…don’t be such a downer.

Bill Reynolds finishes up by marveling at the NFL that Pete Rozelle wrought.

In the Hartford Courant, David Heuschkel says that it’s hardly a level playing field when Tom Brady steps on the artificial turf. As always, you can find the rest of the story at patriotslinks.com.

Enjoy the game today, friends.

Note: My first pass at this column today completely overlooked the outstanding Albert Breer and his own Patriots Beat, filed only with the MetroWest Daily News now that their shared arrangment with the Herald is finished. Anyway, Breer will be soon finished himself (off to cover the Cowboys in Dallas), but not before he rings up an ode to the Patriots Culture. I should have been paying closer attention than to miss out on one of our last helpings of Breer, who made quite an impact here in a short time.

Filed Under: Media

College Scout for September 8, 2007

September 8, 2007 By Greg Doyle 1 Comment

logo 98 by Greg Doyle
[email protected]

The second Saturday of college football kicks off today with some good matchups. As the season gets rolling here, we’ll start to see some really great games pop up. Let’s take a look at some of today’s best.

Miami at Oklahoma (12:00 Noon ABC): Unranked Miami (1-0) visits the 5th ranked Oklahoma Sooners (1-0) in a match up between these two traditional powerhouses who have not met since the 1987 Orange Bowl. This game should feature some hard hitting defense and excellent athletes on both sides. Here are some of the players to look for:

Oklahoma TE Joe Jon Finley (#19): You gotta love any football player named Joe Jon. He must be able to play. In this case, he can. Has excellent size at 6’6″ and 261, and he has 39 career receptions. Caught one pass in the opening win against North Texas this year. Was a high school quarterback. Solid blocker who has decent hands. Not the fastest guy in the world, but a solid prospect.

Oklahoma DT Steven Coleman (#90): A three hundred pound run stuffer who was Honorable Mention All Big 12 last year, despite low tackle numbers. That is a tribute to his ability to clog up the middle. Could draw interest in a Pats type system as a 3-4 end as he has the size. Also added 3 sacks, so not totally unable to get to the quarterback. Last year was his first as a starter, he should improve and put himself in the draft mix. A player to watch.

Oklahoma CB Marcus Walkers (#24): One of the top corners in college and definitely someone the Patriots will take a close look at. Has had some shoulder issues in the past. Walker was rated as one of the top corners coming into college out of high school a few years back and has been a good player. If he can turn it up a notch to great his senior year, he should at minimum be a first day pick.

Miami WR Lance Leggett (#9): Miami’s leading receiver last year has 70 career receptions. Trackster had second fastest 100m time in the ACC last year, so he has speed to burn. Excellent height as well at 6’3″. Known for his blocking as well, which should impress the Patriots. He has never quite produced up to his level of talent, but its hard to say for sure if that is his fault or the fault of the disappointing quarterbacks Miami has had the last few years.

Miami CB Glenn Sharpe (#4): Another excellent cornerback prospect, however he has suffered several serious knee injuries in his career and that will surely be a concern at draft time and could drop his stock a bit. Was healthy last year, his junior year. Had a big interception to clinch the Boston College game last year and send Miami to a bowl game. Been very productive when healthy. The Patriots will likely be in the market for corners and given his injury history, may be able to get him at a bargain spot in comparison to his talent. A second consecutive year would do a lot to help his standing.

Oregon at Michigan (3:30 PM ABC): Michigan will be looking to rebound from its embarassing loss to Appalachian State last week and it will face a tough foe in the Oregon Ducks. Oregon won their opener, but traditionally is a much better team at home than on the road. Some very good players in this game:

Michigan QB Chad Henne (#7): Has been a starter since appearing at Michigan as a true freshman. He didn’t get his senior year off to a soaring start with a very pedestrian game last week. He has all the tools, he’s the proverbial tall with a strong arm pocket quarterback. But still, there has been something mildly disappointing about his play since he has been at Michigan. His stats are good, but with the talent around him that isn’t surprising. Henne certainly has the potential to be one of the top quarterbacks in the draft next year, but he won’t do it playing like last week. The Patriots could have some interest, as they have had a bit of luck with Michigan quarterbacks, but he will likely be high enough in the draft they won’t take a quarterback at that point.

Michigan RB Mike Hart (#20): One of the best running backs in college football, he is shifty yet surprisingly powerful despite his lack of top size (5’9″ 202). Could approach or surpass 5,000 yards for his career, so his production can not be doubted. Doesn’t look to me like a back who’d strike fear into anyone in the NFL, but you have to be impressed by his durability, endurance and ability to carry the load throughout college. Needs to improve as a pass catcher.

