Bryan Joiner

Entries tagged as ‘Patriots’

The Decline

January 11, 2010 · 5 Comments

The Patriots are on the decline. There’s no question about that now. I pooh-poohed people Bill Simmons earlier this year for calling them DOA after the Indy loss, but I stand by that. Simmons and his ilk fed us the Patriots as “winners when it matters” for the last decade, but called the dynasty kaput over a matter of a couple inches in Indianapolis. To suggest that 4th-and-2 had anything to do with what happened today was ludicrous. Maybe the plays preceding 4th-and-2, but not the event itself.

Randy Moss probably has to go. I’m drawing some parallel with Gisele here. Tom Brady finds a tall, lanky, good-looking friend. Tom Brady is enamored to the point of supplicance. Moss certainly appears to dog it from time to time out there, and Brady doesn’t seem to raise word one with him. Every time they talk, it’s a pep talk or they’re trying to speak some superstar language. That ain’t going to win you ballgames when a team’s got as many holes as this one. Put another way: that, in itself, probably has no bearing on much. But take away the time from Brady trying to fix the little problems with the offense, and that’s time wasted. As is becoming clear, there’s not much time left.

It seems like Brady and Moss are on one island, and the rest of the offense is somewhere else, particularly the offensive line. The defense played like crap today, and that’ll happen. It just hasn’t happened to us in such a big game in awhile. The defense was pretty good in the Super Bowl two years ago, but not anymore.

The Patriots now remind me of those late nineties 49ers teams that raged against the dying of the light with increasingly futile playoff campaigns. The magic could show up for any single game, but never stuck around to get them what they really wanted, which was another title. There were too many teams that were just younger and hungrier, despite their best efforts.

I got a Facebook message after the game consoling me. I don’t know what I have to be sad about. If this is the end, I can’t say I didn’t get everything I ever wanted, and more.

Categories: Patriots
Tagged:

Bill Simmons, Heel

December 2, 2009 · 3 Comments

Bill Simmons has always been something of a heel to non-Boston Sports fans, a category I don’t belong to. They often tire of his Boston-themed columns, and if they don’t, they often scrape away enough of the good feelings that a misplayed pop culture reference finally breaks them. It’s understandable, but it never affected me. I enjoyed reading Simmons, and even as I type this, I’m enjoying his book, the absolute litany of copy editing errors contained therein aside.

But in two short weeks, Simmons has lost at least one 10-year reader and listener in the day-to-day, at least for the day-to-day. I’m sure I’ll come back some day, and it might even feel like it’s the same as it used to be, at times. It won’t be. It never is.

As regular readers of this blog know, it all started with his intellectually dishonest column about Bill Belichick’s 4th-and-2 decision; it’s not that he hated the decision that bothered me, but that he spoke so disingenuously out of both sides of his mouth. He argued that he did not take issue with the statistics showing that it was the technically correct choice to go for it, then took issue with the numbers. He argued that numbers don’t always apply to football situations, then created his own numbers, as if from thin air, and applied them to the situation. It was an argument built like an inverted house of cards—he undermined his own argument so quickly that the rest was all smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact that there was no “there” there, so to speak.

That alone would have been one thing, but he preceded these arguments by engaging in a podcast whereupon he somehow argued simultaneously—as many do—that Belichick was both “arrogant” and “didn’t have confidence in his defense,” and, like many others, didn’t even attempt to reconcile the contradiction. He also repeated a theory, hatched earlier, that since Belichick is 57 years old, he is likely “losing it” and that this is the first sign of said senility, lack of energy, whatever. I wouldn’t have a problem with this argument individually, even if I don’t agree with it, but piled on top of everything else he’s written it infuriates me. On top of that, it violates his own anti-statistical code. He’s busy scouring the history books and saying that 55 is the last good year for a coach… well, if that’s true, shouldn’t the Pats be looking for a younger coach? If that’s what Simmons is arguing, he should just come out and say it. If he thought people were angry about 4th-and-2, I’d love to see the reaction to that one. It’s the smart thing to do!, he’d probably say, make a pre-emptive strike based on the numbers!

That would, for obvious reasons, make me laugh.

That’s all, and was, water under the bridge until I saw one of his tweets today, which called the Pats “dead.” Take a look at their schedule and tell me what you see. I see 12-4. You know what the Pats’ record was when they won their first Super Bowl? 11-5. You remember who they played? A clone of the Saints from this year, or the Pats from 2007. There are details of which I’m obviously aware that could mitigate this: the 12-4 Pats wouldn’t likely have a bye and the Saints looked fairly unstoppble the other night. But to declare the Patriots “dead” is something in the spirit of Simmons’ supposed arch-enemy, Dan Shaughnessy. Yes, the Pats don’t look like the best team now, but if 2007 taught us anything, it’s that you only have to look like the best team on the last day of the season for it to mean anything. Do I believe then can, even if I don’t believe they will? Yes.

That’s what it comes down to: hope. If you hope your team does well, and you see one of its biggest cheerleaders raining on your parade, it’s time to disengage. If Bill Simmons can’t enjoy first place, and yet another awesome season, maybe he needs to re-read some of his columns from 1999 and 2000 to show how far we’ve really come. Will it help him get back to a positive mindset? Maybe, for a little bit, but never completely. Like my love affair with his columns, that part of him is probably gone forever.

Categories: Essays · Football
Tagged: ,

About last night…

December 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Last night’s Patriots/Saints liveblog will have to serve as your post this morning, at least for now. Click through to see what two things I said “mesh like two mismatched images overlaid on vibrating overhead projector.”

