Holy Terrible Takes: The injury to Il Grappa’s shoulder had the NFL media freaking the off out. Quite a sight. It’s so fun to have everyone in the national media scrambling to expose what idiots they are. Anyway, a truncated look at the concern trolling from them.
1. Peyton Manning should be on Belichick’s speed dial. Why not?! Boomer asks… um…
To be fair to Boomer Esiason, he hasn’t had an intelligent thing to say for some time and now he’s knee-deep in the derp-tastic sports radio world. I mean, let’s move on and pray for his family. Someone mentioned Doug Flutie and Vinny Testaverde-type players to Bill Belichick’s face. To his face. And folks wonder why Belichick is dismissive of the NFL media. Amazing.
The Media List:
Tim Tebow: (without comment).
TJ Yates: Sure. This is only reasonable mention. (Brought up by the only sane man covering the NFL, Greg Bedard, obviously)(reports that he was worked out Tuesday exemplify this.)
Ryan Lindley and Matt Flynn: Both were evaluated and cut.
Matt Cassell: Belichick’s already proven he can win with this bag of balls and super nice guy.
Johnnie Manziel: We know what the Patriots scouts think about him. That’s before he hit his girlfriend, etc.
Honorable mentions: Tarvaris Jackson, Jimmy Clausen (only room for one Jimmy), Josh Freeman, Charlie Whitehurst, Michael Vick, Good god, someone suggested A Hasselback?
The fact that the Patriots released their Monday workout invites and didn’t include a single QB was BB trolling at peak. Glory in the highest. (Yates was Tues. left w/o contract).
2. Any of the aforementioned veteran QBs should start over Jacoby Brissett.
Huh? Brissett’s an adult. I think. He’s basically an adult. He knows the system as well as you can. He’s a prospect. Let’s see what Bill Parcells sees, he’s certainly looked pretty good.
3. Belichick doesn’t need a true back-up QB.
Okay, this was stupid. And I have the luxury of writing this after it’s been made clear that Garoppolo’s injury is about pain not damage and he at the very least will serve as a back-up. Clearly because we didn’t know the nature of the injury and severity, everyone was assuming that Edelman was the primary back-up, but Julian Edelman is far more valuable as a WR (if he looked more like a traditional WR, the writers would make him an all-pro), also his absence would leave them with 4WRs (including Slater). I love the thinking that Edelman could be a QB in the NFL, but it’s a tantalizing pipe dream. Interestingly, AJ Derby (a college back-up QB at Arkansas) and Chris Hogan may have been doing some emergency signal calling having been seen at practice warming up their arms.
4.The Patriots are going into this match-up a heavy underdog because nothing else matters.
The line is 2.5 and the game is in Foxboro, so Vegas is saying on a neutral field the Texans are giving 5.5 points. Listen, the Texans are playing well. They’ve become a good team and they have excellent individual defenders on their team, they should be favored. They have balanced offense and defense. If the Patriots win, I’d expect no more than 21 points scored by their offense. But I think this line significantly undervalues the Patriots defense and overvalues the Miami comeback attempt. Also short week’s are tough. The Texans offense hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire.
5. Bill O’Brien will know how the Patriots would attack him with Brissett and could gameplan according.
The thinking here was that Bill O’Brien in his 4-year stint with the Patriots 5 years ago learned the secret sauce of Belichick. I can see the logic, but O’Brien has 4 days to adjust his defensive gameplan too. His time is much better served getting his team to attack the Patriots defense, than throwing darts at the wall guessing what the patriots will do at QB and with their offense.
Also there’s a misconception that the Patriots find holes that can plugged in real time and have no back-up plans. The Patriots are this good for this long because they find weaknesses, not necessarily just match-up ploys. Then they adjust accordingly. They know that one of their players can achieve a good result by forcing the opposing individual players to try to perform without the necessary skill set.
6. Bart Hubbuch and Manish Mehta have valuable opinions worthy of debate.
These two get an absurd amount of oxygen in Boston because they say stupid stuff (see latest black QB garbage). I don’t understand, Boston’s media is RICH with trolls of its own teams. Where is the local pride? Why are we outsourcing for out of market trolls?
7. The Patriots let the Miami game slip because they were in the prevent.
Not true, they were playing aggressively, as brokedown by Mike.
8.LaGarrette Blount is racing to 1,000 yards like a galloping, leaping monster.
Currently on pace for 1544 with the Black Unicorn in uniform. Takes this great, cannot be undone.