Michigan T Jake Long (#77): Protects Henne’s backside and one of the best offensive linemen in next year’s draft. A team captain, first team All-American as a junior and one of the leading candidates to be the Outland Trophy winner as the best college lineman this year. Could be a franchise left tackle and definite candidate as a top 5 pick next year. The Patriots would probably love a guy like this, tough, strong, hard worker, team captain. But its doubtful they’ll be high enough in the draft to ever get near him.

Oregon QB Dennis Dixon (#10): A phenomenal athlete and interesting prospect. Can both throw and run, last week he had 141 yards rushing. Has a good arm, but sometimes holds the ball too long and commits turnovers at times. It’s possible the Patriots could look at him, he may even project to a wide receiver conversion. Also a baseball prospect and played in the Braves farm system this year.

Oregon RB Jonathan Stewart (#28): I talked about this player last week. Only a junior, but still worth watching. He has phenomenal skills, a rare combination of speed, power and size (230 lbs). But for some reason has always platooned and that was the case last week. He did run for 72 yards, but that was only third on the team for the game. Put up nearly 1,000 yards last year and does return kicks. He should be highly sought after in next year’s draft given his talent. Still, his lack of dominance continues to be puzzling.

Oregon RT Geoff Schwartz (#75): Massive and strong right tackle checking in at 337 lbs. Has started for 2 years previously. Coming off back surgery. Worth watching, given his size and experience. And for any team considering drafting him, I say let the Schwartz be with you.

Virginia Tech at LSU (9:15 PM ESPN): Both teams come in at 1-0. I took a look at both these teams last week, but this is such an intriguing matchup, it has to be highlighted. For last week’s players, take a look at last week’s College Scout articles. We’ll pick some different players to watch on both squads this week.

LSU RB Jacob Hester (#18): A former fullback who has made the transition to starting running back for LSU. Not flashy and runs somewhat upright, but he runs hard, has some surprising moves and has power to break tacklers. Also catch the ball well. A crunch time player who the Patriots definitely could like as a special teams maven and versatile guy who can play both halfback and fullback.

LSU WR Early Doucet (#9): A big, smooth receiver who does not have blazing speed but posseses great hands. Uses his body well to block off defenders. Came into the year with 103 career receptions.

LSU S Craig Steltz (#16): Taking over as a full time starter, he came up big in LSU’s opener this year with 3 interceptions. Has played behind some great players, but he has decent size and did play a lot in sub packages even before this season. Has shown a knack for interceptions throughout his career. The Patriots are likely to be in the market for safeties next draft, and this could be a target.

Virginia Tech NT Carlton Powell (#99): Athletic and hard-nosed nose tackle in the Hokies system. Slightly undersized, but seems to have the talent to slide to end in 3-4, which makes him a possible Patriots target. Could also play tackle in a 4-3. Team leader could get himself into the mid-rounds with a good year.

Virginia Tech CB Victor “Macho” Harris (#1): Only a junior, but is a potential shut down corner who may come out next year. Brash and plays aggressively. Makes plays on the ball. Good sized. Had a great first week, if that continues he’ll be tempted to put himself in the draft.

Other players to watch this weekend: Over on ESPN2 at 11:00 AM today, West Virginia takes on Marshall. West Viginia RB Steve Slaton (#10) has blazing speed, maybe the best I have ever seen from a running back. He ran for 1,700 plus yards last year and will be a top Heisman contender this year. On ESPN2 at 9:00 PM, you may want to check out South Florida middle linebacker Ben Moffitt (#59) as they face off against Auburn on the road. He is a inside linebacker who has put up great stats the past two years, has solid size and seems to fit the Patriots 3-4 system. Two years ago Moffitt was National Player of the Week leading South Florida to a huge upset of then #9 Louisville with a monster game. On some of the Fox Sports Networks at 10:15 PM, Arizona State faces off at home against Colorado. Arizona State running back Ryan Torrain is a big (6’1″ 213 lbs) runner who has a big year last year in his first season out of junior college. He has been called by some a dark-horse Heisman Trophy candidate. He went for 3 touchdowns on the ground last week, so it should be interesting to see how he does against the improved Colorado defense.

Don’t be shy – shill for your favorites here.

Filed Under: The Draft

Patriots Roundtable – September 7, 2007

September 7, 2007 By Scott Benson 34 Comments

logo97 by the Patriots Daily Staff
[email protected]

The opening of the 2007 regular season is near, and that means it’s time to get the Roundtable gang together for our traditional Friday pre-game chat.

There’s plenty of gristle for the boys to chew on, including the unexpected loss of Pro-Bowler Richard Seymour and the NFL’s suspension of team leader Rodney Harrison, due to his admitted use of performance enhancing drugs.

