Brandon Spikes (seen below making the biggest play of his young career against the Jets) was suspended today per Ian Rapoport of the Boston Herald. It’s a four game suspension for violation of the NFL’s substance abuse policy. We’re not sure what the substance was… Steroids? Weed? Sex Tape Juice?

This is a significant loss for the Patriots. Spikes has been an excellent run defender and just seemed to be hitting his stride when he made pretty much the play of the game by picking off Mark Sanchez. Ouch…

I don’t think enough is being made of this interception by Brandon Spikes. If you’ve seen any highlights from Spikes career at Florida (grainy sex videos not withstanding) you know he made plays like this routinely. It speaks volumes to his growth as a player, especially since this play was specifically designed to get him to bite on play action, which had been a huge weakness for him earlier in the year.

The Jets were driving and a touchdown would’ve cut the score to a manageable 24-10. Instead all momentum was instantly killed as Spikes pulled this interception down. Then Brady and pals marched down the field and delivered the knockout punch making it 31-3. Game over.

Sometimes it’s really amazing how much you miss when you’re watching the game and you’re all caught up in the emotion of it. That’s why I always enjoy watching the DirecTV shortcut to really see where the game was won and lost.

The Defensive Packages page will be updated later today, but for now here are some things that I didn’t notice while watching the game live.

There are two players who really stood out to me the second time through. The first is Brandon Spikes. He’s still a little rough around the edges at times, but most of the time he is making a huge impact in the run game. 

Let’s not forget how badly our run defense was gashed against the the Ravens in the playoffs. Now we have a defense that no team has run for a hundred yards on. Spikes has been a huge part of that. He comes downhill hard and often blows offensive lineman backwards. He’s always right in the middle of the plays and that’s exactly what you want from a Mike linebacker in the 34. It has also allowed Jerod Mayo to become a tackling machine.

The second guy I want to point out is Brandon Deaderick. We’ve seen Deaderick’s play time slowly spike over the last few weeks and after having a chance to really focus on him against the Vikings I can see why.

Deaderick is explosive and can play both end positions. He’s used as a pass rusher at times, but he looks like he’s really growing as a two-gapper. Opposing lineman always have their hands full with him and most times he’s tossing them into the backfield.

At a position where the Patriots had major question marks even before Ty Warren was lost, the ascension of Deaderick has been a much-needed boost. It has allowed the Patriots to have a healthy rotation of solid defensive lineman. Gerard Warren barely saw the field until the second half against the Vikings, but when he did he was fresh and ready to keep Adrian Peterson shut down.

Ron Brace has also been showing up well as of late, with the biggest play of his young career coming on the 4th down goalline stand. Seeing a defensive front of Brace-Wilfork-Deaderick for a good chunk of the first half should give Patriots fans optimism heading into the future.

I consider myself a fan of offensive football, but a student of defensive football, so I wanted to take another look at the game before posting my thoughts on the defensive performance against the Jets.

First a reminder that this is a young defense and they certainly showed it yesterday. I’m sure Darius Butler is getting killed on the Boston airwaves today, but let’s remember this is his second game starting.

With that said, this defense was carved up by Mark Sanchez yesterday. Woah, read that last sentence again. Scary, right? Well, it’s week two so let’s all relax and remember that the Jets offense is largely a veteran group. I’m not going to say that this is an excuse. The Patriots were outplayed by the Jets in all facets of the game. But you cannot be discouraged because we should see improvement as the season progresses. 

Surely everyone out there is ripping the Patriots defense a new one today. But let’s just focus on the positives and most interesting points.

1. Devin McCourty, Brandon Spikes and Jermaine Cunningham all look like they will develop into solid players. Add in Chung, Brace, and yes even Butler and you have six defensive players in their first two years who are major contributors. This will pay off in the years to come. I know it’s hard to have this perspective now.

2. Welcome to bizarro world but Ron Brace was an excellent run stopper yesterday.  Brace seems to be improving each week now, his development allowed the Pats to slide Gerard Warren over to RDE and put Mike Wright in the situational role he seems most suited for. This is an encouraging development.

