Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 6: Patriots vs. Giants
Things to consider while discovering Gunner Olszewski truly is the hero New England deserves:
–You can already see the narrative forming. It started with the postgame shows. It’ll carry us through Friday and the long weekend and the extra long week before the Monday Nighter at the Jets. The Patriots are 6-0. Their Point Differential is +142, which is more than DOUBLE the No. 2 team. They just won by three touchdowns despite missing a Straight Flush of offensive starters and with a kicker they hired off of LinkedIn. And they’ve got 11 days to prepare for a team they just scored 30 points on and who will be 0-5 by game day. Therefore there is only one way to look at this: It’s a disaster. An absolute, Roland Emmerich-style, end of the world, cataclysmic disaster.
–It’s already underway. The usual collection of mediots, who are the kinds of people that, when you find yourself stuck talking to them at a party, you’ll pretend you’ve got explosive diarrhea just to get out of the conversation, are making their usual finger tents, putting on their serious faces and bemoaning the hopelessness of it all.
–Specifically, they’re seriously, gravely concerned about how this is not a “Super Bowl” caliber offense. And how bad the quarterback has looked lately. Missing throws. Taking sacks. Fumbling. Throwing interceptions. This week it’ll be non-stop. Like a cross country flight. Where you’re sitting next to a screaming, colicky baby with a broadcasting degree from Syracuse.
–Here are Brady’s numbers: 31 for 41, 334 Yards, one INT. And with two rushing touchdowns. That’s a 75.6 Completion Percentage. With several drops. Throwing into a three-club wind. Fighting through protection problems. Working with a skill position unit running on a great slot receiver, an elite 3rd down back, wishes, optimism, and My Pretty Pony smiles. If the resentful TV turds with crippling cases of Patriots Derangement Syndrome have other QBs in mind who could post those numbers throwing to Julian Edelman, James White, Ryan Izzo, Gunner and Jakobi Meyers, I’ll need them to provide us with a list of names. And Jesus doesn’t count. We all know that once he got that clubhouse cancer Judas out of His locker room, that offense was unstoppable.
–Still, we’ll always remember this as the game where Brady passed his great rival Peyton Manning in Career Passing Yards, right there with Eli Manning looking on. And how appropriate it was that they stopped the game, brought Gisele and the fam down to the sidelines so that Brady could give his kids a heartfelt, spontaneous, mic’d up, on camera Dad Talk about believing in yourselfism and following your dreamsness. What an unforgettable moment. Which I guess I missed because I fell a little behind on the DVR and must’ve fast forwarded through it. But I’m sure it was great. Thanks for setting that precedent, NFL.
–Now here’s a sentence I never thought would come out of my QWERTY keys: “The entire offensive game plan had to be adjusted when Matt LaCosse got hurt.” Does that read as weird as it felt to type? Anyway, they came out on that first drive entirely in 20-personnel packages, mostly with two tight ends, going Jumbo on the Giants and trying to grind them down with powers and then work the edges with passes to the backs. Were it not for a questionable 4th down spot and an inch or two either way, we’d be talking about what a bold strategy it was. But Sony Michel was stopped. And just to be consistent, I’d rather have my backs protecting the ball rather than reaching for the yellow stripe, which so often makes the bad things happen. Anyway, LaCosse came out of the game not long thereafter, putting them into a lot more 2X1 receiver groupings. As a matter of fact, the next time they went to a Heavy package was on the goal line, and they had Jermaine Eluemunor at tight end. (Wow. That was a paragraph just full of first time sentences.)
–Don’t get me wrong, there are legit concerns about this offense, most of them owed to injuries, some due to neglect at certain positions. Izzo is not an effective blocker, to put it mildly. To put it not as mildly, if Brady was switching insurance providers, they’d have to cover Izzo’s pass protection as a pre-existing condition. Until that gets straightened out, Josh McDaniels should move those pass plays where Brady holds the ball for five seconds waiting for the play to develop to the “Pending” file. I’d be saying this even if LaCosse wasn’t hurt, but here’s hoping when Ben Watson was let go, there were no words exchanged they can’t take back. I’d have him moved into his locker by lunch time today.