Oh, yeah, there’s also a game – a season-opening matchup with divisional rival New York – to talk about.

Let’s get started.

Rodney Harrison has admitted to using the banned substance Human Growth Hormone (HGH) to reclaim his place in the Patriots lineup after a series of debilitating injuries. As a result, he’s discredited himself and his league, and left his team without one of its best players as a new season opens. Your reaction?

Dan Snapp: Crime and punishment. He got caught, and he – and the Patriots – get penalized with the four games. Harrison tried to draw a line between HGH and steroids, but I doubt the public’s going to care about such nuances. He cheated, got caught, and the blemish will follow him the rest of his career. It won’t keep me from rooting for him, though.

Tim Jordan: That news hit me like a ton of bricks. I wish I could tell you that my first reaction was anger at the offending player, but it wasn’t. I was disappointed and sad about such jarring news so close to the beginning of the season. A few days later I’ve rationalized because it feels more like a normal season with some obligatory pre-season adversity. It was too surreal before the Harrison and Seymour setbacks, too much to like about their chances – it made me dubious. Also, I am sure it makes me a flaming fan-boy worthy of derision and scorn, but I’ve felt for a long time that NFL players use PEDs and I don’t have a problem with it. One could make numerous analogies to similar measures taken by people to survive or thrive at their own vocations. I think it’s naive to think that it’s not prevalent in the NFL considering the nature of the work and the compensation involved.

Bill Barnwell: If people think Harrison is the only player in the league using HGH, they need to get their heads out of the sand. There’s going to be more players who are outed as a result of the ongoing investigation into Signature Pharmacy, which is the only reason Harrison (or any of the other athletes) are admitting to usage. If there was a test that reliably detected HGH, that would be one thing, but there’s not. The only way to find users at this point is to find evidence of purchases, which is why Harrison’s squawking. This doesn’t change how I feel about the guy, to be honest, because if I didn’t like players who use HGH, I’d like about 20% of the league.

What will the loss of Richard Seymour for the first six weeks mean to the Patriots?

Travis Graham: When I first heard the news that they PUP’d him I was disappointed. After a few minutes of thinking about it, I actually feel good about this decision. Arguably, the deepest position on the team is the DL. It’s not like they need him right away. With the rotation of Green/Wright/Smith/Brown (and possibly Thomas) they shouldn’t have any trouble finding fresh legs to fill that hole. Having a fresh Seymour down the stretch will be a nice bonus, especially after what happened in Indy last year. I wonder if Seymour was close to coming back when he came into camp and Belichick told him to take his time with his knee and save his energy for this winter when they really need him… sort of like a Roger Clemens agreement.

Dan: I don’t want to underestimate Seymour’s absence. Six games is a significant portion of the season, and they have the Jets, Chargers, Bengals and Cowboys in those first six games. With the competition so tight for a playoff bye, those games are important. Since Harrison’s suspension was announced prior to Saturday’s decision to put Seymour on PUP, the team could have used that open roster space for Seymour and not need to make another roster move ’til Harrison came back in week five. So, does this mean Seymour’s injury is serious enough to require the full six weeks of recuperation?

Kevin Thomas: Of course, now the rumors are that it could be the entire season. It seems to me that the Patriots aren’t trigger-shy when it comes to IR’ing players, so my guess is their legitimate timetable for Seymour’s return is sometime between weeks 6-10. I don’t think they would go this route if there was only a small chance of Seymour returning at all this season. If they know that the earliest he could be back is, say mid-December, he would be on the IR now. I really don’t see an upside to playing games with the PUP/IR designations, unless Seymour’s health situation is so uncertain they really have no way of knowing when he might be ready. On the field, this one is going to hurt, I think, especially in the running game. The Chargers game will be a challenge, to say the least.

Bruce Allen: The Seymour absence definitely troubles me more than the Harrison one…perhaps because of the uncertainty surrounding the injury and surgery. The reports of some sort of infection following the surgery don’t sound good. While the Patriots have some nice depth on the line, Seymour is the keystone. Ty Warren got some well deserved recognition and praise last season, some even said he was their top lineman. It will be interesting to see how he does as the main focus on the line.

Bill: It’s a problem for me. Wilfork and Warren are very good, but they look better than they actually are because Seymour draws so much attention.

Scott Benson: I think there might be some merit to that thought. I wonder how the Pats will fare over a prolonged period with Seymour out. The closest comparison is a four game stretch he missed in 05, and they didn’t cover themselves in glory then.

