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College Scout, Bowl Edition

December 20, 2007 By 1 Comment

logoby Greg Doyle
[email protected]

The College Bowl season gets under this week and I could not be more excited. Scores of entertaining, fun games between generally good teams with many great players can be found from now up until through the first week of the New Year. So sit back, enjoy and take in some college football. Here at College Scout we’ll try to review each of the Bowl games and the plan is to do so in three parts. As always, we’ll do so in terms at looking at potential draft prospects and, on occasion, how they may or may not fit with the Patriots. Part One will look at the Bowl games from December 20th through December 23rd.

Thursday December 20, 2007

The Poinsettia Bowl – Navy (8-4) vs. Utah (8-4) (9:00 PM EST ESPN): Two good teams face off here in this annual Bowl held in San Diego at Qualcomm Stadium. Utah has a six game Bowl winning streak on the line. Navy coach Paul Johnson has taken the Georgia Tech job so will not coach this game. Ken Niumatalolo, who was offensive line coach and assistant head coach, takes over for Johnson. Because of service commitments, among other things, Navy is not traditionally a program that sends a lot of players to the NFL. But let’s take a look to see who they have who has a shot, as well as Utah.

Navy FB Adam Ballard (#22): Ballard is an option fullback like current Patriots fullback Kyle Eckel. He has good size at 6’1″ 223 and is a nice inside runner. Not just a blocker, he’s run for over 2,000 yards in his Navy career. Broke his leg in Navy’s bowl game last year and required surgery, but was back for spring practice. Shows good speed, but pass catching ability is questionable as he has only caught a handful of passes with Navy. Has not played in a pro-type offense. Has played special teams. Like Eckel, there is potential here but a long way to go. He has to learn a NFL offense and needs to bulk up because he lacks the pure size and strength of Eckel. Isn’t quite as good a runner as Eckel either. But he is a good athlete and is worth a look as a project.

Navy KR Reggie Campbell (#7): A pure burner who has played a little bit of everything for Navy, including running back and wide receiver. Is Navy’s leading receiver this year. But where he really excels is kick returns and that is where he has a chance in the NFL. Tiny player at 5’6″ 168, but has great speed and elusiveness. Explosive on returns and that may get him a look.

Utah S Steve Tate (#28): An under-the-radar player who deserves a look. Been extremely active for Utah and put up some really great numbers, including being their leading tackler. Comes up and stops the run, but also has been solid in coverage. Seems to make plays and is a smart player. Two issues are his age, he’ll be 25 at the time of the draft, and his size as he only checks in at 5’11″ 195. A late round pick at best, but he could stick with a good camp somewhere.

Utah DE Martail Burnett (#93): A big, fast defensive end at 6’3″ 262 and reportedly runs a 4.68/40 which is a great time for a guy his size. Shows pass rush ability and led Utah in sacks this year. Great athlete, he has a chance to be a high pick and may really move up at the combine. You could see the Patriots taking a stab at converting him to outside backer, but more likely he is a Robert Mathis-type defensive end.

Friday December 21, 2007

The New Orleans Bowl – Florida Atlantic (7-5) vs. Memphis (7-5): (ESPN2 8:00 PM EST): Florida Atlantic makes its first bowl appearance ever under head coach Howard Schnellenberger, who once won a National Championship as head coach at Miami. Memphis rebounded from a 2-10 season to make this bowl this season. Let’s take a look.

Florida Atlantic S Taheem Acevedo (#9): Their team leader on defense, he has perfect safety size at 6’1″ 220. Known to be a good tackler, has also made 9 career interceptions. His production and size will get him a look, but has a lot to prove coming from a low-profile school.

Memphis QB Martin Hankins (#13): Hankings is not going to be a high draft pick, but he’s worth a look and will be in somebody’s camp. Has had an excellent college career, including career 87-43 TD/INT ratio. Started at Southeastern Louisiana before transferring to Memphis, where he has been the starter for two years. Hankins is one of those guys who has had been very productive in college, seems to be smart, has a decent arm but doesn’t overwhelm you in any area. Has average size and needs to commit to bulking up if he is to make it in the NFL. May be able to stick on a practice squad and eventually make a team.

Saturday December 22, 2007

The Birmingham Bowl - Southern Mississippi (7-5) vs. Cincinnati (9-3): (ESPN2 1:00 PM EST): The always solid Southern Mississippi program takes on the Cincinnati Bearcats, who had an excellent season, including some big upsets, under first year head coach Brian Kelly.

Southern Mississippi LT Chris Clark (#75): A good All-Conference USA tackle who may attract the interest of the Patriots as a second day type as he is strong, a good worker and also a good enough athlete to get out in space as the Patriots insist upon from their linemen.

Southern Mississippi DT Martavius Prince (#97): A good college player with nice size who ould convert to a 3-4 end if the Patriots took him. Known as a very smart player who studies the game. A little bit undersized for tackle. Shown some special teams ability by blocking kicks at key times. Can pass rush and had 6.5 sacks this year. Good prospect the Patriots should consider.

Cincinnati RB Greg Moore (#48): Splits time with fellow senior Butler Benton, but Moore is the better pro prospect of the two. Has NFL size at 6’2″ 225. Rushed for over 1,500 yards in his career. Mediocre speed which could indicate he should bulk up a bit and be a fullback. Will have to prove himself as a blocker and on special teams to make it. Did okay as a pass catcher this year and shows some potential. Possible 7th round pick.

Cincinnati RB Butler Benton (#23): Splits time with Moore. Not as big as he is, but checks in at 210 lbs as well. Put up over 1,700 yards in career and isn’t completely lost in the passing game either. A bit faster than Moore, but not as powerful. Like Moore, may be picked at the end of the draft.

Cincinnati DE Anthony Hoke (#12): A quick pass rusher who disrupted opposing offenses all season long. Finished with 12 sacks and another 7 quarterback hurries. A 6’1″ 245 pass rushing end who could be perfect as a 3-4 outside linebacker for the Patriots. Also reportedly runs a 4.55/40, so if that is confirmed at the combine, Hoke could become a name that could start racing up the charts. In an interview, he once said the quarterback he most hopes to someday sack is Peyton Manning, so that should endear him to Patriots fans.

Cincinnati OLB Angelo Craig (#82): A sleeper who the Patriots should take a look at. A 6’5″ 245 lb. guy who has played both end and linebacker and had a pretty good year this year. Had only started 2 games prior, but showed talent this year and contributed 3 sacks and 11 quarterback hurries. Has played special teams. This is a guy who is a true sleeper and not likely to attract much attention, but would be a nice undrafted free agent to look at if he does well in workouts.

New Mexico Bowl - Nevada (6-6) vs. New Mexico (8-4) (4:30 PM EST ESPN): It would appear New Mexico would have the homefield advantage in this one that points a potent Nevada offense versus a good New Mexico Defense.

Nevada LB Ezra Butler (#56): An All-WAC linebacker, Butler has good NFL size at 6’2″ 248. Was on the pre-season Lombardi watch list for the nation’s best linebacker. He’ll get a shot in the NFL and is a good prospect for the Patriots inside if he can show he is intelligent and has good speed and strength when tested. If the 4.55/40 speed reports prove accurate he could be a first day pick.

New Mexico WR Marcus Smith (#4): Set the Midwest Conference on fire this season with 86 catches for 1,039 yards. Has excellent size at 6’2″ 212. Smart receiver with good hands. A mid-round talent with average speed, his size makes him a nice slot receiver possibility.

Las Vegas Bowl – BYU (10-2) vs. UCLA (6-6) (ESPN 8:00 PM EST): Just what the world needs, Mormons in Las Vegas. I hope Mandalay Bay and The Palms are busy locking up the milk in preparation for this one. In any event…..

BYU LB Kelly Poppinga (#46): The Cougars middle linebacker, he was their leading tackler this year. A full-time starter for the first time this year. Has two brothers who have played in the NFL. An athletic guy with a good motor and good strength and size, he deserves a look. Could be a good sleeper for the Patriots, especially since he has played in coverage.