–Of course if it were up to me, I’d hired Gronk away from his new temp job. I’d make Fox an offer of maybe Gronk for cash and a hot, leggy, blonde Trump supporter to be named later.
–And when Josh Gordon came out, I think we all were thinking the same thing.
I couldn’t help but imagine how good Brown would look back in his Patriots uniform right about now. Splitting out wide. Stretching coverage in all directions. Making the tough catches. Yup, I caught Troy sitting next to Edelman and he looks like he’d be a solid No. 2 option for Brady. Suit up, Mr. Patriot. Gunner’s got your No. 80 but they’ll find you something.
–Just when it looked like Jakobi Meyers was not in the Brady Circle of Trust, he caught four passes for 54 yards. The general rule is that Zone is designed to stop quarterbacks and Man is meant to stop receivers, but Meyers defeated Man repeatedly. Obviously no catch was bigger than the one he made inside the Giants’ 5 to set up Brandon Bolden’s TD that made it 14-0. Just when it looked like another drive was about to run out of gas thanks to seven straight incompletions, Meyers was lined up as the middle guy of a trip set. From the slot Edelman ran a Seam route, Gordon drew the centerfield safety with a Post, and Meyers did an Out & Up, with outside leverage so that Brady could hit him with a back shoulder throw. And he broke back on it with the body control that made him stand out as far back as OTAs. Then there was that 23 yarder when he ran a cross on Grant Haley from the weakside slot in a 2X1. That was perfect positioning and fightng off the Man coverage. There’s a lot of reason to believe he can follow that same path Malcolm Mitchell did, gaining Brady’s confidence to the point he becomes a go-to guy instead of just a last resort.
–The Patriots have a Jakob and a Jakobi. You Tolkien fans might have heard those names were among the company of dwarves in an early draft of “The Hobbit,” before he settled on Kili and Fili.
–When Eli’s wearing a wool hat, no 38 year old man looks more like he’s on a street corner pushing crystal for Jesse Pinkman. Then again, he’s the most clutch QB ever when it comes to holding a Microsoft Surface while watching the rookie starter turn the ball over multiple times.
–I’ve probably buried the lede here. But in my defense, if I wasn’t so triggered by the negativity I wouldn’t have waited this long to single out Stephon Gilmore, who’s playing cornerback better than I thought was allowable under the rules in this pass-happy utopia Bill Polian created back in 2003 out of his wettest dreams. He had five passes defensed. FIVE. Plus an interception. I’m convinced the only reason he’s still getting thrown at is because the Patriots haven’t faced a quarterback lately who knows any better. The Giants lack a pure No. 1 so this week he had different assignments, mostly on Cody Latimer early on then Darius Slayton as the game progressed. And he rocked them all.
–On the John Simon pick, Gilmore had outside leverage on Latimer before cutting underneath him to bat the ball in the air. His own pick was actually a rare zone in which he came off Latimer’s inside-breaking route, leaving him to the linebackers as (I think) he had Seam-Curl-Flat responsibility. So he dropped to Rhett Ellison and Jones did not see coming. Add to that the various times he got a hand on a ball or perfectly timed a hit to knock the ball free and, as good as he’s been all season, he’s playing at Threat Level: Midnight right now. I’m not alone in thinking that.
–It’s hard to even fault the other defensive backs, even for the chunk plays they gave up. As ugly as that 64 yard touchdown by Golden Tate might have looked, Jonathan Jones got his hand on it. Tate just did Good Receiver things with it. The same thing happened to Jason McCourty when Slayton held onto a pass he got a hand on for 16 yards. It happens in this league. But since I’ll be telling my grandkids how I survived the infamous 8-Yard Cushion Defense of the Wheatleys and Wilhites from 2009-12 the way some guys talk about walking to school with a hot potato in their pocket to stay warm and then eating the potato for lunch, I can live with the occassional great catch on a well-contested ball.