Tim: As Bruce mentions, Warren is a young player and is seemingly getting better. I think they have experienced talent to spare here for 6 games, while they probably don’t at other positions. This preseason introduced us to LeKevin Smith and Kareen Brown to add to the stable of back-ups along the line. Jarvis Green has played Seymour’s position in some very big games that they won, including the playoffs. The line looks like it’s been built to withstand such absences since it is so vital to what the team does defensively.

Let’s take at look at Sunday’s game. What a way to start the season, with a road game against their top divisional rival. We’ll start with the Patriots offense vs. the Jets defense. What will you be looking for?

Greg Doyle: An emphasis on throwing. In contrast to many, I actually feel the Patriots will continue to try to be pretty balanced, on the whole, this year. But in this game, I think the Jets will have more trouble defending the pass than the run with the Patriots new weapons going against their mediocre secondary. It will be a week to week thing, I think, but this week look for more throwing than running.

Scott: 147, 146 and 158. That was the Patriots net rushing in three games with New York last season. Run the ball down their throats. Spread it out and get them all flying to the quarterback (as they did in Foxboro last fall), and then run it right past them.

Tim: Yup, lots of disguised blitzes with no set formation pre-snap so Brady isn’t allowed to recognize the formation and make the call. Last year the Patriots countered with the no-huddle and it worked out very well. I think the Patriots offense will put together some solid drives to complement the defense and make this one out of reach by the 4th quarter. I’m typically terrified of the Jets (irrationally) every year, but when I think back to 06 I feel more frustration than fright. They stole that game in Foxborough and, other than some fluke plays you won’t see again in a lifetime of watching games, the Patriots dominated them in the other two. It’s also noteworthy that no one outside the locker room has any idea how Moss will be used. No one. That can’t be an easy wild card to game plan against. I can’t wait to see how he’s used this week.

Travis: I’m curious to see how the Pats offense operates with all of their new weapons in place. We still haven’t seen what Moss and David Thomas can bring to the offense this year in a game situation. I agree with Scott that the Pats will try spreading out the receivers in no-huddle situations, which would set up Maroney for an occasional draw play (where he excels). I don’t know if Mangenius will trust the rookie CB Darrelle Revis enough to put him out there in only his third week in the NFL, but if he does, look for Brady to pick on him.

Bill: Running game is everything here. The Jets defense was the worst in football last year at stopping the run. They’ll be slightly better this year, but this is still a very weak front seven with no nose tackle of consequence. The Patriots can dominate this game by running the ball, and if they don’t, it will be a huge shocker.

Let’s flip it around. Pats defense vs. the Jets offense.

Kevin: It looks like Asante Samuel will play, which is key, because Pennington is a guy who will turn the ball over if you have a playmaker like Samuel out there. I am somewhat concerned about the safeties. The Pats gave up more than their share of big plays against the Jets last year. Sanders and whoever else they put back there need to be cognizant of that and not get burned on those big gains. That’s probably the only way the Jets win this game–I can’t see the Jets dominating this defense for 60 minutes. Cotchery is almost an Official Patriots Killer at this point of his young career. They absolutely must contain him.

Bill: Cotchery last year: three games, 16 catches, 291 yards, three touchdowns. A lot of that was due to weakness at linebacker and safety. This year, Adalius Thomas and Brandon Meriweather are there, and Eugene Wilson is here until he gets hurt again. They need to be able to handle Cotchery as a deep threat and as an underneath receiver playing off Laveraneus Coles.

Tim: Pennington has had his fair share of multiple interception games against this defense – my favorite being the infamous Kolber-Namath game. Samuel put the lights out on the playoff game with the interception that he returned for the TD. I am not worried about the Jets offense, unless they can find a way to run consistently against New England. That’s one of the reasons for the loss in Foxborough last year. With the bad field conditions Kevan Barlow looked like Jim Brown on two drives and their defense did a good job of confusing Brady the rest of the way.

Travis: Without Seymour and Harrison, the strength of this defense is the linebackers. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a group of linebackers this good in New England. Think about who they have: Bruschi, Vrabel, Thomas, Colvin and Seau. There could be four or more hall of famers in that group. That’s amazing. When the Pats had all four starting LBs healthy last year (10 games), they gave up 76ypg on the ground. When Seau broke his arm, in the remaining 9 games they gave up 121ypg. This year they’ll start out with five solid linebackers and the newest one is one of the best in the league. What does this mean for the Jets? Well, I think they’ll have difficulty running the ball especially if Tom Jones hasn’t regained all of his speed yet. The Pats will have to force Pennington to beat him with his arm strength. They’ll have to take away the short stuff that Pennington throws because when Chad tries to go deep it can be a horror show for the Jets. The Pats DBs should try to force the issue by playing close to the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped.

Scott: Tom Jones? I love that. “It’s not un-u-sual to be stuffed, on third and one…..”