UCLA DE Bruce Davis (#44): A really good defensive end who at 234 lbs will play outside linebacker in the NFL. Has racked up 29 sacks in his career including 12 this season. Made some All-American lists in his career. Father is Bruce Davis who was a tackle on two Raider championship teams in the 80′s. Extremely quick and has a lightning fast first step as a pass rusher.

UCLA CB Trey Brown (#23): Had a very good senior season with 5 interceptions and 2 fumble recoveries. A bit undersized, but good in coverage and sticks his nose in there in run help. Has a ton of experience in a good conference. Shows an ability to make plays. Could interest the Patriots in the later rounds.

Sunday December 23, 2007

The Hawaii Bowl – Boise State (10-2) vs. East Carolina (7-5) (ESPN 8:00 PM EST): An offensive shoot out in what should be perfect Hawaii weather conditions. This could be an entertaining game and we all saw how the Boise State coach isn’t afraid to pull out all the stops as he did last year in the bowl season.

Boise State OT Ryan Clady (#79): Only a junior, but a dominant left tackle who already projects as a first round choice, so he very likely will come out early for the 2008 draft. Has dominant strength and size, but combines it with amazing athletic ability. Could be a franchise left tackle for a decade or more. May interest the Patriots even though their line is pretty set. He is that good and could eventually move Pro Bowler Matt Light to right tackle if the Patriots looked in this direction.

East Carolina RB Chris Johnson (#5): A very productive runner who ran for 1,200 yards this season, averaging 5.8 per carry and scoring 16 touchdowns. Not terribly big, but gets it done and runs hard. Has excellent speed and was a sprinter in high school. Ran for over 2,700 yards in his career. Showed good ability to catch the ball with 34 receptions and did a lot with them, averaging 14.6 per catch. Returned kicks, which will help him, and brought one back for a touchdown. Could be a first day pick. Remains to be seen if he can take the pounding as a full-time back in the NFL or if he is more of a third down/kick returner/change of pace type.

Filed Under: The Draft

Outside Foxborough – The Injury Effect

December 20, 2007 By 4 Comments

logoby Bill Barnwell
[email protected]

The Miami Dolphins came into this season with high hopes following the acquisitions of quarterback Trent Green, wide receiver Ted Ginn, Jr., and outside linebacker Joey Porter over the long NFL offseason. Replacing the departed Nick Saban was offensive guru Cam Cameron, who’d successfully crafted the Chargers offense into one of the best in football. With Ginn and Chris Chambers stretching defenses deep, Porter and defensive player of the year Jason Taylor coming off the edges, and Green bringing a stability and authority that the quarterback position hadn’t seen since the Marino days, things were looking up for Dolphins fans.

14 games later, the Dolphins are the laughingstock of football, a team that induces tears from their owner upon winning their first game of the season, with a pass thrown from one Chargers castoff, Cleo Lemon, to another, Greg Caramillo. Cameron is likely one and done as a head coach, Chambers has ironically been shipped to San Diego, Ginn’s failed to make an impact at wideout, and while Taylor’s put up 10 sacks, Porter’s only mustered 3.5.

More than all that, though, it’s injury which has struck the Dolphins at their core. Green suffered a severe concussion in Week 5 that’s called his career into jeopardy. Ronnie Brown, who had been among the NFL’s best backs, went down two weeks later. That was also middle linebacker Zach Thomas’ last game of the year. Other starters have missed time: Vonnie Holliday, Travares Tillman, Channing Crowder, Matt Roth, and David Martin have all missed time with injuries this year.

On the other hand, the Patriots have enjoyed some remarkable health this season. Losing Richard Seymour for the first six weeks of the year would have been a problem for most teams, but the combination of Jarvis Green and Mike Wright (himself now gone for the remainder of the season) did an admirable job in his stead. Meanwhile, the Patriots’ long-term injuries consist of Sammy Morris, Wright, and Rosevelt Colvin, who managed to play for most of the season. Ben Watson is the only other injured player of note on the roster.

Obviously, the differences between the Patriots and the Dolphins are not a series of injuries. That being said, would this be the same Patriots team if their starting quarterback, best skill position player, and core middle linebacker had all gone down for the season by Week 7? Obviously not. Injuries are often discussed when it comes to why a team’s had a disappointing season, but when they have a great one, staying healthy is almost never one of the reasons you’ll hear bandied about as a reason why.

And, well, they should be. The effect of injuries on a team can be huge, and while everyone knows they’re bad, there’s been little in the way of research on how much they hurt, which hurt more, and what causes them.

Last year for this very website, I analyzed the injury rates of Patriots defensive backs and attempted to find reasons or trends in the data to explain this injury rash that had broken out. I later updated and expanded my findings in Pro Football Prospectus 2007, the annual published by me and my colleagues at Football Outsiders. With that as a starting point, I’ve done much more research into the trends of injuries and begun to quantify the likelihood and effects of injuries. The results, if confirmed with more data, could be staggeringly important: They could guide teams on how to construct their rosters, while offering gamblers and fans likely picks for teams that will rebound or decline in a given season.

We’ll be doing a two-part feature on the injury effect here on Patriots Daily. This week, I’ll be looking at the year-to-year effects of injuries, why they seem to happen, and what the results are on teams. Next week, we’ll get more specific, looking at offenses and defenses and what injuries are more important than others.

First, the data: The NFL injury reports, from 2001 to 2006, as compiled by Football Outsiders intern Chris Povirk. Injuries were weighted with a simple metric that measured the effect of an injury: A player who was listed as “Out” or placed on IR was scored with four points for each week he was in that role; a player who was listed as “Doubtful” three, “Questionable” two, and “Probable” one.

Following that, we compared the injuries to what we determined were the team’s 22 offensive and defensive starters heading into the season, its “projected” starters. For example, in 2006, although Tony Romo ended up being a huge part of the Cowboys’ success, Drew Bledsoe was the expected starter going into the season. We focused specifically on their injury rates, since the majority of a team’s salary cap, training camp, and focus is placed into those starters. This differs from last year’s research, which looked at a team’s 53-man roster equally.

We then split up the data by position and squad (which will be discussed next week) and compared it to wins and DVOA, our metric which analyzes teams based upon their play-by-play performance after correcting for down, distance, situation, and opponent. (For 2006 teams, in order to analyze their success this year, we used DVOA through 15 weeks, and did not include this year’s wins on their research.) This analysis was not only confined to one year, but we examined a team’s health from year-to-year and compared it to injuries from year-to-year. We used correlation coefficients, which gauge the relationship between two variables, to analyze whether there were significant comparisons between the injury data recorded and a team’s performance. When looking at the correlation coefficients, remember that football relationships tend to be less significant than those of most other comparisons because of the myriad variables involved, so what would be a small relationship in other fields is actually a decent relationship when it comes to football.

The answer to that question is, unequivocally, yes. Over the six seasons that we looked at, injury rates had a dramatic effect on a team’s amount of wins, DVOA, and the change of the two from season to season.

Comparing a team’s injury rate to the number of wins they had in that season, we found a moderate relationship of -.22, indicating that there’s a negative relationship between injuries and wins. That shows some importance to injury rate, but that injuries aren’t a death knell to a team. Where the relationship becomes more intense is when we look at the difference in a team’s wins from a season ago. The correlation between injury rate in a given season and the difference in that team’s wins from a season before is -.38, or nearly twice as strong. When we correlate the difference in a team’s injury rate from year-to-year and the difference in that team’s wins, we get a whopping -.50 as the correlation, a huge indicator.

That’s borne out when we look at the injury outliers in our data. The most injured team in our study were the 2004 Tennessee Titans, who collapsed at the end of their multi-year run by going from 12 wins down to 5. Number two were the 2006 Cleveland Browns, who, of course, have been one of the surprise packages of this season.

On the flip side, the healthiest team we saw across the data were the 2003 Dallas Cowboys. They won ten games that year after winning five the year before. The year after, with a more normal injury rate, they went 6-10. Second were the 2002 Bills, who went 8-8 after going 3-13 in 2001; in 2003, with an average amount of injuries, they went 6-10.