–What can you say? Six games, six outstanding performances by The Boogeymen. The entire Front 7, really. Operating mainly out of a 3-4 with a safety down in the box. Kyle Van Noy and John Simon getting most of the reps at outside linebacker. And a lot of Terrance Brooks at the Robber safety spot. The interior line took care of the inside gaps and the linebackers covered to both sidelines in Spill. Aggressive but controlled blitzes with 2- and 3-man combo stunts. And a lot of simply destroying people mano-a-mano, as the candidates like to say when they’re pandering for Latino votes.
–I remember when Pepper Johnson was coaching here, he talked about wrapping a ballcarrier up by “grabbing cloth” on the back side of his jersey and then “biting the football.” Which is exactly the way it should be taught. And exactly what Jamie Collins did to Jon Hilliman on that screen. After blowing through a block by Kevin Zeitler, he did it just the way they coach it up here. And while, like I said, I’m no huge fan of stretching out with the ball, thanks to Van Noy’s scoop and score this Tweet aged like a single malt scotch:
–This Week’s Applicable Movie Quote: “Daniel-san, must talk. Walk on road, hm? Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get the squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do ‘yes’ or karate do ‘no.’ You karate do ‘guess so,’ just like grape. Understand?”
” – Mr. Miyagi, “Karate Kid”
–Credit where it’s due: Danny Shelton created Duron Harmon’s interception. He spun right around Jon Halapio and then squeezed between him and Nate Solder, who was late sliding over, to get his hand on Jones’ arm as he released. I shudder to think how much this D would miss Shelton if he hadn’t returned. Which is actually the same reaction Giants fans have to them paying Solder all that money. Funny how that works.
–Is it possible that Jake Bailey is a great punter but a terrible holder? If so, Stephen Gostkowski is owed a lot of “Please accept our apologies” cards attached to Edible Arrangements.
–If I’ve ever seen a player block a punt using another player like he’s one of those pads they use to distract the quarterback in training camp, I do not recall it. But I’m sure that now that Bolden managed it with Nathan Stupar, I’m sure the Rules Committee will ban it in no time.
–How much goddamned fun is watching Chase Winovich every single down? The Pats have never had a guy like him in this Dynasty era. They’ve had solid, reliable, 3-down OLBs like Mike Vrabel and Rob Ninkovich. Versatile, high-motor achievers like Chandler Jones and Trey Flowers. And productive rush specialists like Mark Anderson and Tully Banta-Cain. But Winovich is a chimera of all of them, who’s good for at least one major impact play a game despite his limited role. Best of all, when he scored his first NFL touchdown, he threw the ball into the stands. I bet if he was a Viking beserker he would’ve tossed his first severed head to the other villagers instead of taking it home and putting it on a pike in front of his door. He’s that kind of guy.
–Marshall Newhouse is still good for one major scare per game in pass protection. But Brady’s second touchdown came right behind him after he took Antoine Bethea out with a low block. Basically he’s played at about the ceiling you hope for when a guy you pick up just as the season’s about to start is pressed into left tackle duty. Still, getting Isaiah Wynn off IR is the top priority at the halfway mark approaches.
–The key to happiness in this life is to appreciate you live at a place and time where you can witness Julian Edelman laying out for a pass over Janoris Jenkins in double coverage.
I believe the Bible says, it’s not getting what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got. Or Sheryl Crow. Whatever. They’re both full of wisdom like that.
–I’m really disappointed we didn’t get the final, FU touchdown. I’m a huge fan of good “running up the score” talk. But I’ll have to settle for “I’m sick of the defense having to bail this team out all the time! When are they gonna start addressing the other side of the ball?!?”
–Speaking of writing rules to stop the Patriots, how soon before the league addresses this?