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Patriots 20-Dolphins 10

The Patriots are one of a significant number of NFL teams whose record and overall performance aren't running on parallel tracks. As a result, we don't know much more about them today than we did when the season began.

The Pats are a most creditable 4-1. The statistics and the evidence of our own eyes, however, record New England has having played one outstanding game (Cincinnati), one poor one (Denver), and three middling contests against less than middling opponents (Buffalo, the Jets, Miami). The Pats won those last three, but is that a testament to veteran poise and opportunism, or mere proof of the August theory the AFC East would kind of suck this year?

Beats me. Also Bill Belichick and the ghost of George Halas. The Pats aren't even the NFL club MOST at odds with its record. The Colts are a perfect 5-0, and belching clouds of doubt and suspicion with each win. Their defense, never great, is clearly weaker than it was in 2005. So's their offense minus Edgerrin James. Any team that can surrender over 200 yards rushing to the Titans is in for serious misery down the road, or else all football textbooks will be recalled for major rewrites.

The Bears look like a 5-0 team. The Raiders, Titans, and Lions look like their winless records, too. In between, all is confusion. Before the season began, most of us had the Saints season over/under for wins at five. They're 4-1, too. So are the Rams, another record I prefer to treat as a mirage. The defending champion Steelers are 1-3, and pose the flip side of the Pats' mystery. Their poor start could be due to a front-loaded schedule, or maybe Ben Roethlisberger's medical travails will make 2006 a lost year for the Pittsburgh QB and his team.

So what do we know about the Pats so far? Try this numerical sequence, 17, 17, 17, 13, 10. Those are the points New England's allowed in each of its five games. That performance DOES equal a 4-1 record. Allow no more than three separate scoreboard entries, you usually win.

It must be noted that the Bills, Jets, and Dolphins main problem is lack of offensive firepower. No one would say that about the Bengals, however, and the Pats
throttled their attack with merciless thoroughness.

So if the Pats have been dominant on defense, why haven't they seemed as impressive as their record overall? The answer is both obvious and staggeringly counter-intuitive. Tom Brady. The top quarterback in the NFL has become a supernumerary, a spear-carrier, at times a liability.

When New England's duo of Corey Dillon and Laurence Maroney ran well, the Pats offense was both consistent and efficient. When they could not (against Miami and Denver), New England sputtered through long periods of futility. When the team put the game entirely in Brady's hands against the Broncos, he failed.

Memory's a tricky muse, and doubtless more obsessive Pats' observers than yours truly would be able to cite exceptions to the following observation. When I recall the five games New England's played to date, the decisive winning strokes and big plays are almost exclusively created by the defense, from the goal line stand against Buffalo in the opener to the three turnovers that resulted in 17 points against the Dolphins. Then come some spectacular moments by Dillon and Maroney. Frankly, Brady's not in my memory bank at all. Since the sack/fumble/Bills TD on the opening play of the opening game, Brady's primary responsibility appears to be the minimalist chores of error-avoidance and capitalizing on short fields provided courtesy of the D.

Brady's supreme gift is adaptability, so he's done well at his new, more limited duties. The results remain disconcerting nonetheless. Giving one's best player less to do is an odd strategy to watch, whether it works or not.

There are teams in the NFL a good team can defeat without major contributions from its quarterback. Three of them can be found in the AFC East. They're almost never found in the playoffs.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:15 AM