by Dan Snapp, Patriots Daily Staff
September 10, 2009

I sometimes wonder if I’m watching a different game than everybody else. When did football become about making sure everybody’s happy? Since when did approval ratings trump winning?

Yes, it sucks for Richard Seymour to be traded to Oakland, and yes, he just built a house, and yes, he now has to uproot his family. This may sound callous, but that’s life. In the game he chose to make his profession – one in which he’s worked hard and was handsomely rewarded – this was a possible outcome in the scheme of things.

Seymour’s entitled to feel however he feels about it, but the Patriots owe him nothing beyond respect and gratitude for his contributions to their success.

The transaction garnered a predictable response from the usual suspects: Dan Shaughnessy called us toadies for rooting for the laundry; Ron Borges urged Vince Wilfork (again) to sit out; and former Seymour slammer Michael Felger shrieked that his departure was the first sign of the pending apocalypse.

It’s really no wonder Bill Belichick is so tight-lipped. He comes within minutes of the league’s first 19-0 season, loses his MVP quarterback the next year yet still leads the team to an 11-5 season with a QB who hasn’t started since high school, and that’s not enough? They want him to be Dick McPherson, as well? Hugs all around. Cold cuts and doughnuts in the pressbox. Christmas bonuses and personalized holiday greetings. “Best wishes for a swell 2010 to my favorite cub reporter. You’ll get me one of these days. Love, Bill.”

Give up the ghost, guys. It’s never gonna happen. And yes, fans do prefer wins over keeping players past their primes. Seymour’s still in his prime, but the Raiders’ compensation was so over the top, the Patriots would be fools not to take it. All the pundits agree on this. The ones outside Boston, anyway.

Shaughnessy made an interesting analogy Monday, ostensibly as criticism, imagining Belichick’s moves helming the late-80s Celtics:

If the 1980s Celtics had been managed by Belichick you can be pretty sure Kevin McHale would have been traded. Maybe Robert Parish, too. The Big Three would not have gotten old and broken down on Coach Bill’s watch.

If he’s saying that’s a bad thing, the Celtics of the ’90s don’t help his cause much. If a Belichick figure could have parlayed an aging McHale into a Shaq or Mourning two years down the line, would you have taken it?

Borges, ever the union man, bemoaned Wilfork’s lack of leverage as a rookie, saying he had no choice but to sign the six-year deal which he has now obviously outperformed. His remedy, as always, is for the player to sit out . But what’s management’s option when a player underperforms a contract? The 49ers in 2005 signed rookie Alex Smith to a megadeal, then were stuck with him when he foundered. It’s not like they were going to get their money back, and if they cut him his sizable bonus would have ballooned their salary cap. Where’s Ron’s crocodile tears for that injustice?

Seymour and the Patriots were equally loyal to one another. When not liking his  situation, Seymour twice sat out and was rewarded. His last deal made him one of the highest paid defenders, and it’s arguable whether he performed up to that stature. The Pats paid him at the first two impasses, and traded him this time, well within their rights.

Both parties treated football as a business, and both took risks associated with that decision. By sitting out, Seymour risked just this kind of transaction occurring the next time his contract was coming up. And the Patriots are taking a risk now in not having Seymour’s services for the year.

The price for being a successful team in the salary cap era is that you can’t keep all your good guys, and your roster is constantly in flux. The media seems shocked that only four Patriots remain from a Super Bowl that occurred eight years ago, in a league where player careers average half that.

What’s more impressive is that 14 Patriots from the 2001 season were still playing football in 2008, eight of whom were still Patriots. By contrast, the 2008 Rams had four players left from their 2001 roster, the 2008 Colts had six, and the Steelers and Ravens each had four.

Tell me, which team is most loyal?

Hating losing Seymour as a Patriot and loving the Raiders deal are not mutually exclusive events.  As fans, we’ll continue to have the memories to cherish, and can even be so magnanimous to actually wish the best for somebody wearing a Raiders jersey.

But at the end of the day, we’re loyal to the guys wearing the laundry.

E-mail Dan Snapp at [email protected]

“Falling on a Knife” must have been a real health concern in Oscar Hammerstein’s old neighborhood. Whenever the legendary librettist needed a quick character exit, but without implicating another, falling on a knife was the literary device of choice. Jud Fry? Billy Bigelow? Both dead by self-shiv.

The point being, as an NFL starting quarterback, JP Losman has a great future in musical theater.

The adjective doesn’t exist to truly describe the level of incompetence beheld in that one play Sunday, when Losman mindlessly fumbled the game away against the Jets when most any other option would give the Bills the win.

