Bill takes over defense

Okay, this was announced a few days ago and I am behind on things (it has been a busy month...thank God spring training is soon because I am looking forward to the distraction!). Anyway, Belichick has decided not to name a defensive coordinator and will be taking a more active role in the defense.

I don't like this.

Also, apparently they are not making any changes to the offensive coaching staff.

Definitely don't like this.

Compare how we looked this season (sluggish/cruddy) to how the Saints looked tonight (energetic/awesome). We need some of DAT. And while I was hardly expecting them to bring in someone totally new, a shake-up on offense is, in my view, mandated after last season.

My next question: when the hell are we going to start signing our free agents?

Fixing the Patriots, step 1: get new defensive coaching staff.

Done.

Step 2: new offensive coordinator. Bill, get on that. It's been four days, already.

What the Pats need to do to improve next year

Patzboy09 has all of our problems solved. Trenchant observations about the fact that Romeo Crennel has also joined Kansas City (meaning that they now have Weis, Crennel, and Pioli), as well as a few suggestions for next season:

Patzboy09 wrote: Am I the only one who thinks that we should just let these fckers go and move on with life and be a fcking man and get tough within, seriously..For a whole dam year, its been Romeo this, Charlie that, on and on and on and ON...geez, f0ck them, let them go to the piece of sht worthless Kansas City Chiefs and become failures again and embarass themselves. I'll tell you this, Kansas City Chiefs doesn't make the playoffs next year or within three years of those 2 over there and they end up getting fired, they might as well retire because it will put the shine out of them for good. the Patriots organization and its fans needs to stop being a bunch of Girlie men, stop thinking like a bunch of girlie men and fcking man up and get tough. Let Dan Pees go, seriously, that's priority#1. Dan Pees is a girlie men of a defensive coordinator. He gets his cues from his grandaughter, I bet you she stood on the sidelines during Patriots practices dictating to her Grandpa that the players "hit too hard" and they need to be "caressy like". No wonder they couldn't tackle for sht. What kind of f0cking weights are these slackers lifting over there to be playing like a bunch of girlie men on PMS. I say next season, double the fcking Weights, those that can't lift, send them packing. It pissed me off this season everytime I watch a Patriots game and saw how weak and feeble they were compared to the other teams. To add more insult to injury, you watch the following game that came on from another team and you see how feracious those players were, how high they jumped for balls, how hard they hit any receivers that caught a ball, how much they pounded a line on a critical 3-4th and inches and you say to yourself, why couldn't our players play like that. Why has the Patriots players become nothing but a bunch of Prima Donnas puzzies. The Team's uniform next year might as well have them wearing fcking skirts, seriously. Get fcking tough you bunch of girlie men 1/11/2010 7:26 PM EST Thought-provoking...

It will all be okay. But not this year. This year was painful.

I still stand by what I said after the Saints game: it was not our year. We had too many weaknesses (I listed a few two posts ago, such as pass rush). That being said, I'm actually not so upset about it. Yesterday basically took all of the flaws that we had seen all season and magnified them. That was painful. I wish that the team hadn't had such weaknesses. But we did and the Ravens exploited them, and that's how you win football games.

I'm a fan. Not a bandwagon fan, not a fair-weather fan, but a fan. The team will go through good and bad. Extremely smart decisions will be made (such as the acquisition of Moss/Welker or re-signing TBC). Extremely stupid decisions will be made (dear Lord, may I never have to see 3rd & 20 with a hand-off to Faulk again...that is an extremely stupid decision and I saw it more than once this season, making it even stupider since people might expect it). This year, I do feel that there were some very bad coaching calls and I would like that to be fixed for next season. Yet at the same time, you have to take risks and change or you could become stagnant (a la Giants this season). We sought change. It may have been too much and some bad decisions may have resulted. But the point is that they tried, they failed (somewhat), and now's the time to regroup.

I see at heart here the whole question of why we watch sports: part of the thrill is seeing a group being challenged, struggling, and overcoming. Pats fans are used to this narrative. Yesterday, we saw a group that failed to cohere and could not get together from start to finish. I hope that we can return to the struggle-overcome mode. I think that this has to do with that elusive mental toughness that was a problem for much of the season. Perseverance is what we like to see. Staying around after they fail, that's what a fan needs to do.

Pats lose in first round for first time in Belichick's tenure. Game immensely ugly.

That was not a fun game to watch.

It wasn't enough that we gave up a 24-0 lead in the first quarter, it was even worse that we could get nothing together on the offense. Tom did not have a good day, but for the first half of the game, Baltimore's D was owning our O-line in awful ways. I mean come on. Dude almost didn't have time to hand the ball to Maroney at one point. That is not Brady's fault that he can't execute in such situations. The love-child of Peyton Manning and Joe Montana couldn't execute in such a situation.

The second half was better because they changed the snap count and it was effective. Fewer turn-overs. The turn-overs freaking killed us. And two of them bounced off someone and there just happened to be a Raven there (admittedly, we got one of those too, but three times in one game? When does that happen?).

Let's not even talk about the defense. I mean, full credit to the Ravens RBs (Flacco's QB rating was, like, 8.6 in the first half or something...Tom's was 32.something, which isn't exactly great either), who completely dominated our players, including that killer first run where we gave up, like, 833 yards (okay, it was actually 83, but it felt like ten times that). Wilfork was tied up most the time and contributed. TBC, bless him, picked off a ball that hit a Ravens' player. Not all was gloom and doom. No wait. The rest of the D was doom and gloom.