Tim: While the swooning offensive line throws bouquets and soiled jockstraps at him.

Dan: You were kidding about the HoF, right, Travis? I think it’s even debatable whether this is the best linebacker grouping they’ve had. The 2003 and 2004 seasons, with Bruschi and Vrabel in their primes, a still-contributing Ted Johnson and Roman Phifer, Colvin coming on strong in the ’04-’05 playoffs, and a resurgent Willie McGinest, might trump this season’s. The wild card, of course, is Adalius Thomas. The collective age of the group, though, could turn a team strength into its biggest vulnerability.

Greg: I think the Jets will try to run and control the clock. They do have two good receivers though, so it would be dumb to not try to get the ball down the field with them. I think with Pennington you have to try to force him to throw it downfield from the pocket. He doesn’t have the arm to do it very well. He can hit the short stuff. He can hit a pass if he’s flushed a bit. But make him stand there and he can’t consistently. So I guess that would mean the gameplan is to take away the run early and force Pennington to throw from the pocket where he has many times made mistakes against the Pats.

Scott: I wonder if we underestimate their offense a little. Aside from the playoff loss last year, the Jets have been pretty close to the Pats in time of possession, total yards and most importantly, on the scoreboard. Whether its big plays or long drives, they seem to find a way to stay in these games.

Anything about the special teams matchup that stands out?

Travis: The Pats might be catching a huge break in this one if Justin Miller is unable to return kicks because of his hamstring injury. He can be a difference maker when he’s out there. The other question mark is how the Pats punter de jour will perform. I’m not too worried about this one, though. I don’t see the Pats giving up the ball much on Sunday.

Greg: I’m interested to see Wes Welker return kicks. We really didn’t get too good a look at that in preseason and they were trying different combinations out. I think Brad Seely is a really good special teams coach, so I’ll be interested to see how Welker flourishes under his coaching.

Let’s look at the coaching matchup. The Jets have clearly focused on one thing since last January – unseating the Patriots. How close are they getting?

Bill: They’re closer than they were last year, but not as close as they appear to be, if that makes any sense. The Jets were an incredibly lucky team defensively in a number of ways last year: missed field goals against them, recovering an inordinate number of fumbles, no defensive touchdowns against them, etc. They had a great draft for their needs and they’ve brought in more depth at defensive line, but they still don’t have the proper personnel for the 3-4. Offensively, Chad Pennington’s a good quarterback, but he’s not going to be the quarterback that takes the Jets to the Super Bowl. Kellen Clemens is, and it won’t be for another two years at the earliest.

Bruce: Mangini clearly tries any trick in the book to gain an edge, even if it is just trying to annoy the Patriots. Bringing in Caldwell, Elgin and Hawkins is just that…annoying. The players aren’t likely to give up anything that the Jets don’t already know. As far as Mangini approaching the level of his mentor, I thought this Football Outsiders Extra Point bit on Mangini as a coach was pretty interesting. If the things in there hold true, then we should wait a bit and see how Mangini does for a little while longer before putting him on the level of Belichick.

Tim: Part of you hopes that the challenge that Mangini presents to BB within the division is a good thing. Belichick was clearly upset about some of the things that Mangini has done during and since his transition to the Meadowlands, and he is very familiar with how Belichick runs a team. He’s a great foil to have within the division, but let’s remember the guy is in his early thirties with relatively limited experience in comparison to the Hooded Houdini. The Patriots have the superior coach and the superior talent. The Jets haven’t caught up. Also, Belichick is consumed with winning and football. Mangini likes those things, but in truth, he’s consumed by the smell of fried Ho’Ho’s and canadian bacon.

Dan: Jets fans lived through Herm Edwards, so to those poor heathens, Mangini must seem a God. I’ll say this: they’re very creative, on both offense and defense, so you can’t overlook them. I just don’t think Mangini can see the game the way Belichick does. And the Jets just don’t have the horses to unseat the Pats. But the gap is narrowing.

Scott: Close enough to be a pain in the ass. The Patriots took them in the playoffs, but those two games last year were the proverbial knothole games, meaning you get dragged through them. To me, the Jets don’t seem to do anything particularly well, yet there they are.

Okay, it’s time to nut up and lay a prediction out there. Conference runner-up New England on to road to open the season with the 2006 wild card Jets. Now…who drew the short straw?

Bruce: Patriots 17, Jets 13. At least a couple of weird plays along the way, as there usually are when these two teams meet up.