Another issue that comes up is, as you can see, that teams tend to revert back to an average amount of injuries: Simply put, there’s no team that stays snakebitten with injuries. The correlation between a team’s injury rate and the same metric from the previous season is 0.02, or virtually nil. A team that’s extremely banged-up might get hurt a lot the next year, too, but they’re just as likely to stay healthy.

On the other hand, a team that does see a dramatic change is likely to see their fortune change with it. The biggest injury shift involves the Chicago Bears. A healthy Bears team in 2001 went 13-3; the next year, as the most injured team in football, they went 4-12. The year after, they got healthy and got back up to 7-9, but then suffered a serious injury bug in 2004 and stayed at 7-9. Finally healthy in 2005, they went 11-5.. The 2006 Browns were the second-largest shift, and they lost two more games that year than in 2005, while the third-placed 2004 Titans lost seven games more, as we mentioned.

That 2004 Titans team was a veteran team that had been through several years together before collapsing, which of course, brings up some comparisons to this year’s Dolphins, one of the older teams in football. It obviously brings up age as a possible indicator of likely injury. Surprisingly, though, age has little to do with the equation.

Taking the average age of the 22 starters and comparing it to injury rates reveal a correlation of 0.04: Again, virtually no correlation whatsoever. It should be noted that the Dolphins defense is significantly older than the Dolphins offense, and the correlation between defensive injury rates and age (+.18) is much higher than that of offensive injury rates and age (-.02).

Comparing injury rate to DVOA shows that the changes aren’t just superficial and related to lucky or unlucky wins. The correlations are similar to those we saw when looking at the relationship between wins and injury rate, but slightly weaker. For injury rate in a year and a team’s DVOA, there’s a -.16 correlation. If we compare injury rate to the difference in DVOA from the year prior, though, the correlation is -.4, and if we then compare the difference in injury rate to the difference in DVOA, it’s -.46. In short, there’s a very real and dramatic decrease in both the success and performance of a team when they get hurt more.

Looking at the 2006 season, this data would’ve given us several teams to highlight as potential flukes or sleepers because of their injury rates. One of them was the aforementioned Browns, who have stayed healthier and done much better than expected. The Jaguars were the second-most injured team in football, and have also rebounded with a nice year. Third was Tampa Bay, another team who’ve done well somewhat surprisingly. Our DVOA projections pegged all three of these teams as likely to improve.

On the other hand, there are several teams we’d expect to struggle with injury. First and foremost would be the Rams. Although we didn’t expect them to lose their entire offense, there was a strong likelihood that they would lose one or more of their key players to injury, and at times this year, they were without their starting quarterback, running back, and left tackle. Number two, surprisingly, would be the Cowboys, who illuminate the fact that injury rates aren’t infallible. They’ve stayed very healthy and had a superb year. Number three would be the Houston Texans, who will be at least one game better than they were last year, and number four would be San Diego, who have seen their performance drop some, although that likely has more to do with Norv Turner than injury.

Next week, we’ll analyze offense and defense and find out who’s more likely to get hurt and what the results are.

Filed Under: Columns Tagged With:

Eight Men In

December 19, 2007 By Leave a Comment

logoby Dan Snapp
[email protected]

They can’t call the Patriots a “team without stars” anymore. With eight men chosen for the Pro Bowl yesterday – seven of them starting – they’re manufacturing stars at a Dallas Cowboys rate.

Wait, scratch that; the Cowboys have 11 players going. America’s Team, Leading the League in Smiles.

Pro Bowls are always mixed blessings. You like the honor but you hate the game.

When you’re a kid, and you think every player on your team should go, it obviously means the most. For some years, it was the sole consolation, seeing probably one Patriot get honored in an otherwise cruddy year. You wait for that moment in the third quarter when your guy gets in, watch him run on a couple snaps, and that’s that. How sad the days we sat waiting for Rich Camarillo to punt.

Any awe the game once beheld has long since worn away. Yeah, it’s still nice to see the recognition, and you have to be happy for the Patriots first-timers Logan Mankins, Dan Koppen, Vince Wilfork, Mike Vrabel and Asante Samuel. It’s too bad the game never lives up to the honor.

There are other shortcomings, too. For the team, a Pro Bowl honor might be the first step out the door for that player. No longer is he your little secret, your diamond in the rough. And the way the voting always seems to work, for some players once you’re in, you’re in every year. Matt Light earned his second straight trip, and it’s easy to imagine Mankins and Wilfork earning multiple honors. So what’s Wilfork’s asking price now when it comes to renegotiation time?

The game itself, we could all do without. Face it, it’s the least enjoyable of any of the all-star games, league-decreed vanilla rules make it the least competitive, and you mostly spend your time hoping nobody get hurt in the meaningless affair.

The league needs to rethink this, from the marketing suicide of playing it a week after the season’s denouement all the way down to the garish Hawaiian shirts they’ve got the coaches wearing. Bill Belichick in a Hawaiian shirt makes one appreciate the hoodie.

Can’t we just have the honor and say screw having the game? Still send them to Hawaii, have an event, sign a few autographs, drink a few mai tais and come home. I suppose they could still have some sort of competition. Anything but beach volleyball.

Backgammon perhaps?

I suppose the thing to hope for is the day when your team’s players tire of the trip. They say how honored they are by it, but they need time to heal. The honor then goes to some alternate from some doormat team, whose young fans can now wait eagerly for that big third quarter series when their guy finally gets a few snaps.

Filed Under: Columns

Pro Bowl-ers Tour

December 19, 2007 By 6 Comments

by Scott Benson
[email protected]

As you know by now, the Patriots yesterday placed eight players on the squad that will represent the AFC at the 2008 Pro Bowl.

One thing struck me about the honors; six of the eight players chosen were home grown Patriots.

QB Tom Brady – 2000 Draft, 6th round, 199th selection overall.

T Matt Light – 2001 Draft, 2nd round, 48th selection overall.

CB Asante Samuel – 2003 Draft, 4th round, 120th overall.

C Dan Koppen – 2003 Draft, 5th round, 164th overall.

NT Vince Wilfork – 2004 Draft, 1st round, 21st overall.

G Logan Mankins – 2005 Draft, 1st round, 32nd overall.

Of course, LB Mike Vrabel (1997 Draft, 3rd round, 91st overall by Pittsburgh) was a free agent acquisition in 2001, and WR Randy Moss (1998, 1st round, 21st overall, Minnesota) was obtained in a 2007 trade for…da da DAAAAAAA….a fourth round pick in last April’s draft.

Please, no letters….without looking, I’m almost certain that the same draft success holds true for nearly all the teams that placed players on the Pro Bowl squad yesterday.

Still, this struck me because diminishing returns over the last two drafts have raised a few eyebrows in some corners locally, among those concerned that the Patriots may have lost their touch when it comes to the NFL’s annual selection meeting. From those two draft classes, only Laurence Maroney, Chad Jackson, Stephen Gostkowski, Ryan O’Callaghan, LeKevin Smith (2006) and Brandon Meriweather (2007) are members of this year’s squad, and only Maroney (Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah) and Gostkowski have made any sort of notable contribution to the team’s nearly unprecedented success.

Those drafts may ultimately prove to be relative whiffs when compared to, say, 2003 (which also netted Ty Warren), but with Samuel, Koppen, Wilfork and Mankins all receiving first time honors yesterday, hope remains for the younger set.

One more thing – apparently, the website ‘Kissing Suzy Kolber’ (you’ll get no link from me) has decided that Pats fans’ disappointment regarding the omission of Wes Welker from the Pro Bowl proves once and for all that Boston is a racist city. According to these wags, it was Welker’s pigmentation, and not all those first downs, that won the fans’ affection and raised their ire when he was passed over for Pro Bowl honors.

Pathetic. The abject hatred of all things Patriots has reached a new low. Forgive us for thinking that the guy with 96 catches and 1000 yards deserved further consideration. Kiss this, KSK.

Our own Dan Snapp, a product of PD’s personnel department, will be back later with more reaction to yesterday’s Pro Bowl selections.    

EDITORS NOTE: A loyal friend o’ PD reminds me this morning that I probably ought to have a better sense of humor when it comes to KSK, considering that it’s tongue is firmly in cheek on all of its posts. Point conceded.  Pays to have a few friends to keep you on the straight and narrow. Come on, Cash, we’re withdrawing that middle digit on this one. Or maybe just directing it towards those who commented on that particular post. Some of those guys weren’t kidding, I suspect.

