First and foremost, my reaction to “Deflategate 2”:
If a picture says a thousand words, a video must say a million. I’m in one heck of a mood, so in order to sustain that you can take a local sports opinion on the matter (Tom Curran, CSN) and a national culture one (Alex Reimer, Forbes), mix them together, stir, and reach your own conclusion. Throw in a few (dozen) expletives and you’ve got mine. Moving on, let’s get to the important stuff: what happened on Monday night at Gillette.
Boss man Mike D provides his reaction here, with a rightfully so, additional focus on the defense. He opines:
The energy was just different from the Patriots defense in this game. They played hungry, with something to prove. They had just two sacks but the pressure was consistent and disruptive. They worked well in conjunction with each other.
I can honestly say I did not realize they had just two sacks and was quite frankly a bit surprised. It could just be me, but did it not feel like they were all over Flacco the whole game? He certainly didn’t look comfortable back there, never coming close to anything resembling a rhythm or flow. Brady threw for 406, and sans a bad interception, played a very close to perfect game. Blount punished defenders early and often, mostly having his way on the ground. As crazy as it sounds, I’m happier about what we saw on the other side of the football. The front seven were flying around, dropping into coverage, rushing, alternating assignments the next play. Forget the blocked field goal (which was absolutely brilliant), McLellin was cracking people throughout. Brown, Branch, and Valentine were excellent plugging up the middle, Butler and the secondary played with an edge and physicality that we hadn’t consistently seen to this point. Listen, I’m not crowning them the units of the early 2000s or anything, but Patricia’s bunch seem to be getting it together at the perfect time. I feel a lot more confident in this group than I did at this time a month ago, that’s for sure.
My confidence in the offense, however, never wavered. Post Gronk, Brady has had minimal issue thus far spreading the ball around, picking his match-ups, and surgically dissecting the defense. Jeff Howe (Boston Herald) wrote a short bit on the quarterback here, elaborating on the signal caller’s mental advantage every Sunday. He writes on the touchdown strike to rookie Malcolm Mitchell:
Later on that drive, Brady diagnosed another one of the Ravens’ popular blitzes on third-and-goal from the 6. Mitchell lined up wide right across from cornerback Tavon Young, while White was in the backfield to Brady’s right. Webb and Mosley showed blitz on White’s side, and Brady uncorked a laser into Mitchell’s hands on a slant. Considering the free rusher, Brady’s nonchalant delivery was indicative that he knew exactly what the Ravens were doing.
For those of you that have to watch Ryan Tannehill, Colin Kaepernick, or worse week in and week out, I can decisively say: no, it never gets old, and yes, I know we’re spoiled. Here in New England, regular season awards don’t mean much. Pro Bowls are afterthoughts. But in this case, I really want Tom to get a wrongfully short-seasoned MVP award at 39 years old. According to Chris Price (WEEI), it certainly could happen:
But in all, he’s 8-1 since he came back in early October. He lit up a great defense Monday without the benefit of tight end Rob Gronkowski. And he remains the best player on one of the handful of genuine Super Bowl contenders this year. And now, if he can pull off something close to that this week against the Broncos in Denver — the best pass defense in the league — it should remove all doubt about who deserves this year’s MVP. The quarterback wouldn’t say Wednesday who he would vote for if he had a say in the process. “I don’t have any MVP votes. I don’t get any votes,” he said with a smile before practice. “There are a lot of great players.”
Against the Broncos, in Denver, is easier said than done. We know the degree of difficulty and the struggles #12 has had at Mile High. I don’t need to remind you of last season’s AFC Championship game. That guy Von Miller is pretty good. He also wrote about the “5 Toughest Guys” he’s ever faced in this weeks’ Players Tribune.
He wrote on Tom: “His presnap vision is the best I’ve ever seen, bar none. He’s able to predict your play just based off the presnap coverage. You can disguise your look all you want, but he’s still able to move guys around and forecast what’s coming.”
He wrote on Gronk: “There’s not a more dominant tight end right now than Gronkowski. But he’s not just dominant as a receiver— he’s the total package. I think his blocking is underrated. This term is almost overused in the media now, but Gronk really is a true game-changer.”
The really cool one that also made what I anticipated to be a players only list? William Belichick.
But with Belichick, his genius comes from the fact that he always gameplans based on the personnel he has…I’ve played a lot of football, but there’s still stuff the Patriots do that surprises me.
Let’s hope Billy Boy has a few tricks up his sleeve for Sunday afternoon. All hands on deck, circle the wagons. Rematch at Mile High. No love lost in this one. Psycho Tom only scratched the surface on Monday night. He really doesn’t like Denver…