It was mind-boggling, incomprehensible, unbelievable, and yet so dramatic and so brutally idiotic, it felt predictable.

Right after the play, Pats fans expressed their disgust, collectively thinking we knew we couldn’t count on the Bills. And a Bills fan buddy told his wife moments before the play, “Watch. We’re still going to lose this game.”

There are these times in sports when we forget what we’re watching is live, and more prone to havoc than we realize. We watch football games with an expectation of order, that the game should go in an orderly fashion according to plan. Plays should be executed as drawn up, and any result outside of that plan – fumbles, interceptions, special teams touchdowns – are shocks to the system, even though we see these things in every game we watch. The irony is the unexpected is what keeps us watching every week.

Compound that with the sports movie glory collections in our heads (Jimmy Chitwood making the last-second shot, Roy Hobbs hitting the home run in the ninth – author Bernard Malamud had him striking out, incidentally), and it’s a wonder our synapses know at which points during a game they should fire.

The end product is a muddle where any result is one we saw coming.

So Losman’s fumble, then, was both a surprise and par for the course. Bill Belichick would probably describe it as a “football play.”

What’s more difficult is apportioning blame. Losman gets a lion’s share, of course. You don’t go that many years in the league with as much as experience as he’s had to blank out in execution.

Many want Bills coach Dick Jauron’s head on a platter as well, a sentiment emboldened with the news his contract was extended. But the call really wasn’t that bad. The two-minute warning was going to stop the clock anyway, so all Jauron was doing was trusting that the guy he had throw 32 times in the previous 58 minutes would know what to do in this situation.

The play has drawn comparisons to the notorious Joe Pisarcik fumble, except fans are clamoring that the Bills should have called the same play now that got Pisarcik in trouble in ’78. No play is 100 percent safe. Belichick probably would have described the Pisarcik gaffe as a “football play” as well.

This was nothing more than Jud Losman falling on his own knife. Unfortunately for the Patriots, it increased the chances the fat lady would soon be singing.

Dan Snapp’s ‘Direct Snapp’ appears weekly on Patriots Daily. He can be reached at [email protected].

My daughter said the F-word last week. Here we were Thursday, happily watching the game, and out it blurted:

“Daddy, did the man just say, ‘Brett Favre’?”

Oh dear. We knew this day would come. A little bit before I expected, but here we are. Deep breath.

No, honey, there is no Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy is just bribery so you won’t freak out at the blood, and the Easter Bunny? Well, I have no earthly clue what the Easter Bunny’s supposed to be about. There’s also no pot of gold at rainbow’s end, and Mickey Mouse is actually just some girl sweating her butt off in a mouse suit in the Florida sun.

And yes, sadly there is a Brett Favre.

Turns out Brett Favre is one friend’s favorite player, and being so thrilled to hear the name on TV (yeah, just wait, honey), my daughter had to tell her best friend about it.

“Brett Barf?” he responded. Whether a character judgment or an allusion to Favre’s Vicodin days, I must say, prescient lad.

Actually, I come to praise Brett Favre. No, really.

In the Jets’ win against the Patriots a week ago, Favre had one of his most impressive days ever. Certainly not statwise, paling in comparison to a number of games. But he played a nice, efficient game, checking down to secondary receivers, not forcing balls, and generally taking what the Patriots defense gave him.

In stark contrast to his legend, he wasn’t drawing up plays in the dirt, he wasn’t winging it, and he actually seemed to grasp the concept of nickel defenses. It even looked like he just wasn’t having fun out there.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

Tell me you didn’t think it. 

Tell me, as Adam Vinatieri’s unexpected (to put it mildly) 52-yard field goal sailed through the uprights Sunday night, you didn’t hear in your head the retired, red-nosed, paper-shuffling anchor with his most tiresome of bromides:

Why can’t we get players like that?

Fortunately, we did. In fact, the Patriots had their cake and ate it, too: they had Vinatieri for the bulk of his possibly Hall of Fame career, and then replaced him with somebody younger, cheaper, and – for the past two-and-a-half years, anyway – better. And remember, it’s not like the Patriots cut Vinatieri loose; his leaving was of his own choosing.

Like Larry Bird’s Indian Summer game against Portland in 1992, there was a nostalgic aspect to Vinatieri’s renewed vigor, even though it came at the Patriots’ expense. It was good to see the old man still had it in him.

But Vinatieri’s kick was the exception, not the rule. The 52-yarder was his first over 50 yards in two years (he had two over 50 in the 2006 playoffs), and he went all of the 2007 regular season without hitting anything over 40 yards before finally connecting on a 46-yarder against San Diego in the playoffs. And quite the irony that a good tailwind at Lucas Oil Stadium came to the aid of a man hoping a dome would extend his career.