Filed Under: News

Inside Gillette

December 18, 2007 By Leave a Comment

logoby Christopher Price
[email protected]

Randy Moss wasn’t shocked when he heard the news. Neither was Laurence Maroney, who mock-confessed to reporters he didn’t know it happened. And Tedy Bruschi and Bill Belichick seemed positively blasé about the whole thing.

After all, when you’ve got a perfect regular-season in your sights, the prospect of clinching home-field advantage and the No. 1 seed throughout the playoffs can sometimes pale by comparison.

“I guess it’s just something they do around here,” Moss shrugged. “I guess it’s expected.”

With Sunday’s win over the Jets, New England clinched home-field advantage for the duration of the AFC playoffs. Home-field for the Patriots is not the annual event Moss may believe — in truth, it marks the first time New England has landed the No. 1 seed since 2003. But come January, it means the Patriots will be home. And history tells us that when it comes to January football, it’s much better to be at home than on the road: Since 1997, almost 70 percent of the NFL playoff games have gone in favor of the home team — they have a winning percentage of 69-31 in that span.

Under Belichick, few teams are a better bet than New England when it comes to a postseason game at home. Since Belichick arrived, the Patriots are 6-0 in Foxborough in the playoffs. (In fact, New England at home in the postseason is a pretty good bet. Overall, they’re 9-1 at home in the playoffs, with the only loss coming in the first-ever postseason game in Foxborough, a 31-14 setback on Dec. 31, 1978 to the Houston Oilers. The nine-game home playoff win streak is tied for second-best all-time.)

The Patriots aren’t looking to minimize the fact they’ve clinched the No. 1 seed, and don’t want to appear ungrateful they have the opportunity spend the entire month of January at home — as long as they keep winning. Just ask the running backs, who will likely play a heavier role in the offense in the traditionally foul January weather.

“That is nice,” said fullback Heath Evans. “It’s nice being in your own bed. It’s nice practicing on your own field, knowing the circumstances and conditions.”

“It’s always better to play in front of your home crowd, to make the visitors play with the noise,” said running back Laurence Maroney. “You can just play relaxed and you don’t have to deal with the crowd noise. You know what the elements are going to be up here, and you can make teams come and play in our elements — the ones that we practice in every day.”

But there will be a time and place to celebrate their accomplishment. Right now, it’s all about Miami.

“It’s nice to have, and we’ll start to think about that and focus on that a little bit more when it comes into play,” Bruschi said of the No. 1 seed. “But it doesn’t come into play just yet.”

“It’s good. It’s good to have that, but right now that’s not really anything we’re going to dwell on,” Belichick said. “We’re just going to get ready for Miami and get ready to play the Dolphins. That’s what we’re going to do this week.”

FIVE THINGS TO LOOK FOR THIS WEEK

1. The Patriots’ running game. With 104 rushing yards and a touchdown, second-year running back Laurence Maroney had his best game of the season Sunday against the Jets. With more winter weather looming on the horizon, can he be the kind of back that could be a consistent No. 1 running option for the Patriots in the bad weather? A reliable Maroney would certainly go a long way toward stabilizing the running game, and also force opposing teams to respect New England’s play-action ability even more.

2. The Patriots’ red-zone defense. After struggling with red-zone defense through the first 11 weeks of the season, New England opponents are 3 for their last 11 (and zero for their last 7) when it comes to scoring touchdowns inside the 20. Can they continue that Sunday against the Dolphins? For what it’s worth, Miami is perfectly pedestrian in its red zone offense — through 14 games, it has scored touchdowns on 18 of 35 trips inside the 20, good for 51 perfect (16th best in the league).

3. If Richard Seymour continues his upward trend. The five-time Pro Bowler, hampered by offseason knee surgery thus far, has started to round into form lately. The defensive lineman had his finest game of the season Sunday against the Jets — his first-quarter hit on New York quarterback Kellen Clemens was a crusher that really set the tone for the day. It’s been a long way back for Seymour, who is still getting into football shape. “It’s a gradual process. Richard’s worked hard,” Head Coach Bill Belichick said Monday. “Practice is good, but it’s not the same as games. I think all of those reps, practice and games cumulatively have helped him, and that’s probably really the way it should be.”

4. Defending Jason Taylor. Taylor has always managed to give New England fits, and will likely be the lone point of emphasis on the defensive side of the football for the Patriots. After Sunday’s win over the Ravens, Taylor left the stadium in a walking boot, saying he aggravated a left foot injury. But it says here he’ll be ready to play Sunday afternoon — in addition to a getting a rare start on national TV, it would also give him the outright record for the longest consecutive games played streak in franchise history. (He’s presently tied with former Dolphins center Jim Langer with 128.)

5. Talk of the dangerous Dolphins. When it comes to describing even the most anemic of opponents, the Patriots have always been able to seize upon a theme and make it work in their favor. In the run-up to this week’s game, expect plenty of talk about the December 2004 game the Patriots played in Miami against a woeful Dolphins team, one that ended with a shocking 29-28 loss for New England. (They’ll also likely haul out last year’s loss in South Florida for good measure, a 21-0 cautionary tale for some who would dare to look past the 1-13 Dolphins.)

STAT OF THE WEEK

101:31: The time — in minutes and seconds — that has elapsed since the Patriots last allowed an offensive touchdown. The last offensive touchdown came with 11:31 left in the second quarter of the 34-13 win over Pittsburgh, a 32-yard pop fly of a touchdown pass from Ben Roethlisberger to Najeh Davenport. It’s a stretch that has lasted six-plus quarters.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“As long as that zero stays in that [loss] column, I’m cool with it.” — Patriots wide receiver Randy Moss, talking about any satisfaction he might derive from being part of just the second team in NFL history to start 14-0.

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. He’s written “The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower,” and can be reached at [email protected].

Filed Under: Columns Tagged With:

Rainy Day Winnin’ #14 & 17

December 16, 2007 By 3 Comments

by Scott Benson
[email protected]

Not quite what you expected, huh?

Me neither. Things rarely go according to plan while a Nor’easter is advancing, I guess. They certainly didn’t at Gillette Stadium yesterday, where the undefeated Patriots found themselves entangled in a rather nasty affair with the 3-10 New York Jets, who were supposed to be the doormat on which New England would wipe its slushy cleats.

Not quite. Thoughts of triple-figure revenge and NBA scoreboards quickly disappeared, as removed from the cold, wet stadium as September’s blue skies and balmy temps.

But you know what? The Patriots won anyway, becoming the second team in NFL history to begin 14-0, and with its 17th straight regular-season win, New England is just one victory from tying the league mark it set in 2004.

Most importantly, the Patriots clinched home field advantage through the 2007 AFC playoffs.

And when it was over, an ebullient Bill Belichick bounded across the soggy field to greet Eric Mangini with a broad smile and an “awesome!” A hilarious development that was as jarringly unexpected as the Jets performance was.

Quite a day after all. A few thoughts:

*No one could have conceived of the day Tom Brady would have, not after he’s strode the earth like a Colussus all season. I thought Brady was mightily impatient early on, passing up open receivers underneath by forcing balls to Randy Moss up the field. He never got untracked, save for a couple of big fourth quarter completions to Wes Welker (an improvised third down conversion) and Moss (a 46 yard jump ball) that set up a Stephen Gostkowski field goal and a late two-score lead. That was it. In a game where he might have been expected to challenge the touchdown pass record, he threw none, while pitching an awful interception to Darrelle Revis on the Patriots first possession of the second half. The pick amounted to nothing, not unlike the Patriots passing game.

*I don’t know how much of that was due to the weather (a toxic looking mix of snow, sleet, rain and high winds) and how much was due to the Jets’ game planning. Considering the Pats ran roughshod over New York’s secondary in Sptember, I’m inclined to attribute their futility yesterday to the difficult conditions, BUT……..it wasn’t like Brady was missing a lot of open receivers with wind-blown passes. There was nobody open, especially in the second half.

