PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Patriots Gameplan: Week 12 vs. Miami Dolphins

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The Patriots return home after two weeks high above sea level and two impressive wins that have put them back atop the conversation of Super Bowl contenders. Despite numerous injuries to critical players the Pats have recalibrated and look like their same old dominant selves even without heart and soul players like Julian Edelman and Dont’a Hightower.

Now the Patriots have just six games left and five of them are inside the AFC East, starting with this weekend’s matchup against the 4-6 Miami Dolphins, whom the Patriots will face twice in the next three weeks. After a 4-2 start the Dolphins have lost four straight, including twice that they’ve given up 40 or more points.

What has the Patriots’ season devolved to? It’s become all about A) staying healthy and B) beating the Steelers in a few weeks. AFC East teams do tend to play the Patriots closer than expected, but if we’re just going off expectations the Patriots shouldn’t lose more than one game the rest of the season.

What the Pats need to do to put an iron grip on their ninth-straight AFC East title in the gameplan.

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The Patriots Defense is Pretty Damn Good After All

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The Patriots won their sixth straight game on Sunday in Mexico City, improving to 8-2 thanks to a complete domination of the Raiders. While the offense has been putting up gaudy numbers of late, and really for the entire season, more attention needs to be paid to the marked shift in the Patriots defensive effort in the past few weeks.

Torn apart by anyone and everyone in their first four games, the Patriots defense looked like the worst defense in football, and a potential roadblock to the team’s Super Bowl aspirations. In those first four games, the Patriots defense allowed 32 points per game and 456.8 yards per game, both figures that would rank dead last in the NFL today. In fact, they were so bad that, in this millennium, only the 0-16 Detroit Lions have finished a season allowing more points per game than the Patriots did during the first four games, and no team has allowed more yards per game in a single season in the 21st century. The Patriots defense was that bad during the first four weeks, but since that point, we have seen a vast alteration in performance from the much-maligned unit.

Since Week 4, the Patriots defense has allowed 374.8 yards per game, which still isn’t all that good (it would rank them 27th in the NFL this year), but is a major improvement from the hideous effort of the first four weeks. When only looking at the past four games, the Patriots have allowed 343.8 yards per game, which would place them 19th in the league. Also in the past four games, the Patriots have allowed only allowed 217.7 passing yards per game, 129 yards down from their average in Weeks 1-4. This leap is absurd, especially when considering the fact that defensive signal-caller Dont’a Hightower was lost for the season after Week 7, Stephon Gilmore missed Weeks 6-8, and Eric Rowe hasn’t played since Week 5.

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Patshow 114: Raiders Wrap, Cooks Big Gainer and my Grasshopper Pie Recipe!

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Here’s today’s latest episode of Patshow, shot live today at MediaBoss studios in Framingham. It’s a full hour of me and your old pal Fitzy (aka Nick Stevens) talking Pats. We’re also excited to announce that the Electro Breakdown Zone is now brought to you by Energizer! Please check out our dedicated show page and help support Patshow!

This is our Thanksgiving show and on it I mentioned my favorite pie was Grasshopper Pie. Here’s the recipe for those out there who’d like to make it!

 

20-30 Oreos

1 Stick of Melted Butter

1 small jar of Marshmallow Fluff

8oz whipping cream

1/4 cup Creme De Menthe

Crush the Oreos in a food processor. Pile them into a 9″ pie dish. Pour the melted butter in and mash the Oreos and butter together with a fork, and slowly push it into the pie crust shape. Put in freezer while you make the filling.

Blend the Creme de Menthe together with the fluff. It takes a little work but eventually it all comes together.

Whip the cream and fold it in with the green fluff mix.

Pour into Oreo crust. Sprinkle some extra Oreo crumbs on top and freeze. Overnight is best.