3. Undrafted rookie Kyle Love is getting playing time as a backup nose tackle.

4. Anyone else notice it’s not Jonathan Wilhite getting toasted every play now? Granted Butler is, but hey maybe Wilhite is improving? 

5. Cunningham got time at ROLB and DPR (designated pass rusher) and had a heads up play to not lose contain on a reverse. He improved from last week to this week and that’s a very good sign.

6. Brandon Spikes continues to make a big difference in the run game. The Jets ran all over the Pats sub packages but that was not when Spikes was in the game. He looks fast to the ball and by buttoning up the base run defense his impact has been huge. He’s also being used as a down lineman in the goalline package which is interesting. I expect his role to continue to increase.

7. Brandon Meriweather needs to get it together. This defense badly needs him to play well. He’s primarily being used in passing situations now, and you can’t discount his regression when talking about how the Patriots defense has lacked luster. When we see him starting we’ll know he’s turned it around. Let’s remember he led the Pats D in snaps played in 2009.

8. Rob Ninkovich is playing a much bigger part in the defense than any of us would’ve predicted. His missed tackle on Ladainian Tomlinson’s long 4th quarter run was a back breaker. But Ninkopoop had been fairly strong against the run to that point.

9. Didn’t see a lot out of Patrick Chung yesterday.

10. No big plays from the defense against the Jets. No interceptions or forced fumbles. This is not a hallmark of a great defense, and something that needs to change.

The Bills have been trying to run a spread offense much of the time so far this season. They haven’t put up many points but they’ve given up less than the Pats have. This will be an excellent test for the Patriots defense because we know they’re going to attack what the Pats don’t do well at… short passes and runs against their subpackages. 

Rapoport had just about everything BB had to say about Brandon Spikes. I find it extremely interesting when BB finds a player interesting. It tells me that there might be something special there. As BB would say, we’ll see how it all plays out. But I am certainly more intrigued by Brandon Spikes now.

Thanks to DrjgoPatsGators on PatsPulpit for linking this video of Spikes destroying Moreno.  Can’t wait to cheer for this guy…

Me likey. 

Always enjoy finding a new Pats blog, especially an X-and-O centric one.

You had to be excited for media access day at OTAs today, but no one could’ve predicted that Wes Welker would be on the field. Of course Michael Silver had plans of his own today, deciding to turn “talks between Pats and Brady are going slowly” into “this might possibly lead to something but it probably won’t” article that of course every member of the Boston media had to hop on.

We stick to the positive propaganda here, we’ve read the recaps, and here are the non-Welker tidbits that we’ve found most interesting:

From PFW Blog:

The linebackers split up during one segment that included seven-on-seven work. Crable, Mayo, Guyton, Eric Alexander, Pierre Woods, Williams, Banta-Cain and Spikes remained on the field with the defensive backs and worked on coverage. Burgess, Cunningham and Ninkovich went to work with the defensive linemen.

On the outside I saw many different guys get reps on both sides with a variety of groupings in different drills. I saw some with Tully Banta-Cain on the left and Derrick Burgess on the right. I saw Jermaine Cunningham on the left with Burgess on the right. I saw Burgess on the left. I saw guys like Shawn Crable, Rob Ninkovich and everyone else on the depth chart rotate through.

Maybe it’s reading into it, but I think this is very significant. Why? Because it says to me that Burgess, Cunningham, and Ninkovich are considered primarily pass rushers, while Crable, Woods, Williams, and Banta-Cain are those we could be seeing on early downs as run stoppers (i.e. “starting”).

Of course the Patriots linebackers are versatile, you’ll see all of them all over the place. But I’m surprised to see Ninkovich with the lineman. And I’m happy to see my boy Crable with the defensive backs.

From Mike Reiss:

With two-time Pro Bowler Logan Mankins not present for the voluntary session, veteran tackle Nick Kaczur was inserted at his spot at left guard. Second-year man Sebastian Vollmer took reps at right tackle, with Matt Light remaining at left tackle.

Ultimately when Mankins comes back we’ll be back to Kaczur and Vollmer battling it out at RT, but knowing now that Kaczur has the confidence and ability to play guard, we should have a better sense of why the Patriots gave him a contract extension. He’s versatile and could be the new Russ Hochstein.

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