*So it was left to the defensive and special teams units to give the Pats an edge, and they did. With New York backed up against its own goal line, Richard Seymour knocked Kellen Clemens on his left shoulder and out of the game on the Jets’ second offensive play, and the bloop that squirted from Clemens was gathered in by Eugene Wilson for the easy score. If you’re Eugene Wilson, you’ve got to like that bunny in your first series as James Sanders’ fill-in.

*Chris Hanson had a pretty good game, but he royally screwed up in the second quarter when, after a bobbled snap, he tried to get a punt through an approaching rush. The block by David Bowens (and easy return) gave the Jets their only touchdown, which kept them in the game through the fourth quarter. It’s easy for me to say, but I figure in that situation (an inevitable block), take off running, and whatever you get is better than what the Patriots got today.

*But Kelley Washington went tit-for-tat late in the first half, blowing through with a perfectly timed, one-handed block of a Ben Graham punt from the Jets 17. I could hardly believe how perfectly and effortlessly Washington blocked that punt, as if he could do it whenever he wanted. It set up the only offensive touchdown of the day.

*So back to the defense for a minute – they started out like they were going to dominate, but Chad Pennington (after a couple of quarters that Mangini wasted by alternating him with Brad Smith) eventually began to chip away underneath, and the Patriots D ended up spending an awful lot of the second half on the field. It got hairy there for a minute (Justin McCareins’ bobbled and overturned touchdown would have cut the lead to three), and I’m wondering if the defense is going the way of the offense. Yet, when it was all said and done, they allowed three points all day.

*Laurence Maroney probably did as much to win this game for the Patriots as anybody. Oh, I’m sorry, do you have to sit down? I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ll eat this plate of crow all day long, because I have often wondered if Maroney had it in him. He stood tall when the weather forced the ball his way, carrying 26 times for 104 yards. Most of it came with a gang of Jets on his back. The only time the Patriots looked good on offense was when Brady turned and simply handed Maroney the ball. To their credit, they did it often. Now, let’s not put him in Canton yet, all right fellas? If I’m not mistaken, he went the wrong way on a couple of early running plays. But today was a great start, and a sight for sore eyes.

*The Pats o-line had a devil of a time with false starts, and later, they seemed to falter in the face of a rallying Jets pass rush. They did do a good job of creating a rugby scrum around Maroney every time he carried the football, a tactic not widely used since the early 1900′s. I LOVED it.

*Adalius Thomas was a man possessed for some reason, laying the wood to anything he could get his hands on. A couple of time he’s got up acting as though he was a blink away from a five-star nutty. What got into him? Can we get him some more? He also chased down Chris Baker and forced him to fumble, which was recovered by……Eugene Wilson. Is he pulling a Costanza here or something, where he’s doing the opposite of what his instincts tell him? What’s with this change in luck?

*Junior Seau was an inspired sidekick to Thomas, and Mike Vrabel came hard off the edge despite being listed as questionable. Vince Wilfork and Ty Warren stuffed the Jets early, and Seymour’s explosive sack of Clemens was a welcome flashback. The cornerbacks stood out mainly because they didn’t convert any of the interception chances that came their way.

*I suppose the question will be asked: can anybody else do what the Jets did to Brady, or was the weather The Main Ingredient of his frustration? I guess everybody plays the fool, sometimes.

*Belichick must have figured that every camera in the stadium  would be trained on him the second the clock went to zero, and the images taken as he crossed the field towards Mangini would soon be hurtling across every corner of the Internet, when they could be scrutinized, analyzed, and quite probably scandalized. I like to think that the usually dour coach burst out laughing at the thought of it, and that’s what carried him across to Mangini, and then some warm embraces by a few Jets, before a triumphant fist pump to the Patriots sideline. That ending wasn’t the one we expected either, but it was great.

*”The whole chipper, friendly “great game, great game….awesome” veered dangerously close to John Denver “far OUT!” territory. Man, that was fun.

*With the top seed now clinched, the debate begins: will Belichick rest some starters over the final two weeks? why, with the bye week that’s only two Sundays away? I don’t know if Maroney was this involved in the game plan before the weather arrived, but I’d like to see a lot more of him and his flying wedge, for example. I’d like to see more of Adalius Thomas sprinting around, and perhaps another Richard Seymour sack or two. I’d like to see Tom Brady come out and have another great game, if only to assuage any lingering thoughts of yesterday.

Filed Under: Games

The Sunday Links

December 16, 2007 By Leave a Comment

logoby Scott Benson
[email protected]

The long awaited rematch with Eric Mangini and the New York Jets has finally arrived, and with it a messy winter storm. With all the high drama that is expected this afternoon, the morning papers are out in force. Let’s dive in.

The Globe leads off with a big file photo of Bill Belichick with his arm around the shoulder of Mangini, and that sets the tone for the day’s coverage. It’s all about Bill and Eric, and handshakes. Christopher Gasper sets the stage with a rehash of the Patriots-Jets soap opera, but acknowledges that several other teams have come to better fit the term ‘rival’ for New England. Jim McCabe follows with a Top Ten list of NFL feuds. I laughed when I saw that ESPN analyst Mike Ditka, a frequent critic of Belichick, once tried to trade blows with Packers coach Forrest Gregg in the bowels of County Stadium – after an exhibition game. Do as I say, not as I do, I guess.

In his Patriots notebook, Gasper has the Jets secondary praising Randy Moss, perhaps in an effort to lull him to sleep this afternoon. Jim McBride says it won’t do any good, calling for a 28 point Patriots win in his weekly scouting report.

Mike Reiss closes out the Globe’s coverage with another exhaustive edition of his league notes, where he has Romeo Crennel building a foundation in Cleveland, Charlie Casserly taking a measure of satisfaction in the play of Mario Williams, and the always volatile Lawyer Milloy blasting away at departed Falcons coach Bobby Petrino. Deservedly so, I might add.

In the Herald, John Tomase looks at the Jets fall from grace since their 2006 playoff season. In his Quick Hits, Tomase wonders whether Belichick will pull a swerve on the football world this afternoon, and adds a bit of a rant on the sometimes docile Gillette Stadium crowd. Not going to do much for John’s Q rating among Pats fans, I suspect. Tomase closes with five things to look for today. Guess what #1 is? Handshake!

Karen Gurgeian has the Pats notebook, reminding us that on a slippery track, the advantage goes to the offense. Tony Massarotti has a brief bit on Ben Watson, who has faded to the background after an impressive start. Tony laments that Watson isn’t as productive as Jason Whitten. Um…..okay. I would suggest that one reason might be that Whitten is the Cowboys second option, and for the spread ‘em out Patriots, Watson is no better than, what? Fifth? Sixth? I’m not sure how much Watson could really do about that.

In their weekly Behind Enemy Lines feature, the Herald offers a forum for Steve Serby of the NY Post, who is doing his best to convince himself that the weather will be the great equalizer for the Jets today. Um…..okay. I did get a kick out of David Bowens and his story about Tom Brady’s cappuccino machine at Michigan. Was Peter King a frequent visitor?

In the ProJo, Jim Donaldson says when it comes to the controversial Patriots, the game itself seems to play second fiddle. Pretty good point, I think, though Jim never gets to the X’s and O’s either. Shalise Manza Young does her typically thorough job on the decline of the Belichick-Mangini relationship, before going up close with cornerback and track man Eddie Jackson. In her game analysis, SMY notes that the Patriots lead the league with 32 drives of five minutes or longer, which I will do my best to remember the next time I start to fret about the de-emphasized running game.

Elsewhere, our pal Chris Price of the Metro reminds us that snow has never been a problem for the Pats. Eric McHugh of the Patriot Ledger, who always seems to find a fresh angle, talks with Arizona special teams coach Kevin Spencer, who first brought Belichick and Mangini together in Cleveland. David Heuschkel of the Courant says regardless of the history shared between the two men, frost is expected in Foxborough today. Rachel Lenzi of the Maine Sunday Telegram, bless her heart, acts as though none of this is happening by focusing on Tom Brady, celebrity quarterback.

As I’m finishing this up, the Today show opens with a report from Gillette Stadium, enveloped in a Nor’easter some five hours before gametime. As Michael Conrad used to say, be careful out there. 