Vinatieri’s time as an elite kicker is over. He had a glorious year in ’06 with the Colts, including a five field goal performance against the Ravens in the divisional round. But his average has dropped each year, as well as his range. At 35, he should be around for a while; it’s not unusual for a good kicker to play into his 40s, as Jan Stenerud and Gary Anderson did. But he’s no longer the Adamatic of old.

In the meantime, we have Stephen Gostkowski, who was recently named October’s Special Teams Player of the Month. He’s raised his average each season, from 76.9 percent in ’06 to a sterling 95 percent this year.  He showed he could hit the big kicks, like the game-winner against San Diego in the waning minutes of the ’06 divisional playoffs, or the two fourth quarter field goals against the Colts in the AFC championship. And of course, there’s the value of his kickoffs, with nearly as many touchbacks in eight games as he had all last season.

At the time of Vinatieri’s signing with the Colts, Peter King claimed Adam alone would be the reason for three more wins for the Colts, and ostensibly by extension, three more losses for the Patriots. Three more wins for the Colts would be a pretty mean feat, seeing as how they had just gone 14-2 the previous season. Let alone the ludicrous idea that a kicker, even one Canton-bound, could change two teams’ fortunes so dramatically.

The outcome? The Colts went 12-4. The Patriots, 10-6 in ’05, went 12-4.

There are a handful of personnel shortcomings since ’05 for which we could critique the Patriots. Replacing Vinatieri with Gostkowski isn’t one of them.

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

You never know what memories of a football game you’ll stash away long after the contest’s completed. The big plays typically get top billing – the bomb, the interception, the game-ending sack – but often, it’s less-likelier suspects that resonate. It’s a subtle part of the game’s beauty.

Early in the fourth quarter Sunday, after the Rams went up 16-13 on the Patriots, an old familiar feeling washed over: the Patriots are going to win this.

There was no particular rhyme or reason for it at the time. The Patriots had just consummated an abysmal third quarter by giving up an onside kick, two interceptions, the ball on downs, and ultimately the lead. Moreover, their first possession of the fourth featured two dropped passes, a sack and punt.

Didn’t matter. The feeling persisted.

And it was familiar not from last year, when a different kind of “They’re going to win this” feeling would hit, usually in the first quarter. No, this was a feeling returning from 2003 and 2004.

Despite their matching 14-2 records those two years, the Patriots were often undersold as a league power, as they rarely blew anybody out. A common win would be them holding an 8- to 11-point lead early in the fourth, and then watching the opposition use up most of remaining regulation getting one of the two scores they needed.

To beat the Patriots back then, you had to knock them out early. If they were lingering, they were going to win. That old feeling said as much.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

Remember the halcyon days of yore, when people routinely compared Tom Brady to Joe Montana? These days we’re left resurrecting the Ghosts of Patriots Misfortune Past.

Who does Matt Cassel remind you of most? Drew Bledsoe holding onto the ball too long, Tony Eason turtling under pressure, or Hugh Millen losing his bearings on fourth down? Is Deltha O’Neal the worst Pats corner since Duane Starks, Antonio Langham, or Chris Canty? And is Richard Seymour turning into Kenneth “Game Day” Sims before our eyes?

As our eyes tell us, and as the stats back up, the Patriots just aren’t a very good team. We suspected as much during preseason, but were willing to brush that off as just that – preseason. Surely with Brady back for the opener, they’d revert back to the dominance of ’07.

But the blowouts to Miami and San Diego taught us something else: with or without Brady, this team has serious issues to resolve. Former areas of strength now loom as gaping holes. Positions neglected in drafts and free agency are exploited as vulnerabilities.

For Bill Belichick, it’s the perfect storm: His MVP quarterback out for the season, his old standby vets with too many steps lost to make the plays, and a couple of years of tepid drafting leaving nothing in reserve.

Ehh, but forget about all that. Let’s talk about the quarterback, as it’s so much easier to blame it on the guy handling the ball.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

Troy Brown says he’s a Patriot for life. We need to hold him to that. Hear that, Troy? You can’t leave.

“If you love the game so much,” his son Sir’mon tearfully asked during the retirement press conference, “Why are you retiring?”

Excellent question, and the answer is he’s not. We won’t let him.

Consider this: The franchise’s unprecedented success ran concurrent with Brown’s career; they made five Super Bowls with him as a member of the team, and lost the two he was inactive. Coincidence?

He was a tremendous player, but perhaps it’s more than that. Maybe he was our good luck charm all along. Maybe it’s just good karma to have such a man on our sidelines. As the saying went, good things happen when Troy Brown touches the ball.