Dan: Just got around to watching the 2006 Colts “America’s Game” episode. Apparently, the Patriots tipped off to Peyton Manning the way to beat the Ravens by the way they beat the Jets. Great, just what we need! More pressure. So now that Manning’s monitoring Patriot games for strategy tips (Tony Dungy’s hugs can only carry a team so far), they’re gonna have to protect the family secrets until Manning changes the channel. Or they could just put him to sleep by running the ball, which is what they should do anyway. 24-13, Pats.

Tim: Patriots carry a 10 point lead for 3 quarters and put them away in the fourth. Mangini is bludgeoned by Patriots cheerleaders during a 3rd quarter TV timeout. The Jets coach, upset after a cheerleader gets too close to the sideline, starts verbally abusing intrepid choreographer Tracy Sormanti. Tracy, after several minutes of trying to rationalize with the (heavily buttered) Toast of NYC, silently signals to her three best dancers that there may be trouble. Within moments Dinna Yap and Sandra Smyly have Mangini subdued and they gesture to Jessica Wanzie that it’s time for the submission move that they’ve been practicing all offseason – the Flying Wanzie. Jessica doesn’t hesitate to climb section 100 and pounce like a sequined panther. A bloodied Mangini lies catatonic on the ground twitching while the paramedics race to his side. As he’s lifted into the stretcher he burps up something that smells like apple butter, scrapple, maple syrup, and goose fish.

Bill: They’ll be fine. Patriots 23, Jets 9.

Scott: As I said earlier: knothole. Pats prevail, 21-19, but the whole affair turns out to be rather unpleasant.

Filed Under: Games, Media, Opponents, Roster Tagged With: The Roundtable

Outside Foxborough

September 6, 2007 By Bill Barnwell 11 Comments

By Bill Barnwell
[email protected]

Hello! Welcome to the year’s first “Outside Foxborough”. I’ll be your host, Bill Barnwell. Although the column has a new name, this is the second year I’ll be penning a weekly column looking at the Patriots from the Football Outsiders perspective.

For those of you unfamiliar with our site, Football Outsiders is a website dedicated to analyzing the NFL through viewpoints not seen anywhere else. Primarily, that’s through our work in developing new metrics and means of judging performance that are more accurate than established measures like yards. Our primary metric, DVOA, measures performance against the league-average while accounting for context in ways that those traditional measures don’t, and are a better predictor of wins than the previous year’s performance. Now that I’ve explained all that, I’ll say that this week’s column has nothing to do with DVOA. In the future, I’ll explain DVOA and our statistics further when they come into play. Although our work has been featured in places like ESPN The Magazine and The New York Times and on FOXSports.com, if you enjoy these columns and want to read more of our work, I’d recommend you go out and purchase Pro Football Prospectus 2007, our annual that features essays on each team, original research looking at those teams, player and team projections, fantasy football information, and everything else you’ll need by your side come Sunday.

The archive of last year’s columns is available here; among other things, I looked at whether Deion Branch and Adam Vinatieri were worth the money, how wide receivers from different college conferences performed in the pros, the historical injury rates suffered by the Patriots defensive backs, and whether running quarterbacks age faster than pocket passers. Several of the essays were expanded and updated for PFP 2007.

This week’s column, though, was inspired by Cut Day, and what the Patriots did to get to the 53-man limit; namely, remove all their Day Two (Rounds 4 to 7 of the NFL Draft) draft picks short DT Kareem Brown, who might also have been cut had Richard Seymour been ready to play. While three of the players went to IR, the Patriots also cut four more players. This wouldn’t be surprising for some teams, but the Patriots have been known for their drafting acumen during the Belichick era. A look at the players they selected between 2002 and 2006 on the draft’s second day reveals several key Patriots that were found on Sunday in April instead of Saturday:

Not only did the Patriots find stars like Asante Samuel and Dan Koppen, but useful role players like Tully Banta-Cain, Jarvis Green, David Givens, Ryan O’Callaghan, and Willie Andrews have all came out of the later rounds of the draft. So it would seem to be a surprise, then, that the Patriots were only able to find one active roster spot for their Day Two picks this year. (G Clint Oldenburg has already been signed onto the practice squad.) While this is a deep, veteran team, it isn’t exactly a new situation for Belichick and Pioli.

Let’s evaluate Day Two, though, and see how the Patriots have done there. It’s sort of a forgotten day in the modern draft cycle; it gets sent to ESPN2, where most people don’t watch it, 99% of mock drafts don’t talk about it, and it’s seen as somewhat of a crapshoot for most, if not all teams. Of course, it’s precisely these areas seen as crapshoots or otherwise underappreciated that smart franchises like the Patriots exploit to their advantage.