Filed Under: Media

Patriots Roundtable

December 15, 2007 By 3 Comments

logoby the Patriots Daily Staff
[email protected]

Some housekeeping before we give the Roundtable gang the floor:

Some technical difficulties prevented us from publishing Bill Barnwell’s Outside Foxborough column this week. Apologies to Bill, who turned in a typically illuminating effort on pro football betting lines, such as the rather considerable one favoring the Patriots this Sunday. Good news, though: the always helpful gang at Football Outsiders pitched in and published it yesterday.

We mentioned it yesterday, but check out the Buffet Table that the PD Kitchen Staff has prepared for tomorrow’s game.

Lastly, Eric Wilbur of boston.com found it first, but in case you missed it, we bring you the official bottoming out of Spygate.

Oy. I give up.

Okay, panel, what’s on your mind? 

Along with trying to become the first NFL team to go undefeated since the 1972 Dolphins, the Patriots are also approaching several other league records, both collectively and individually, as the regular season winds down towards the playoffs. Do these records matter?

Greg Doyle: They will only matter if they win it all. Then it will be a great reflection on what an amazing season they had. I think it will be something both players and fans appreciate, but only if coupled with ultimate success in terms of a championship.

Scott Benson: I know full well that if it wasn’t for Tom Brady, we’d still be waiting for one world championship, never mind three, or a possible four. But I don’t care whether he throws 48 or 50 touchdown passes. I don’t care if Randy Moss catches more touchdown passes than Jerry Rice. While the thought of the Pats losing a game at this late juncture is abhorrent, I don’t care about an undefeated season. You can win a Super Bowl without any of those things. That’s the only legacy that’s worth a damn, and without a championship, I imagine all of that stuff would feel pretty hollow, especially to the players themselves. Ultimately, winning Super Bowl 42 is the only thing that matters at all.

Travis Graham: I agree that the stats records aren’t that important in the big picture, but I have to admit that I really want to keep that goose egg intact. Twenty years from now, any offensive records from today’s game will probably be shattered, but an undefeated season in the middle of the Pats dynasty would have to be considered the pinnacle of NFL greatness.

Dan Snapp: The individual records, those are just gravy. The perfect season, so long as it’s not in conflict with the goal of winning the Super Bowl, I say go for it. It gets dicey after the Pats lock up homefield advantage throughout, because then there may be some desire to give key players time to heal and rest. Scott, I think the “undefeated” legacy is worth something to these players. They’d like to be able to say, long after their playing days are done, “I played on the best team ever,” and there’d be no dispute. I think Belichick (he of the Vinny 20th year with a touchdown pass and the Flutie drop kick) has an appreciation for that legacy as well. The only issue is if going after one sacrifices the other, and I trust Belichick to have those priorities straight.

Scott: There will always be dispute, even at 19-0, which I think says something about the value of this stuff in the first place. It’s all subjective. Like figure skating.

Kevin Thomas: Sure its subjective. And you know going in that the Eastern Bloc judges (Ron Borges, Don Shula, et al.) are in the bag. But it is a significant accomplishment that would greatly inform the debate among rational thinking people. I have no doubt the entire Patriots organization wants this. Is the quest for the 16-0 regular season in conflict with winning the Super Bowl? I don’t think so. I think it has helped their cause that Indy is still nipping at their heels this late in the season. There’s only going to be at most two meaningless games to close out the season, one against winless Miami and the other against a Giants team that will probably be resting for a Wild Card game the following week. On the other hand, we’ve now had two regulars on defense go on IR in successive weeks (Colvin and Mike Wright). You can chaulk up those two losses to regular NFL attrition, but if for example they lose Harrison or Wilfork (or God forbid, the QB) in the second half of the Dolphins or Giants games, you bet there will be some second-guessing. The scedule helps, though, where they’ve got 14 or 15 days from the final regular season game to the first playoff game, a 7 or 8 day layoff before the AFCCG (and presumably no traveling), and then 14 days to the Superbowl. What a difference from the past two years, huh? I think that makes it an easier decision to go full throttle over these final 3 weeks.

Dan: At the very least, they’d go to the top of the heap of the “America’s Game” voting. 17-0 has carried that Dolphins team past a lot of probably more deserving teams in the “greatest ever” debate. How much weight would 19-0, the new scoring record, and touchdown records for both QB and receiver carry?

With their win over Pittsburgh last Sunday, the AFC East champion Patriots clinched a first round bye. Another win this week will ensure them home field advantage throughout the playoffs. What AFC contenders (including the Colts, who have also clinched a spot) pose the biggest threat to the Patriots in the playoffs?

Dan: I’m still shocked at how that Steelers team laid down after not converting the fourth-and-goal at the one. There was still the entire fourth quarter to be played, and they were down 18. I thought they were made of tougher stuff than that.

Kevin: The Colts, the Colts, 1000X the Colts. Do you realize that Indy is #2 in defense in terms of yards surrendered, and just a hair behind the Bucs for #2 in points allowed? And offensively, despite their injury problems, they are right there with the league’s best non-Patriots teams (Football Outsiders has them essentially tied with Dallas for #2 in their DVOA offensive rankings). This may be the best all-around team they’ve had in the Dungy-Manning era. The Pats obviously have a large statistical edge in terms of offensive production (one that should be more than enough to offset their deficiency on the defensive side of the ball), but as we’ve seen in recent years, the Colts tend to bring their “A” game on defense when playing New England. If the game is at Gillette, that should be an advantage for the Pats, but again, it’s been almost 3 years since that mattered. If you look at recent years where they’ve played Indy twice (’03, ’04, ’06), I guess you could make a case that the Pats tend to play them tougher the second time around. But still, just thinking about what AJ Feeley, Willis McGahee and others have been able to do against the Patriots in recent weeks, and then imagining what their Colts counterparts might do in the same position should give any fan a quesy feeling.

Greg: I am skeptical they can win in Foxboro in the playoffs and its even possible they could get knocked off before getting that far. But I have to say, they are the only team I can even envision a scenario of beating the Patriots.

That brings us to this week’s game, and the highly anticipated rematch between the Patriots and their Spygate nemeisis, the New York Jets. Naturally, the focus is all off the field. Are observers overlooking any on-field threats posed by the Jets?

Dan: John Tomase, reporting on the Jets squad, said they already have that “mailed-in” look about them. Kerry Rhodes was quoted as saying hopefully, they don’t get beat too bad. This could be the first game ever at Foxboro where its the opponents hoping the natural elements play a role.

Kevin: I don’t buy it. These guys on the Jets (and indeed every team the Pats play from here on out) are one game away from immortality if they can pull this off and knock off the Patriots. Their disastrous season would essentially become a mere footnote to one of the greatest, most memorable upsets in NFL history. If they can’t get up for this game, frankly I don’t know what they’re doing in life. Here are the things that concern me (at least a little bit) about Sunday’s game:

-it’s a division game, between two teams who know each other extremely well, and not to be too cliche, but anything can happen. The Pats have not turned in their annual dog**** performance against an AFC East opponent yet, and since I don’t see it happenning against Miami, if it’s going to happen it happens this weekend. As we all know, the Patriots have never swept the division before, so if they are going to complete the 16-0 regular season, they will need to clear that hurdle first.

-the adverse weather conditions probably will be something of an equalizer. If you remember, it was the bad weather and muddy track that was perhaps the biggest factor in the Jets upsetting the Patriots last year. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, including the Patriots ripping up the field at Gillette and replacing it with field turf in the immediate aftermath of the Jets loss. (Question: if the Jets upset the Patriots at home again, will the Sarandis Memorial Retractable Roof be built in time for the Divsional Round playoff game?). The teams themselves are vastly different. Still, if the weather conditions take away the Patriots’ deep threat, they become much easier to defend, and we could see a repeat of what happenned last November.

