The Patriots Butt Slide back into Brady

a blog by La Kifo

Tom Brady is back, the only words I need or want to hear at this point. Sunday was an embarrassment for the Patriots as they were shut out in Gillette for the first time in the Stadiums elongated life. 1993 was the last time fans in Foxborough witnessed their home team manage a goose egg on their scoreboard. 

Scott Zolak had some interesting words describing the Patriots performance while calling the game in early Sunday afternoon. Very bluntly he said, 'you are the Houston Texans', and it was true. Just a week ago they were out-coaching, out-executing, and out-performing their opponent. More than a week later, the Bill is putting a wet towel over this loss before the smell of a shit stained asshole expands into the whole room. 

The sound of the words, Rex Ryan out-coached you, are nauseating even when not spoken aloud. But it seemed to be true. Ryan and the Bills were quicker to every punch, they provided pressure frequently, and they covered Brissetts first read exceptionally. Real quick, the reasons we lost that game, tentativeness on offense, 3rd down defense, non existent pass rush, special teams and the quarterback.

I hope for the kids sake that people didn't put too much hype on him. There was no way he could have topped his week 3 performance. A performance that was more indicative of a high level coaching staff than of the quarterbacks skills. Brissett played like you expect a rookie too, with a side of collard crap. Almost every throw he attempted was into double coverage. He had that inexcusable red zone fumble, and missed at least a couple of potentially open throws. But he's a rookie, to say he sucks or that he was a huge mistake (for drafting him) is a bit much. I pretty much think, he won't be a starter for this team and he won't be a high level starter for any team. A lot of the things he struggled with in college showed up yesterday. He rarely scanned the field, and went through his reads. His throws all hit 100 mph but they lack accuracy. Some balls are too high, others thrown too far. As a Quarterback, he's all over the place, doing not one thing particularly well. I'm going to give him more time though, as we all should, he's a rookie with one month NFL experience. That was the 4th game he's ever dressed for in the NFL. Everyone should have known that this kid is meant to be a project, he had incomplete NFL talent coming out of college but a good amount of potential with the skills he does posses. Let's chill out on Brissett hate, the Patriots loss was far from singularly being his fault. 

If were talking about fault, we can start at the first play of the game. Cyrus Jones sucked any shred of confidence the Patriots may have had before trotting a starting unit out onto the field. Everyone is talking about his brutal kick off returns, as they should. The return game is of dying importance in this sport. People who've played football at most levels can understand how dangerous kick offs are. With the new rules, touch backs now being placed at the 25, I don't get why Bill put a rookie back there to return kicks. You could say, that rookies should have as much experience on kick offs this season as anyone else, since college has had this new NFL rule for awhile (placing touch backs at the 25, instead of the 20). But that's not the problem a rookie faces in situations as such. The problem is they don't understand the level of competition around them. There is a huge gap in almost all sports between professional and collegiate. Basically rookies are playing against 5-14 good/great players each week in college, in the NFL, teams of 50 players are made up of those 5-14 good/great players from every college team. Only the best college players make it into the NFL. So when Cyrus Jones runs the balls an inch past the goal line, he's thinking he has enough space to run up field make a cut and get past the 20 yard line. Until he goes another half inch past that inch and realizes these chunks of muscles are running significantly faster than he thought they would be. My whole point is, why have a rookie back there when you have Julian Edelman and Dany Amendola? Both those guys have the ability to take a kick off 50-100 yards, with the rule changes it seems you take advantage of the return when you can (a few times a game at the most) and take the touch back nearly every time. The last thing about special teams I want to touch on is Gostkowski. He needs to get his head out from the sand in his butt hole, I know a lot of butt hole talk today but I feel like butt hole, the Patriots played like a loose butt hole, so word of the day is butt hole.

The last disappointing factor from this game was the cowardly play calling, on offense. They dumbed down the playbook so much, I could have run that huddle, all 150 lbs of me. It makes sense, and the biggest factor is either that Brisset doesn't know the whole playbook (which I doubt, he seems like a hardworking, smart guy) or he can't execute on the level that the playbook demands. Both good reasons to cut the binder in half, BUT THROW THE BALL ONCE ON THIRD DOWN. Fuck, throw the ball on consecutive plays. Just throw the ball. There was a point in the game where the Patriots lost Bolden, Bennett, and Blount. At that point, I would throw in the towel. But that was the fourth quarter, there was 3 quarters of absolute garbage before that. The most frustrating thing was they tried a lot harder to contain Brissets responsibilities than they did to try and win the game. The Patriots protected Brisset, through the play-calling, like a mother bear defending her cubs. They did this to a fault, and what it led to was an offense with no rhythm. Obviously, this bitching is a one night stand. The Patriots should and would never call a game like this with Tom Brady under center. That is precisely the problem, they were down to their third quarterback and if you thought they would have an easy time going undefeated, even for a week, you are delusional. 

3-1 in the non Brady era is the best we could have asked for in the early summer. Ideally, we wouldn't have lost to a division opponent, and one that seems to be the only competition in the division.  Beggars can't be choosers, just as fans and media will never decide the outcome of an NFL game.