To look at how teams did on Day Two, I went through the five drafts that took place between 2002 and 2006 and evaluated the results of each of the 799 players taken as measured by their games played and games started in the years following their selection. Games played and started were counted for all teams, not just the team who selected the player. You’ll also note the “Value” column above — that stands for Draft Value, as determined by the generic NFL Draft Value Chart, which you can find here. While the specific charts vary, the chart quantifies the value of a pick and assigns each a numerical value, ranging from 3000 to the first overall pick all the way down to two for the 224nd pick. (Since each of the drafts had more than 224 picks, I assigned all picks following #224 zero points.) The chart’s origins are attributed to Jimmy Johnson, and while it stands as a decent generic base for judging potential trades, I’m sure the Patriots’ chart is different from the one being used here.

The Games Played chart is led by the team that I believe has the best scouting of any team in the NFL right now, even if they don’t often receive the credit for it they deserve. Note that the “2002″ column, for example, measures the number of games played over the past five years by people who were selected in that draft, while “2006″ measures only those players who were selected in 2006.

The Baltimore Ravens franchise is impeccable at finding talent in the lower rounds and integrating them into their lineup (Adalius Thomas comes to mind). Amongst the other top teams, you see a mix of awful teams with nothing to lose in Tennessee and San Francisco, but then a series of relatively successful franchises, including the Patriots.

Indianapolis also stands out as a franchise who have often used Day Two picks, especially on defense, to fill in gaps. Keep in mind that this is strictly games played, so all a player needs to do is play one snap to count as much as someone who plays the full game. Matt Cassel has eight games played in his career. To see whose draft picks are really making a difference, we’ll need to look at the games started figures.

Again, the same mix of teams is near the top, even though the Ravens drop slightly. The 49ers in 2002 were the last team of the Steve Mariucci era, and the number of Day Two starts from that draft is due less to the quality of the players and more to the confluence of salary constrictions and the failure of both the Mariucci and Dennis Erickson eras to draft successfully on Day One. This is the franchise that chose Mike Rumph, Kwame Harris, and Rashaun Woods with successive first-round picks. The Colts and their Cover 2 guys are second, with players like David Thornton, Robert Mathis, Cato June, Jason David, and Antoine Bethea all stepping into starting roles.

Chicago, meanwhile, has Alex Brown, Ian Scott, Nathan Vasher, Kyle Orton (hey, he started 15 games), and Mark Anderson in their haul.The teams at the bottom of the list are also a mix of surprises and usual suspects. The Broncos are generally thought of as a team that drafts well, but all they have to show from Day Two over the timeframe is Elvis Dumervil, Jeb Putzier, and the argument against you being able to gain 1000 yards behind Denver’s offensive line, Quentin Griffin.

Pittsburgh’s also been famed for their drafting abilities for decades, and they unearthed contributors like Larry Foote, Brett Keisel, and Verron Haynes in 2002; after that, though, the well has gone dry. Chris Kemoeatu is a depth guy at defensive tackle, and Noah Herron got some carries in Green Bay, but no one else has really made the breakthrough into being a steady NFL player. On the other hand, Washington’s well-known for both trading away draft picks and making sure it has a very famous starting 24 with nothing else behind it, while Oakland and Detroit are the teams you associate with futility in everything.

The interesting thing here, and what surprised me when I was doing the research, is that there’s no consistent “year-after” effect where a team in salary cap hell or otherwise awful starts 15 second-day picks for two years in the hopes that a bunch make it through. There’s no correlation between a team’s wins the year before and the number of games played or started by their Day Two picks the year after, nor is there one between Day Two picks starting and the team’s wins that season.

Now that we’ve seen which teams are successful, we can look and see which positions have the best return on value.

Generally, we see running backs, receivers, linebackers, and defensive backs offering the best return on value, while quarterbacks and linemen tend to lag behind. Well, there’s a reason for that; those four positions make up the majority of special teams players, and many teams grab their special teamers from Day Two. Again, we’ll have to look at games started to get a clearer picture.

The first thing that stands out is those fourth-round tight ends! No wonder the Patriots went after Garrett Mills. Justin Peelle, George Wrighster, Darnell Sanders, Robert Royal, Donald Lee, Bo Scaife, Putzier, Courtney Anderson, and Owen Daniels have all seen plenty of playing time as starters, while Randy McMichael has started every game of his professional career. Fifth-round offensive linemen include Koppen, David Diehl, Tony Pashos, Jacob Bell, and Jake Scott. The clear trend is that late-round defensive players are more likely to be successful than offensive players (tight ends excluded), with skill-position players in particular lagging behind their defensive counterparts.

As you can see from the games started chart above, the numbers do seem to trend downwards as the draft goes along, which indirectly answers another question: Is there a point at which the draft becomes a crapshoot, and picks in one round are just as valuable as those from another round? The chart indicates that the answer is no, and it’s easy to confirm by checking for a correlation between draft value and both games started and games played.