-the possible letdown from the Pittsburgh game. Frankly, I don’t buy that the Patriots players have any special motivation when it comes to the Jets. Sure, there is genuine animosity between the front offices and coaching staffs, but I don’t think it extends to the players much at all. The players have no real beef with Mangini. They know him and remember him as one of Belichick’s underlings. They probably have a better relationship with him, and maybe even like him better, than their own head coach. As far as I’m concerned, the whole “revenge” factor for spygate is a media/fan creation that won’t really impact the players. For the players, I think the important thing is that they are coming off one of their biggest wins of the year, against their last significant test heading into the playoffs, and are now facing a 3-win team in bad weather. All the ingredients are there for a flat, uninspired performance.

Greg: I have thought for awhile now this game will be closer than anticipated. For a long time the conventional wisdom has been this game will be the blowout of blowouts. I say bull. Its hard to crush a division opponent just because you want to. Yeah, I know they did it to Buffalo, but its not that easy. And the Jets know very well that has been the conventional wisdom too. They know the Pats will be ready. That really gives them no choice, it they have any pride at all, to come up here and just go for broke. I don’t think the Jets will get ambushed on this one. They know. The Pats will still win, I’ll say 23-3 with the weather. But it’ll be more competitive than anticipated and maybe even close for awhile.

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

Niner Watch, Week Fifteen

December 14, 2007 By 8 Comments

by Scott Benson
[email protected]

Another week closer to the end of the season, and another week with the San Francisco 49′ers holding position as the second worst team in football.

Just three games left. Can San Francisco maintain? The Niners, now 3-10 after being pounded by the surprising Vikings, will host the 5-8 Bengals on Saturday night. Over the final two weeks they’ll entertain Tampa Bay (8-5) before finishing on the road with the 8-5 Browns.

First thought: hell, they could lose all three of those games. What is best case scenario? One of three? The Bengals have won three of their last five, and the Bucs and Browns are each knuckle-deep in playoff fights. I’m really starting to think this could happen: the Patriots sitting on the 2nd pick in the draft.

Then I realize that the Bengals mini-run has mostly come at home, and they’re actually 1-5 on the road. Conceivably, both Tampa and Cleveland could have already clinched playoff spots before they even flip the coin with the Niners.

Given this information, I’m pondering the dreaded two-of-three ‘doomsday’ scenario. Five wins by San Francisco would almost certainly drive the Pats to the back end of the Top Ten (which is still a pretty good haul for a #28, but we’ve gotten our hopes up already).  

Our ace in the hole, as you know, is the vaunted Strength of Schedule (SOS) tiebreaker. The Niners .481 SOS easily gives them the edge over the Rams, Falcons and Jets, the other 3-10 teams that are now filling slots 2-5. It gives them the same advantage over the 4-9 cluster of Kansas City, Oakland and Baltimore, meaning the Niners can drop no lower than fifth this weekend, should they inadvertantly beat the Bengals. 

So we’ll see. Here’s this week’s chart.

GAMES OF THE WEAK

Cincinnati at San Francisco – The first round pick quarterback says the head coach is undermining him with the team, and then goes on IR – God, it just gets better. Then the third-string guy comes off the bench and turns out to be the best quarterback they’ve had yet. Watch it, Shaun Hill. Don’t screw this up.

Green Bay at St. Louis – I don’t trust Brett Favre. Another guy that could screw it up. I suppose the Packers can lock down a first round bye with a win and a Seattle loss, so we got that going for us.

Atlanta at Tampa Bay – I don’t buy that the Patriots were once the laughingstock of the NFL. I think its always been the Falcons. Tampa can take their division with a win. Let’s pencil that in, shall we?

New York Jets at New England – Keep that pencil going. And while you’ve got it out, write down this weekend’s tailgate menu, as prepared by the PD Kitchen Staff.

Baltimore at Miami – Am I being foolish, or is this the perfect spot for the Dolphins to dodge the 0-16 bullet? I really ought to be rooting for the Ravens to go to 5 wins, but come on. Where’s the romance in that?

Elsewhere, you have to believe that Tennessee and Indy will beat Kansas City and Oakland, respectively. The Titans are trying to worm back into a wild card spot and the Colts can clinch their division with a victory this week. If things stay true to form, the Chiefs and Raiders will stay at five wins.

Filed Under: News

More Than A Passing Fancy

December 12, 2007 By 6 Comments

logoby Dan Snapp
[email protected]

It was the most insidiously impressive drive of the game.

Albeit outshone by the wonderfully executed play-action bomb to Randy Moss or the splendid Tom-Brady-to-Moss-to-Brady-to-Jabar-Gaffney flea-flicker, the Patriots drive to open the fourth quarter Sunday was where they most definitively exerted their dominance over the Steelers.

Driving 89 yards in 13 plays, all passes, and leading to a 28-yard Stephen Gostkowski field goal, it was an exercise in mastery. The Pats tipped their hand, going empty backfield on all but two plays, but the Steelers couldn’t stop them.

New England went no huddle the entire series, still running the play clock down each time. They completed nine straight passes (the first five to Wes Welker), with the receiver staying in bounds each time, and ran six minutes off the clock. In essence, it was their runless run-out-the-clock squad.

The signature play was the first. The ball at their own one, the Pats had Tom Brady alone in the shotgun. Welker made a quick break outside, Brady caught him in stride, and Welker left James Farrior in his dust for a 22-yard gain.

“How ’bout this?” an awestruck Phil Simms said at the snap. “You’re backed up at the one, and this says it all: ‘We are a passing team.’”

So that’s what it’s going to be. For better or for worse, this is what they are now: the Great American Pass Team.

We’re about to see if the Patriots can do what in any normal year couldn’t be done: win a Super Bowl with a one-dimensional offense.

We warned about the team getting too pass-happy back in August. There are harbingers of this danger every year: Peyton Manning’s record 2004 season gone cold in frigid Foxboro (and him finally winning once he tempered his statlust); John Elway going ringless before Terrel Davis came along ; Dan Marino never winning a title.

So what would make us think things will be different for this Patriots team?

Obviously, nobody’s ever been this good at it. Soon, the Pats will hold the single season scoring record, Tom Brady will best Manning’s passing TD accomplishment, and Randy Moss most likely will surpass Jerry Rice’s season receiving TD mark. Those records might not even survive this week’s Jets game, maybe leaving Eric Mangini’s job on the endangered list as well.

One can hope.

But doing all this, plus maybe going undefeated, plus then maybe winning another Super Bowl, all while running a heavily lopsided offense – it’s just the Patriots thwarting convention yet again.

On first glance at the stats, the Pats look relatively balanced. For the season, they’ve run 43% of the time – pretty decent considering what a pass-happy offense we expected them to be. They’ve also got a respectable 4.0 yards per carry, for a middle-of-the-pack 1,478 total yards rushing.

But the team’s running success the first part of the season skew the results. Through the first five games, the Pats mixed the run and the pass about 50-50, running for 775 yards, an average of 155 a game. The next eight games, they ran the ball only about 37% of the time, running for 703 yards, an average of 87 yards a game.

Dallas seemed to be the turning point. So did the team’s change of MO hinge on Sammy Morris’s injury early in the third quarter of that game?

As the weather’s turned colder, the Patriots have aired it out more. Perhaps it’s just a by-product of situational football, with the recent come-from-behind wins against Philly and Baltimore dictating a pass-first mentality. But why then just the nine carries against the Steelers, a game in which the Pats took control in the third quarter?

When Laurence Maroney talks to the press, it’s usually a bad thing. He doesn’t dance, he says, and we don’t see what he sees. If we’re to believe Laurence, the only things holding him back are the coach’s reins. The team’s choice of plays seems to hint otherwise.

The next two weeks should shed some light on Maroney’s future with the team. The Jets and Dolphins are 30th and 32nd against the run, respectively, a disadvantage the Patriots would love to exploit. If the Pats are still showing empty backfield late into those games, Maroney’s New England days may be numbered.

Then again, they’re only doing what they do best.

Filed Under: Columns

Inside Gillette

December 11, 2007 By Leave a Comment

logoby Christopher Price
[email protected]

New head coach. New players. Same old over-aggressive Steelers.

When it came to beating Pittsburgh Sunday, the Patriots appeared to take a page out of their old offensive philosophy that worked for them in the 2004 AFC Championship Game, a 41-27 win over the Steelers. Want to beat Pittsburgh? Use its hyper-aggressive defensive tendencies to your advantage.

