Brandon Meriweather named AFC Defensive Player of the Week

Brandon Meriweather has received the honor (or is it honour when you play in England?) of being this week's AFC Defensive Player of the Week. Tom has already won Offensive Player of the Week twice this year, but he's just Tom, so we expect that.

Meriweather had a very good game against the Bucs, with two interceptions in the first half, one returned for a TD. He's shown glimpses of this before, but it's nice that it seems to be coming together for him. Also, since he plays in the secondary, this marks a considerable improvement from last season (he's a safety, not a corner, but still, what a change from last year).

What I remember was last season, Belichick turned to him during one of their games and gave him a run-down of what to do. The next play, Meriweather went out and made an interception. It was great, and also great to see that he's continuing this level of play.

Oh, and in case there are any lingering doubts about the overhaul of the D, check out this stat:

Points allowed
3rd (14.0 per game)
Last week: 3rd (15.1 per game)

Bear in mind that the two teams ahead of us, Denver and Indianapolis, have played one less game, and that Indy has the most ridiculous easy schedule, like, EVER (no, I'm not whiny/bitter).

Who was worried about our defense again?

Who I'm not annoyed with

WE HAVE CORNERS!

Leigh Bodden led the team in tackles today. Second place went to Shawn Springs, also a corner.

Much, much better

The Pats looked like the Pats again today. Although sadly they carried some traces of the 2008 Pats, in that their red zone conversion was not great. But much was good:

1) If that's Randy Moss with a back injury, then everything is going to be o-k. He played a great game, running for over 100 yards and coming up with the big plays when he needed to.

2) Tom's precision is coming back. Sure, there were some plays where he was off. But overall he kept things together.

3) The running game -- while not spectacular -- was still pretty good. Fred Taylor came through with some key plays, picking up big yards (105 total).

4) Overall, I thought the defense played very well, allowing only 10 points. This was without Wilhite, Mayo, and Wilfork, who went out during the game. Now I would prefer not to have to play the rest of the season without these guys, but considering who was left, I thought that they did a great job. Also, Gonzalez was allowed no big plays and our corners played like corners. Yay!

5) I believe we were penalized twice for 5 yards. Much better than the past two weeks and more in line with what we expect from the Belichick-run Patriots.

There is one player who I still have issues with, but I will save that for a separate post. Followers of this blog can probably take a wild stab as to who that is.

As usual, though, the sky has not fallen and all was not over last week. I wonder too if part of the problem was that last week, we had expected Welker to play and designed routes involving him. This week, his absence was less noticeable. Edelman, while no Wes Welker, came up with a few nice plays, one of which was rather Welkeresque.