The correlations are both positive (-.28 for games played and -.23 for games started) across all draft picks; if you remove the fourth round and just run the correlation for the fifth round on, the correlations are weaker, but still trend positive. The same is true for the sixth round. This means conventional wisdom is true; the draft becomes more of a crapshoot as it goes deeper, but a fourth-round pick is still much more valuable than a seventh-rounder.

So, with all this data compiled, we can finally look and see what we’d expect the average Day Two class to do in its rookie year. The result? 30.2 games played and 10.5 games started. It’ll be hard for Kareem Brown to accomplish that all by himself, no matter how long Richard Seymour is out for.

Bill Barnwell’s ‘Outside Foxborough’ will appear every Thursday. We welcome your comments here.

Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: Outside Foxborough

Rooting It Out

September 5, 2007 By Dan Snapp 10 Comments

logo95 by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

It was purely an impulse buy: one of those marble run toys with plastic chutes, columns, spirals and funnels, a space-age facsimile of the wooden block marble game of my youth.

I had little hope either of my young daughters would take to it, but when my two-year-old asked, “Ha ba marble, Daddy?” I knew what must be done. Returning home with the second copy, there were roughly two hours of nap time to construct my masterwork. Using an aesthetically-pleasing diamond pattern for better column reinforcement, the structure ran over three feet high, with two competing tracks cascading over six chutes and two spirals each, before emptying into a lone funnel.

She awoke, and imminent was the moment of truth. It was obvious in her widening eyes the appreciation of my Xanadu. She darted for it, ready for the christening run. One marble down, one from the other side, one more from the first side, and a few intermittent “Whees!” mixed in. Fatherly pride washed over the moment, and the next one as well, when she tore the edifice apart, limb from limb.

There sat the two of us, both loving the game, one zestfully building it up, the other eagerly tearing it down.

Speaking of Patriots fans, the recent Rodney Harrison four-game suspension for using HGH has widened the gulf between fan factions.

Commentary following the announcement ran the gamut of emotions: some called for his immediate release, citing his responsibility as a role model; some bent over backwards in rationalizing his behavior; and others took a moderate tack, expressing disappointment but feeling the punishment was just.

The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy claimed once again that it’s all about the laundry, and that because Harrison was a Patriot, he would escape the derision reserved for Shawne Merriman or Barry Bonds. In a sense he’s correct, because with a fan base so split, he’s bound to find somebody who agrees with him, regardless of the arguments he poses.

For those that do root for the laundry, there’s nothing wrong with that. The advent of the salary cap left little choice. Becoming attached to the players one year would mean rooting for multiple teams the next. Something had to give, and the players were the obvious sacrifice, as regional pride has been the trump card since the dawn of professional sports.

The beauty of the Bill Belichick-led Patriots is there’s something for everybody, even those who hate Belichick.

Looking for a smart team, ahead of the league in cap management, the draft, game-planning and execution? The Pats are your men.

Looking for somebody that extols the virtues of “team”, hard work and perseverance? Look here.

Looking for an underdog, with a bunch of regular guys who love the game but still win, too? Again, the Patriots fit the bill.

Looking to gnaw into Belichick? He gladly capitulates, offering boring press conferences, yearly salary disputes with stars, and little in the way of injury updates.

For those drawn to the team by admirable sorts such as Harrison, his plight has to be an especially sad one. If a stand-up guy like Harrison – so goes the mantra – if a guy like him cheats, anybody can.

Now there’s something to chew on for anybody looking to OD on schadenfreude. You so sure your own house is in order? Look again.

There’s no one absolute guidebook for being a fan. Length of service means nothing. Season tickets mean nothing. Painting your face (Sorry, Puddy) means nothing.

Our one common denominator is a zealous irrationality – a mania really – about the team. Since we’re already nuts, who are we to judge?

We’re fans, short for “fanatic”. Critical thinking, rightfully, takes a back seat to just enjoying the game.

So root for the laundry. Build the team up. Tear it down. It doesn’t matter.

You’re entitled.

Filed Under: Columns, Media, Roster

Patriots Daily on NBC Sports

Patriots Buffet Table – Week Two, Patriots vs. Chargers

Outside Foxborough – Is Michael Turner more LT or Richard Huntley?

We’ve All Been Cheated

Pats Probe Continues

Inside Gillette

Grand Opening

The Sunday Links for September 9, 2007

College Scout for September 8, 2007

Patriots Roundtable – September 7, 2007

Outside Foxborough

Rooting It Out

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Obvious Disclaimer

Links of Interest

Ads

Recent Comments

PD Favorites

Football Favorites

Other Links

Categories