PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Pats Posits: 6-2 at the halfway break

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The Patriots had a strong team win over the Chargers on Sunday. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to get them to 6-2 as they hit the halfway bye week. The glaring problems and untimely struggles are slowly being eliminated. There’s still work to be done, but the stage for a strong second half is set, if the Pats can just stop losing key players to injury.

The offense moved the ball but stumbled in the red zone, making the game closer than it seemed. The Pats held the ball for 37 minutes on seven drives that lasted seven or more plays but had just one touchdown in four trips inside the Chargers’ 20. They make it look easy sometimes, especially when Dion Lewis is twisting and surging through would-be tacklers, but they’ve needed to rely too much on Stephen Gostkowski who hit four of six field goal attempts. Yes, those misses hurt and it will be a long two weeks for Gost, but SIX FG attempts shouldn’t happen! The offense needs to find their finish.

Aside from a huge blown run defense that allowed an 87-yard touchdown run by Melvin Gordon and a three-play touchdown drive aided by a 30-yard Johnson Bademosi PI penalty, the overall defense was mostly solid.  They forced three punts and grabbed the game-sealing interception in the second half, preserving what was at one point just a five-point game. This is definitely a far cry from the worst defense in football. They’re solidified the last few weeks and should get a few players back who can help make them even better.

The quietest storyline will be how, aside from Gostkowski’s misses, the special teams units were a huge part of the victory. These kinds of hidden points and yardage really add up to a lot in a close game against a good opponent. Belichick is almost too obsessed with special teams players, but there are games like this one every year where they play a huge role in a needed win.

More on it all in the Posits.

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PATRIOTS beat Chargers 21-13 in Ugly Fashion – Five from Foxboro with Trags

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqqU6YyTLA&feature=youtu.be

Trags checks in via @CLNSMedia, wrapping up the Patriots win over the Chargers. The Pats move to 6-2 at the halfway point of their season and now have a bye week off before two-straight road games against the Broncos in Denver and Raiders in Mexico City. Who’s ready for some elevation?

A Look Back: My Experience at Pats-Chargers 2006 AFCDG

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The 2006 AFC Divisional playoff game between the Patriots and Chargers in San Diego was one of the best fan experiences of my life. I recounted the whole story on my original Patriots blog way 10 years ago, and my original plan was to just throw out a link to that but unfortunately that blog has finally gone dark. So now I must re-write and re-tell the story but it’s one that’s well worth it and something that must be preserved in the history of Pats Propaganda.

So buckle up, it’s a fun ride.

2006 was when my Patriots craziness really kicked in. Yes, I had grown up just a few towns over from Foxboro and saw plenty of the Patriots getting their asses handed to them in the 80’s and 90’s. I had the thrills of the ’85 and ’96 Super Bowl runs, but by their first title in 2001 I was living in Los Angeles, watching from afar, and disappointed that I wasn’t living at home when all the success started happening.

One thing about Los Angeles, there are fans of all teams and gathering together with your fan-ily on Sundays was a great way to get a taste of home, especially at a bar like Sonny McClean’s in Santa Monica. The 2005 playoff loss to Denver hit me hard. It suddenly dawned on me that we had this young quarterback and “genius” head coach who still had a long career ahead of them. How many titles could they get? How great could they be?

For whatever reason that loss was what pushed my obsession into overdrive. I started frequenting PatsFans.com’s message board and devouring any and all posts by Mike Reiss, who scratched the major itch I had to understand the game at a higher level. I became a student of the game and a student of being a fan on the internet all at the same time. It would be another year, in December 2007, before I started blogging about the Pats, but in 2006 I was all in. Every Sunday was a major event like it had never been before.

I didn’t realize it until I was sitting in Sonny McCleans for the Pats’ AFC Wild Card game against the Jets that if they won, they’d go to San Diego to face the Chargers, an easy two-to-three hour drive depending on traffic as everything in Souther California depends upon.

The Pats won and I vowed to myself I’d find a way to get to the game.

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Patriots Gameplan: Week 8 vs. Los Angeles Chargers

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Just when it felt like the 2017 Patriots had turned a corner and gotten their season on track, they lost their defensive leader Dont’a Hightower for the season to a torn pec. Hightower was one of the walking wounded headed into the season and any hopes that he could somehow grind it out, through knee, shoulder and this pec injury were impossible.