Bill Belichick likes to say he treats all players equally, but I think Troy should be the exception. Surely the man who allowed Vinny Testaverde to keep his yearly touchdown streak going and who let Doug Flutie try the first drop kick in decades, surely he could find a way to sneak Brown onto the squad come playoffs each year. Put him back at gunner. Have him hold for kicks. Teach him to punt. Hell, he’s done everything else in his career.

Of course it’s only a pipe dream, thinking someday we could peel him off the BINGO circuit to come on all Nate Scarboro-like into a playoff game. We can be sure that Brown, unlike say Brett Favre, has put a lot of thought into this decision. Knowing the man he is, there’s no doubting the permanence of it.

This week, Patriots Daily has examined Troy Brown’s greatest moments, the turning point of his career, and his lasting place in our hearts and memories. Now we’re left to ponder his legacy.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

Crisis, they say, breeds opportunity.

When the NFL schedule makers posted the ’08 season, the timing of the Patriots’ bye seemed pointless. Now it looks provident.

If the Pats are to make a real season out of it, this would be the week to plant the seeds. That could mean radical changes, with new players brought in and old ones losing their starting jobs. It could mean new schemes and focuses. Or it could simply be a matter of returning to fundamentals. Stopping the single wing might be a good start.

Perhaps that’s too much to be made of one measly defeat, but man, what a wretched stink bomb of a loss. The Belichick era has seen its share of calamitous results, notably against Tennessee in ’02, San Diego in ’05, and the Dolphins seemingly every other year. But this one seemed worse, conjuring up dark memories of the pre-Parcells Pats, replete with a record day for the opposing running back and a QB who seemingly couldn’t complete anything past five yards.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

Out here, they call it “Minnesota Nice”.

It’s the comment that sounds complimentary, but turns sour the more it ruminates in your skull. Depending on the source, it’s either a sincere belief people here are more kindly, or more passive aggressively, that every smile cloaks a dagger.

Matt Cassel is the recipient of the Oscar of backhanded compliments for quarterbacks: “Good game manager.”

After the Patriots’ huge win over the Jets Sunday – and let’s not understate this, it was enormous – “manager” has been the predominant description for Cassel’s role in the offense. Said Coach Belichick right after the game:

I thought Matt took care of the ball. It wasn’t perfect. He had some rough spots in there, but he did a good job making good decisions and didn’t put us in any bad situations, and made some good, positive plays by managing the game well.

The sentiment was echoed in every game story and pundit’s take thereafter, and the dreaded moniker settled in around Cassel’s shoulders: “Game manager.” It’s the descriptor to which no child aspires when tossing the ball around with his friends.

“Here’s Montana with the throw!”
“Here’s Elway with the bomb!”
“Here’s Hostetler with the handoff!”

It just doesn’t happen.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

Jets fans could sympathize. Not that they’d do such a thing, but they do understand.

The 1999 Jets were on the verge of something big. Falling just short of the Super Bowl in ’98, they were in great shape to contend the following season. Vinny Testaverde was coming off his best season as a pro, Curtis Martin was just hitting his prime, and they had talented complementary receivers in Keyshawn Johnson and Wayne Chrebet. The defense was solid, if unspectacular, with strength in the linebacker corps.

Then it all unraveled on opening day. Testaverde ruptured his Achilles tendon early in the second quarter, and the squad’s Super Bowl hopes were dashed. Coach Bill Parcells tinkered with the position, going with Rick Mirer initially before switching to Ray Lucas in the middle of the season, and then won seven of the last nine games to finish 8-8.

Parcells wrote about the experience in his book “The Final Season” (co-written by the late Will McDonough) – making a perfect trifecta of the season, the book and his retirement plans all going contrary to expectations.

It’s rare to see a book about a middle-of-the-road team in a mostly forgettable season in a market typically reserved for winners. But the trials of the season tapped reservoirs of coaching inspiration from Parcells, and unearthed insights not visible from the heights of a 12-4 record. And it adds a sudden relevance to the Patriots’ situation at hand.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

It’s convention time. Time to define, redefine, and refine. Mold your message: make it, massage it, text-message it. Orate, berate, exacerbate, bring a date, don’t be late (anybody else suddenly get an INXS earworm?).

So potent the fervor even my three-year-old’s stricken, ricocheting down the hallway wielding a plastic croquet mallet. Her campaign slogan? Shriek loudly and carry a big stick.

The same process is set in motion at stadiums across the country: teams learning about and defining themselves, the media manufacturing expectations, marketeers test-driving campaigns, and fans building up their own while trashing the other guy’s.

