Broncos 17-Patriots 7
Train of Thought No. 1: The average NFL team scores roughly 20 points a game. If the New England defense continues to allow only 17 points a game, the Patriots will win more games than they lose, especially since they have the only house with running water in the football favela of the AFC East.Train of Thought No. 2: Paging Ron Jaworski! Football is indeed a game of matchups. The evidence continues to mount that the strengths and weaknesses of the pretty good Broncos mesh perfectly with the gears needed to defeat the pretty good Patriots.
Train of Thought No. 3: Thoughts 1 and 2 are irrelevant. Something's wrong with Tom Brady's game. Seriously wrong.
That's not long-distance psychoanalysis of the John Madden variety. With its love of facial closeups, TV both overpersonalizes and overemotionalizes team sports events. NBC's montage of Brady's frustrated grimaces could've been duplicated by zeroing in on any QB in the process of getting shut out.
No, the issue here is Brady's PERFORMANCE. Things the Pats' quarterback ordinarilly does superbly were things he did poorly indeed against the Broncos.
Brady is the best quarterback I've ever seen at getting his offense out from under poor field position. Backed up against the Pats' goal line, he almost always gets the initial escape first down at a minimum, and usually gets much more than that, up to and including touchdowns.
Not last night. Brady led three Pats "drives" that ended at the New England 15, 24, and 8-yard lines, respectively, one big reason the whole game felt like one endless Patriots' return of serve.
Brady is a first down machine. He's a master at turning second and long into third and short and subsequently moving the chains. Against the Broncos, seven of the Pats' 12 possessions generated one or fewer first downs, including three three-and-outs.
The gift from which all of Brady's good qualities flow is his accuracy as a passer. Greg Maddux has nothing on him when it comes to putting the ball where it does the most good. Ominously, that's the very attribute Brady didn't have against Denver. Has he ever thrown so many wild pitches? Balls thrown low hit the dirt. Balls thrown high sailed in the general direction of the Gatorade containers on the bench. His attempts to go deep were no-hopers one and all.
Is Brady out of synch with his new receivers, as will be assumption A around here this week. How the hell would I know? Knute Rockne couldn't watch a game on TV and make an informed judgment on whether or not Brady was wild because his receivers were covered or was just wild period.
What I do know is that the Broncos made the conscious decision stuffing the Pats' running game would be priority A for their defense. They dared Brady to beat them, which most of the time is like sticking out one's chin and daring a youngThomas Hearns to take his best shot, and the dare paid off big-time.
Maybe match-ups explain what happened to Brady. Maybe they don't.
posted by Michael Gee @ 9:25 AM
1 Comments:
You're hitting exactly what disturbs me about Brady right now.
It would be one thing if we were seeing lots of errant passes because receivers were unable to get open and he was throwing it away.
But we're seeing lots of way-off passes, even when thrown to open people, and even when thrown to people who were on the team last year.
Maybe the Pats need to hire Rick Pitino for 30 seconds to walk into the Pats' locker room and tell Brady "Deion Branch and David Givens are NOT walking through that door!"
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