Cooks-ing with Gas: Return of the Deeeeep Threat

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When the Patriots signed Brandin Cooks this offseason the excitement about adding a weapon with Cooks’ deep speed was palpable in Patriots nation. After all we’d been led to believe that Tom Brady could no longer throw deep without Randy Moss, that the Patriots ran a gimmick offense that relied on the “dink and dunk” that any quarterback could run. Why haven’t more teams adopted that easy offensive philosophy was just a question whose answer eluded even the most stat-backed football pundit.

Here we are, 10 games into the season and there’s no question any more that the deep ball is certainly back in New England, though it never really left except from people’s perceptions. Cooks has caught 12 balls longer than 20 yards, including catches of 62 (season-long) and 52 against the Raiders and the Pats are rolling, pushing the betting odds for Patriots vs. Dolphins game to another stratosphere.

It wasn’t instant out-of-the-gate unstoppability like it was with Randy Moss, but the addition of Cooks has finally put the deep pass back on the front burner for defenses. There’s no more crowding the line, taking away the quick passes and daring Brady to throw down the field. Now, the downfield attack is coming, and defenses are wise to protect themselves from it.

Let’s take a closer look at the two big Cooks plays from the Raiders game, and examine how the Patriots are making these big plays.

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Pats Posits: Pats Make It Look Easy in Mexico

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The Patriots rolled to an “all-too-easy” 33-8 win over the Oakland Raiders in Mexico City on Sunday afternoon, cementing their place as Super Bowl favorites. Even without Marcus Cannon, David Andrews and Chris Hogan (to go on top of all the other significant injury losses this year), the New England football machine rolls on!

This one wasn’t all that interesting to be honest as the Pats controlled things pretty much from the outset. While I always enjoy a stress-free victory there’s still something unsatisfying about an easy win. But at this point obviously we’ll take it. The offense put some of their red zone troubles behind, Stephen Gostkowski kicked a career-long field goal (62 yards) to go with four others and the defense didn’t surrender a point until the game was already decided.

There’s really not much to complain about at this point of the Patriots season, which is prime spoiled fan area. So much of the rest of the league has fallen back to earth after promising starts, with the Bills leading the way, the Patriots just keep on rolling.

Still plenty to unpack from the win, here are my initial thoughts without a film review in the Posits!

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Coffin Corner: Greedy Goodell is a Patriots fan for a day

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Numbers are increasingly how we digest and analyze football play: fantasy stats, advanced analytics, workout metrics, pass charts, etc. Even writers describe game narratives differently than they used to, abandoning word salads like “The Catch”, ‘The Drive,” “The Butt Fumble” for numerical idioms: 28-3, 18-1, TB12. But there’s one big, vast, terrifyingly yuge number that defines what it means to be an NFL owner.

$25,000,000,000.00

That number tells the story of why owners stand by the leadership of Commissioner Roger Goodell, despite his objectively horrible performance. It tells the story of the league’s response to President Trump’s anger at the protesting players. It tells the story of ignored CTE research. It tells the story of non-guaranteed contracts. Abandoned fanbases. Tax-payer funded stadiums. It tells the story of everything that NFL ownership is about in 2017. A singular narrative of Greed.

The owners are greedy. They don’t hide it. They want their product to be worth $25,000,000,000.00 and no amount of player protest, early-onset dementia or Thursday Night Football will get in the way. It is their explicit, transparent, shouted from the rooftop aspiration. In this pursuit, they have one problem: The NFL isn’t getting any more popular in the United States. In fact, it appears that the sport is losing eyeballs based on television ratings and attendance. The US market is saturated. Full to the brim. That’s why this Sunday is very important for them.

Expanding to $25,000,000,000 hinges on one potential development, global expansion. An NFL Team will be an international market in the next five years. Goodell has expressed this desire publically, despite the many complications it presents. Sunday is his attempt to whet the appetite of someone like Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire.

Ironically, to drum up interest, Roger Goodell needs to champion the team he seems to antagonize the most, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. The Patriots are the best sales tools the NFL can offer. The fact that the Patriots have never given up a home game for an international game confirms their negotiating leverage. The league needs them more than they need to sell a few million more jerseys in.

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