On Sunday, both big plays — a 56-yarder and a 63-yarder — came after some chicanery, with one coming on a play-action fake and another coming after a pair of laterals. Both plays had the Pittsburgh secondary headed in the wrong direction, and New England took advantage both times, scoring a pair of touchdowns.

“Those are plays that are part of our offense, so we run them,” Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick shrugged Monday when asked about the two plays that combined for 119 of Tom Brady’s 399 total passing yards. “We’ve run them in the past.”

The Patriots certainly aren’t the only team to use play-action and misdirection to their advantage, and the Steelers aren’t the first team to fall for an occasional fake. But when the New England and Pittsburgh meet on the big stage, the Patriots have a way of making the Steelers look foolish. That was certainly the case in the 2004 AFC Championship, when New England set the tone on the first play from scrimmage — a keyed-up Pittsburgh defense was thrown into reverse when Brady faked a handoff to Corey Dillon and slipped the ball to Deion Branch, who carried it 14 yards on an end around to set up an early score. Later in the game, it was another play-action fake that had Pittsburgh safety Troy Polamalu fooled, giving Branch just enough separation to score on a 60-yard pass play.

On Sunday, the Patriots used the same approach, diffusing the Pittsburgh attacking defense with misdirection and getting big yards as a result. With 14:16 left in the second quarter and facing a 1st and 10 on its own 37, New England manufactured a sweet play-action fake where Brady and Randy Moss connected on a 63-yard touchdown. On that play, both safety Anthony Smith and cornerback Ike Taylor bit hard on Brady’s excellent fake, despite the fact that New England clearly wasn’t interested in running the football — they had just nine rushes plays on the night. Moss was left running cleanly down the middle of the field, with no defender within 10 yards of him as he crossed the goal line.

Play-action forces defensive backs into making a split-second decision. And, as they did in 2004, the Pittsburgh defenders — who are always trained to attack, attack, attack — chose wrong.

“I think that’s the decision that the defensive backs have to make — whether they want to try to come up and help in the running game, or whether they want to stay back, create more space in the running game and defend the deeper part of the field,” Belichick said. “But I think that the offensive line and the ball handling and all, it was good action. It sold the play pretty well.”

The Patriots used misdirection to their advantage again in the third. With 10:17 remaining in the quarter, New England was leading 17-13, and in another 1st and 10 situation, this time on its own 44. Brady made a quick lateral to Moss, who, after a quick drop, returned it to Brady via another lateral. (As Brady tossed the ball to Moss, receiver Jabar Gaffney abruptly stopped his downfield running in an attempt to sell the fake even further.) The back-and-forth again froze the Pittsburgh secondary. As a result, Smith was a step behind wide receiver Jabar Gaffney, and the ball dropped softly into Gaffney’s hands for a 56-yard touchdown.

“It was well-executed,” Belichick said of the play, called the “Ravens special,” according to Gaffney. “It’s a play that we’ve practiced a few times, and it came in handy.

“It was a nice job by [Jabar] Gaffney, really selling it, and Moss by dropping the ball, I think that really gave it a little more draw. I wish I could take credit for that, but that wasn’t part of the play.”

FIVE THINGS TO LOOK FOR THIS WEEK

1. Record breakers. There are only about a half-million different offensive records Tom Brady, Randy Moss and the rest of the Patriots could break on Sunday. Our favorite is the fact that with three games left on their schedule, New England is now just 53 points away from tying the all-time single season scoring record for a team. (The 1998 Vikings hold the all-time mark with 556.)

2. Carryover on the field from Week 1. We know about the relationship between the coaches, but there doesn’t seem to be a healthy amount of enmity between the players. In the wake of “SpyGate,” none of the Jets’ players have uttered a discouraging word about the Patriots, and no one has been able to provide much bulletin-board material. We’ll see if that changes this week.

3. Fast starts. It would appear that the best shot New York has in this game lies in them getting a fast start. If they are able to score on their first possession and hold the Patriots without a touchdown on their opening drive — a tall order, yes, but not unreasonable — then, the Jets might have a shot to make it interesting. But if New York goes three-and-out and New England puts a quick seven on the board, it’s going to be a long afternoon for Gang Green.

4. The inevitable appearance of Mercury Morris on whatever pregame show will have him. As a member of the media, I take no pleasure in writing this. But with the Patriots standing at 13-0 and only the Jets, Dolphins and Giants in the way, expect Morris to show up on every channel except The Food Network over the next few weeks proclaiming the ’72 Dolphins are still better than this New England team. Morris’s 15 minutes of fame have long passed, but the former Miami running back is milking this undefeated thing for all it’s worth, going down with the ship like no other member of that team save Don Shula.

5. The betting line. On Monday, it vacillated between 24 and 27. By the end of the day, it appeared to rest at 26, according to Las Vegas Sports Consultants. Jets Head Coach Eric Mangini said the line wouldn’t have an effect on the game. “The point spread and things like that really aren’t going to affect the outcome, how we do or how they do,” Mangini said at his news conference. “It’s really going to be a function of how well we prepare and get ready for the game.”

STAT OF THE WEEK

80. The Steelers are nothing if not committed to the run. Despite trailing by 18 points in the second half on the road, Pittsburgh stuck with its decision to dominate on the ground. As a result, of its 181 total rushing yards on the afternoon, a whopping 80 of them came after it had fallen behind 31-13 late in the third quarter.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“We’ll just come out and try to play hard. Hopefully, we can do something and not get beat bad.” — Jets defensive back Kerry Rhodes, speaking with reporters about this week’s game.

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. He’s written “The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower,” and can be reached at [email protected].

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Hit With A Measuring Stick

December 10, 2007 By 11 Comments

by Scott Benson
[email protected]

Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin may be a rookie coach that was pretty much helpless for much of the afternoon yesterday, but afterwards, he showed a veteran’s command of the obvious.

“If that is the measuring stick,” a grim Tomlin said of the New England Patriots, “we’re not close.”

Nope, evidently not.

*When the crowd started chanting “GUAR-AN-TEE” at the end of the fourth quarter, it sounded like “M-V-P” on television. Perhaps that’s what they should have been chanting, because there isn’t a better player in the NFL today than Tom Brady. 400 yards, 4 td’s and no sacks against a defense that was supposed to take what the Eagles and Ravens did to the next level. Instead, Brady carved them up with an attack that threw the ball 84% of the time yesterday.  How is it after three Super Bowls and eight years he keeps getting better? He’s not mortal.

*With apologies to Benjamin Franklin, there are now three things in this world that are certain: death, taxes, and the stupid Steelers getting burned on the deep ball. For crying out loud, they bit on a play action fake to Laurence Maroney, which set up Randy Moss’s 63 yard touchdown in the second quarter (which put the Pats ahead for good). I mean, come on! The Patriots aren’t going to give the ball to Laurence Maroney, you idiots. And I knew the minute Moss fielded Brady’s one hop lateral and got it back to him, there would be a Patriot (Jabar Gaffney in this case) twenty-five yards beyond the Pittsburgh secondary. Sure as hell, there he was. Because in this world, nothing can be said to be certain – except that.

*Raise a glass to the entire Pats defense, who held the Steelers scoreless over the final 32 minutes. The Patriots are supposed to be old and tired, right? Then how come nobody can score on them in the second half? Rodney Harrison raised hell with Pitt’s red zone offense as everybody saw; but how about a toast to Tedy Bruschi? He may be in the twilight of his career, but he yesterday, he ran around the field like the old Tedy. His best game of the year for sure.

*I think the Patriots told us after the game just what they think of guarantees and the like. How about Belichick? “We’ve played against a lot better safeties than him, I’ll tell you.” Oh, snap!  Roll your eyes at your own peril, non-believers.

*So the Pats clinched a first round bye with the win, meaning all that’s standing between the Pats and home field advantage all the way through the playoffs is the New York Jets. Oh, dear.

*I don’t know how I feel about an offense that is 64/36 in favor of the pass over the last eight games. I guess those little flips to Wes Welker in the second half yesterday are just as good as a running play – I guess. 

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