As we should all realize by now the Patriots aren’t doomed by this injury. It’s a huge blow, but they’re as well coached a football team as there’s ever been in history and they’ll find a way to still play some pretty good defense. It will be harder on them all, and the team’s odds of winning another Super Bowl went down again, just like they did when Julian Edelman was lost, but they’ll keep fighting down to the last snap.

So now here come the San Diego Los Angeles Chargers (of Orange County?), a team the Patriots have mostly had their way with over the years. In my time in Los Angeles I saw plenty of the games — the 2006 AFCDG, the 2010 and 2014 wins, not to mention all the times here in Foxboro that the Pats handled Phillip Rivers et al, like 2007, the 2007 AFCCG, and 2011.

This is a good and underrated Chargers team, that is far better than their 3-4 record might indicate. They’ve won three in a row and three of their losses were by seven points combined. They’ve got all the necessary elements to beat the Patriots, good pass rushers, a diverse running back and a quarterback who won’t be intimidated despite only beating the Matt Cassel Pats in 2008 (I was at that one too).

This won’t be an easy game, and you wonder how the defense will respond without Hightower. What the Pats need to do to get the job done, and move to 6-2 as they head into the bye week is here in the gameplan.

 

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Report: Hightower Done for Year with Torn Pec

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Welp, you spend a good hour this morning writing about how the Pats can manage for a game-plus without Hightower and then Ian Rapoport drops this bomb.

No other way to cut it, this is a huge blow to Patriots Super Bowl hopes. Between Julian Edelman and now Hightower, it’s hard to come up with a worse scenario that doesn’t involve the quarterback, and given the depth and meaning of all those players, losing your best wide receiver and linebacker might even be worse. At least with Jimmy G there’d be a small element of excitement.

So what now? Is there a trade out there that could help? Are we ready for a whole lot of David Harris? There’s no easy answer as is often the case when you lose a player of this magnitude. As I mentioned this morning, getting Shea McClellin back would certainly help. Then a trio of Harris, McCellan and Cassius Marsh would be serviceable, complimenting Kyle Van Noy, who has shown remarkable progress in recent weeks and is now the de facto leader of the front seven now. Throw in some Trevor Reilly and Marquis Flowers and maybe someone emerges. Is that a Super Bowl winning linebacker group on paper right now though? Ummmmmm….

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Injuries Strike Pats Just After They Clicked

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We’re all sick of hearing it but here it is again “injuries are the only thing that stand between the Patriots and Super Bowls at this point in the Belichick/Brady dynasty.” You either get years where they stay almost entirely healthy — 2014/2016 (with a notable exception or two like Gronk last year), or 2013/2015 where key guys are lost and it’s just not enough to get past the AFC Championship.

Every year is a bit different. And this year, the injuries to Julian Edelman, such a critical player, and others cam early enough that they could still be overcome. But it’s a long season and we’re not even half way through it. And now, after a couple weeks of injury reprieve, the Pats once again had a frightening injury report on Wednesday with Dont’a Hightower, Malcom Brown and Danny Amendola leading the way.

These were three gut punch absences, especially after the Pats were coming off their first complete game performance of the season. A feel-good “Pats are back” type win that made the sloppy start a distant memory.

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Film Review: Pats vs. Falcons – Defense (Until it Got Too Foggy) Edition

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The Patriots defense turned in their best performance of the season against the Falcons, a total team effort where they were fundamentally sound from top to bottom. Things got a little too foggy to breakdown the entire game, but from a half-plus of review I got a pretty good sense of how well they played and how they were able to shutdown a Falcons offense that had shredded them for much of the Super Bowl.

Here’s what stood out…

— Van Noy continues to make really good progress and his development is a big reason why the defense is playing so much better, especially against the run. The 3rd-and-4 on the Falcons’ second possession was a perfect example as Van Noy splits a double team in space to make a solo tackle for a three yard loss on a toss sweep. It was an excellent play, a great example of the kind of things that weren’t happening earlier in the season.

— After converting the following fourth down via a Matt Ryan scramble the Falcons put together a nice little drive that ended with a Cassius Marsh blocked field goal. On the last third-and-10 the coverage was excellent. Ryan had nowhere to go and the pass rush flushed him out of the pocket. He thought about scrambling again, but McCourty peeled off his middle field help coverage to prevent it. Just an overall really solid team defense play in a key spot, the kind of stuff we haven’t really seen enough of.

— On Marsh’s block he again demonstrated a strength — getting skinny and getting through gaps to make plays. It’s shown up a few times on defensive plays and now it set up what might’ve been a season-changing special teams play. After this the Patriots just played with even more confidence.

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