After blowing a great opportunity to take care of business in Miami and firmly entrench themselves in the AFC Wildcard conversation, Rex and company have been awfully quiet this week. No pranks, no bold proclamations, no guarantees, no nothing. That is, at least up until the point that I’m writing this. Unfortunately, there are no low hanging fruit courtesy of Buffalo’s head coach for me to address this week. That being said, there’s plenty to fire up so let’s get right into it.
Chris Price (WEEI) gets us kicked off with two columns. One, as always, is his “5 Things to Know” which gives us a spark note look at the Bills and an excellent breakdown of their strengths and weaknesses. Price points out how impressive Buffalo’s running game has been, but notes they may be without the catalyst for that success on Sunday:
“The key to everything? McCoy, who is as dynamic a back as you’ll find. His health will certainly bear watching over the course of the week. There was plenty of debate surrounding the wisdom of having him try to play against the Dolphins. If Rex Ryan blew him out against Miami and isn’t available for this week’s showdown with the Patriots, the folks in upstate New York won’t be happy.”
Ouch. Throwing your best player out there in week 7 with a bum hamstring, a notoriously nagging injury? Not a good look for the Bills’ medical department or coaching staff. Staying on the theme of explosive playmaking running backs, as the Bills may be without one, the Pats may be getting theirs back soon. Dion Lewis started practicing this week and the 21 day window to activate him has officially started. Price reminds us just how effective Dion was over the first half of last season:
“According to Pro Football Focus, Lewis forced a whopping 24 missed tackles on his catches. If he could have kept the pace over a full 16-game season, he would have finished with 55 missed tackles, far and away the highest total for a running back since PFF started charting that data.”
That’s pretty good. Actually, that’s really freakin’ good. With a hopefully healthy Lewis in the mix, the Patriot offense goes from elite to flat out unstoppable. Plus, with White and Blount performing the way they are, there is no reason to rush Dion. Get right him right, ease him in, and when the time comes, unleash hell.
Unleashing hell sounds a lot like like Von Miller and the rest of the Denver pass rush did to Marcus Cannon on that kind of important game last January. When the news that expected starting right tackle Sebastian Vollmer would likely miss the season with a hip injury dropped, Patriots fans (myself included) were understandably frantic. There was no way we could go into the season with Cannon filling that spot again. Fast forward a couple months, and he’s quietly in the process of proving everybody wrong. Tom E. Curran (CSN) notes that the fact we haven’t heard the big guy’s name much at all this season is a good thing.
“It can’t hurt that the lineman whisperer, Dante Scranecchia, has returned to coach the group. Cannon’s conditioning and physique looks better. He just appears more athletic and explosive. And he’s seemed more relaxed in the limited time the media’s in the locker room. All off that added up equals nobody really talking about Marcus Cannon.”
No one is ready to crown him Orlando Pace, but your simply not watching if you don’t think Cannon has done a commendable job so far this season. Let’s hope he can keep it up.
Another guy who has improved leaps and bounds from his first couple seasons in the league is Patrick Chung. I was going to note his position as safety, but he does so many different things for this defense I felt like that would have been a disservice. Zack Cox (NESN) wrote about why Rob Gronkowski considers Pat the “Gronk” of the other side of the ball. Cox quotes Gronk here:
“To describe Patrick, we always say we’re like the same people. He kind of has the same job as myself on offense. He goes around versus the tight ends. I’m going versus him, he’s a safety. We’re always banging all the time. He’s the type of player that wants to get better every single week….I would definitely want to (give) some of my credit towards him on my success because every single time during training camp during the last four years, we would go at it.”
Can’t say enough about the job Pat Chung has done here the second time around. He’s been a significant chess piece for Patricia and Belichick and is in the midst of another excellent season.
Here are two vicious anti NFL/Goodell pieces, one local from Tom E. Curran and one national from Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, who has been nothing short of spectacular in her criticism of the commissioner over the past year. I’m not going to go into too much detail because I’ve said my 2 cents (closer to a dollar at this point…) on the matter, but I highly recommend these reads. Both bring their A-games, and fully portray the scathing truth about today’s NFL and the people in charge.
To end on a more positive note, Doug Kyed (NESN) had a really fun recap of Matthew Slater’s Hurricane Charity Night Event, “Matthew vs. Matthew”. Several Patriot teammates showed up and supported including Edelman, Devin McCourty, Chris Long, and Rob Ninkovich among others. Kyed included some great quotes including McCourty describing the relationship between C-Long and Nink: “Have you seen ‘Step Brothers’? That’s (Ninkovich) and Chris.”
There’s no way this identical interaction didn’t occur for Nink and Long.
We’re onto Buffalo.