Opening Day, at long last!

Trying to gauge the Patriots is a different story. Bill Belichick’s never been the life of the party, political or otherwise. And he’s not one to engage in conventional thinking.

[Read more...]

by Dan Snapp
[email protected]

The New England Patriots may be the first 18-1 rebuilding team in league history.

OK, not rebuilding in the traditional sense. They’re still Super Bowl favorites after all, even after the shocking loss to the Giants.

No, the Pats will be rebuilding their egos, their pride, hopefully rebuilding their reputation (“Never!” sez the collective punditry). On a happier note, they’ll also be rebuilding their linebacker corps.

We’ve heard the refrain so often it’s become a mantra bouncing around our skulls: the Patriots don’t draft linebackers high; their scheme is too complex for young players; only vets start at LB.

That theorem will be put to the test this season, as the team drafted not one but two linebackers high in the draft, and one may even start. The defense’s premier position is undergoing a youth movement, and it will be the position to watch when Patriots training camp starts today.

Camp is rife with many compelling stories (How will the secondary fare absent Asante? Will the line suffer Super Bowl aftershocks? What calamities can Capers conjure? And will Chad Jackson break out or bust out?), but the new order at linebacker – like last year’s onslaught of new receivers – is the Big Change, the biggest departure from Patriots standard operating procedure.

Patriots starting linebacker was one of the country’s most exclusive clubs: no one under 30 allowed. A couple under-aged kids (Monty Beisel and Eric Alexander) snuck into the club briefly, but were quickly bounced. At center stage were the most grizzled of veterans: Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, the ageless Junior Seau, Adalius Thomas and Rosevelt Colvin; before them, Willie McGinest, Ted Johnson and the medical wonder that was Roman Phifer.

However, the position also demanded a delicate balancing act be performed: gain experience, but lose speed; gain mental precision, but lose explosion; gain confidence, lose steps.

So long as Coach Bill Belichick could replenish the field with prize free agents (Colvin at 28, Thomas at 30), under-utilized stars in the making (Vrabel at 27) or old vets with some legs left (Phifer at 33, Seau at 37), draft-day decisions could be focused elsewhere.

But when supposed diamonds in the rough (Beisel again) flamed out, and when new vets were just old (Chad Brown), Belichick had to place more on the old vets – more reps, more minutes, more hits – and then hope he had a couple more years before the law of diminishing returns came to call. After all, unlike Brett Favre’s ego, Tedy Bruschi can’t go on forever.

So with linebackers the key to New England’s 3-4 defense, a scheme so Labyrinthine only the wiliest of vets can ably navigate it, surely a rookie’s head will swim – no matter his pedigree – trying to absorb the idiosyncrasies, let alone apply them in real time.

Still, Belichick invested a first and third round pick, respectively, in Jerod Mayo and Shawn Crable, and signed relative youngster Victor Hobson (from the fellow 3-4 defense of the New York Jets) to compete for a starting job at inside linebacker.

It’s the boon for which many have prayed for years. Watching highly acclaimed LBs make it to the Pats draft pick and then slip on past was particularly painful. There should have been some bylaw in place, for instance, mandating the Patriots draft Mosi Tatupu’s kid. But had they done that, we’d never have seen the monster that is Logan Mankins. Such are the tradeoffs of the draft.

So now what can we expect of the young LBs? Hobson’s got the 3-4 experience and physique, but didn’t play inside in New York and lacks speed. Still, he’s favored to start next to Bruschi inside.

Unlike a lot of rookies projected to play linebacker in the 3-4, Mayo and Crable were both college linebackers, and so won’t experience quite the growing pains college defensive ends face in the transition.

Crable’s an amazing physical specimen (I hope everyone’s seen the hurdle picture) who needs to develop pass coverage skills and gain some bulk.

Mayo is the wildcard who will really put the old linebacker philosophy to the test. He’s athletic, productive, and smart, and so hopefully the exception to the old Patriots rule.

The past two seasons have witnessed painful playoff endings for the Patriots. Their subsequent offseason actions wrote the epitaphs for those losses. In 2007, after cobbling together just enough of a receiver squad to make it to the AFC Championship, the Pats went wideout shopping in the offseason, and then broke scoring records.

This year, despite the line’s catastrophic Super Bowl, the Patriots went for mostly defense both in the draft and free agency.

Holding the Giants to 17 points is entirely respectable, until you note the two long drives given up at the tail end of the game. Factor in the defense’s late breakdown the previous playoff loss, and a pattern forms. One that explains this year’s linebacker haul.

We’ll soon see if it bears the same fruit as last year’s harvest.