It was ugly. It was a horrible way to go out. It's time for Change. I'm torn because I think we desperately need new coaching staff, yet I think that part of the problem is the turnover in the coaching staff. Dilemma.

For you haters: Brady is not done (are you freaking kidding me?), Belichick is not washed up (he coached Matt Cassel to an 11-5 season last year!), and the Pats can be a strong team again. But there is a whole pile of work that needs to be done in this off-season. I have a laundry list:

1) Pass rush
2) Pass rush
3) Pass rush
4) Offensive coordinators whose plays are more exciting than 'Pass to Welker or, failing that, to Moss.'
5) Pass rush
6) Defensive coordinators who can teach how to rush the pass
7) BETTER FREAKING COACHING BY THE COORDINATORS
8) Pass rush
9) Running backs who can *hold* *on* *to* *the* *freaking* *ball*

That's all I've got.

Incidentally, who wants to take bets on when Adalius Thomas gets released? He can take his Jetson pack elsewhere, I think.

All Hell starting to Break Loose in Foxborough

You remember last season when the Habs starting choking to a serious degree and I posted that story about how some of our players were linked to organized crime? Then I said something about how the whole thing was falling apart? Well, it isn't quite that bad at Foxborough, but things are not all that great:

1) Moss, Guyton, Burgess, and Thomas all were sent home yesterday because they were late for practice. The weather was bad, so they may have had an excuse, but none of that from Bill. I admire the hardassedness of this decision because I think it's the right one. Hopefully it will turn people around and provide the much-needed kick in the butt that this team requires right now. Or it fails horribly, particularly because...

2) Tom Brady did not practice and was on the injury report today and yesterday. Yesterday was for his finger (which was injured prior to the last game) and -- as always -- right shoulder. Today, they added 'ribs.' Not good. Not good at all. I missed this, but apparently he was taken down pretty hard during last Sunday's game.

Oh, and some woman gave birth to my future stepchild this past week. Congratulations to Tom and whoever that is.

Do you know who I blame? The coaches

If there was any game where our defense should have stood up and made a statement, it was the Miami game this past weekend. Why? Because the D had just been embarrassed by the Saints on Monday night. There was no good to be taken from that game; everything was a mess and on D, there were no bright points.

But what happened instead? The Dolphins -- at several points -- marched down the field with no one stopping them. That is not the statement that should be made. Or maybe it is, and we have to accept that far from being a Superbowl competitor, this team may not even be bound for the playoffs.

The coaches sure aren't helping. If they did devise a game plan to try and contain the Saints on defense, you could have fooled me. But more worrisome is the calls that were made in the Dolphins game. There was essentially no pressure on Henne. Sure, there was one interception, but that was about the only bright spot of the game.

This story, which talks about Mayo and his frustration for not being able to figure out what is wrong with the defense, is in my opinion an indictment of the coaching staff. It's the coach who should be able to dissect what is happening and pinpoint the problem. That did not happen yesterday and instead of making a statement about the strength of this team, they unveiled its myriad of weaknesses.

Also, the play calling on offense, particularly late in the game, was hideous. When the Patriots still had the lead in the fourth, they should have worked to burn the clock and move the chains. Instead, they opined for long passes (none of which worked), which did the opposite: missed passes stopped the clock and stalled the drives. And the last sequence, with an attempted long pass on second down then handing it to Faulk on third and long (6, I believe), was atrocious. Think about it: Maroney (and the team) averages 4.1 yards per carry, or something like that. So if you give the ball to him, he should be able to get a first down with that average -- and when he doesn't, throw a short play to get the necessary yardage. It may not be that every single carry is four yards, but it will average out over all. Maybe this is the issue: our coaching staff does not comprehend the law of averages.

The Patriot Way

I have a lot to say about yesterday's game, although I feel like much of it was subsumed by the lengthy car ride I had afterward (I was actually in attendance, then had to drive back from Miami, which takes about 5 hours). However, I will start here. I'm slightly plagiarizing, because I'm pretty sure I read a column about this last week.

As you likely know, the Patriot Way was a term used to described the work ethic and overall philosophy of the Patriots back in the early winning years (2001-2003). Each person had a job and was committed to it. Everyone knew his place in the organization and worked together to achieve success. It was about the team and not the individual. And clearly, it worked, as 2001, 2003, and 2004 show.

Now whatever I was reading last week pointed out that while the Patriot way may still exist in the upper levels, it could be eroded for most because of all the new players in the organization. I'm starting to think too that while the concept makes sense, the execution isn't there. Just look at our secondary (yes, I am bringing back the 'We need corners' tag, it has come to that). They are consistently missing plays or making costly errors, such as the pass interference penalty yesterday. That is not the Patriot way.

Another thing that I would not characterize as the Patriot way is the number of times stupid errors are committed, such as fumbling the ball. Our running backs have now fumbled in four consecutive games. Seriously. This is not the Patriot way, which requires that everyone do his job. If your job is to hold on to the football, then do that!

I think that there is a larger issue right now with the organization, which I will talk about in another post. But the Patriot way, for now, has proven elusive.