Categories: Football
Tagged:

Pats/Saints Liveblog

December 1, 2009 · 3 Comments

Why not?

10:57 AS MANNY WOULD SAY, TURN THE PAGE Pats starting a drive down 14 at the start of the fourth quarter. I daresay this is it, or something trending heavily toward it. I believe we used to call this Brady Time. Or maybe that was must me, or maybe no one said it. But it certainly felt like we were gonna score. Today? Maybe not so much, but a touchdown drive would be huge. After missing Sam Aiken for a bomb on the first play, the next two plays go nowhere, and the Saints easily move the ball for a touchdown to put the game out of reach with 7:49 left. It’s Brees’ fifth touchdown, and to the Pats’ credit, they weren’t out of it until it struck. But it did strike. I would have expected absolutely anything in this game, so I’m not surprised, and I still think the Pats can win the Super Bowl. Can they beat the Saints if they play again? I have no idea how they would, but if they got that far I’m sure they could find a way. Right now it doesn’t look possible, but it’s just one night. The next five teams are the Dolphins, Bills, Panthers, Jags and Texans. We’ll talk about other teams in January. Let’s see what we do with these five.

10:40 I AM NOT IGNORING THE GAME I have largely avoided saying anything, but the Saints are absolutely humming on offense. They scored in no time whatsoever after the Pats touchdown. The Patriots’s secondary is suspect, but Brees is making them look worse than Manning did. Dude just distributes the ball and keeps coming at you. Now, thanks to Sam Aiken, Brady just converted another third down. Whatever the result of this game, this Patriots team looks and feels much more like the 2003-04 bunch than the 2007 crew did. Those teams won with third down conversations, turnovers and breaks. If it’s true that you “make your own luck,” that team had it, and this team seems to have a knack for the opposite. When the 2007 Pats showed up to face the Bills, they got extremely lucky and won; now the old-school team can’t quite get a break on the road, though Ravens fans might disagree. It is unclear if this game is coming down to breaks or execution, but we’re probably a wash on the first and behind in the second. There’s still time, but if the Saints get the ball without the Patriots scoring it could get late out pretty early here, and stay late out very late in New Orleans.

10:22 THERE’S THE MADDENING PART On the flip side of halftime, Laurence Maroney fumbles on the first play because he bowled someone over to get an extra yard. I mean, the Patriots lost to Colts game because he fumbled on a 1-yard run that would have been backbreaking to the Colts, and no one cared. No one in the national media, that is. Sammy Morris replaced him the backfield, and I expect that might last for a while. Morris favors the unspectacular philosophy of “run forward, avoid defenders, and hold onto the ball” that tends to serve Patriots backs fairly well. Maroney may be a good or even great running back, but his style and that of the Patriots’ mesh like two mismatched images overlaid on vibrating overhead projector. Meanwhile, the Pats recovered a subsequent fumble on the same play—with Maroney the strip—and continue to drive, earning a 1st and goal after some nifty Brady footwork kept him alive long enough to find Moss on a 40-something yard catch. It was a broken play, and the Patriots seem to be up against the wall right up until they execute. The Saints are relentless, but Maroney just popped it in from three yards out. That’ll happen.

9:45: WHOA Laurence Maroney just got knocked well out of bounds while he was running full speed, fell down, and scrambled back to his feet like he was still running. He hit his head pretty hard on the play; did he think he was still in bounds? All the evidence says no, because he smiled and walked back to the huddle, jawing with the Saints. But isn’t the problem that concussions are so prevalent that even stopping the completely obvious ones doesn’t prevent many of the problems? It’s either that or Maroney is so jacked up to play that he literally couldn’t stop his legs, which is kind of awesome. Maroney is just a bizarre player. I’ve never seen anyone so unafraid of contact be afraid of the line. It’s like getting to the line is one problem, deciding where to go is another one (hence his legendary happy feet), but going there is not a problem—except maybe for you. He’s absolutely punishing tonight, and he’s seeming to get stronger every game. After all the hype about what he could be, he’s turned into a fascinating, occasionally maddening player who ages like a decent bottle of wine: still fairly good, but slightly different from year to year and a better complementary piece than a show-stopper. But there is time yet. The Patriots have less time. Brady just missed Watson on a 3rd-and-10 and the Pats don’t score going into halftime, and are trailing 24-10.

9:09 IT WOULD BE HARD FOR ME TO PROPERLY REGISTER MY DISGUST WITH THAT BRADY INTERCEPTION So let me get this straight: we stop the Saints around midfield, return a punt to their 40, and on the first play Brady throws across the middle, on the run? That is a baaaaaaaaad decision. On the bright side, I can buy a phone that “trades hairdo for can-do” and is has a name that is licensed to Google by George Lucas. While trying to figure out how to follow this up, the Saints had another 4th-and-1 inside the 20 and went for it, and got it. Good job. They had done something cool with the aforementioned punt, lining up in a standard formation on 4th-and-4 near the 50, then rotating everyone to the punt formation. The idea, I’m guessing, was to keep the Patriots’ punt team off the field, but a) If the Saints didn’t take 4th-and-1 earlier, why would they go crazy with 4th-and 4? and b) Their punt team allowed a 60-yard return, so maybe the moving around messed their concentration. Still, I like the call, and the decision to go for it on 4th-and-1 again. That the decision worked and the punt one decision doesn’t make wrong and one right.

I can’t think of anything to follow that up, so we’re on to the next one…

8:51 OBSERVATIONS PRIOR TO NOW THAT PROMPTED THIS: a) The Saints should have gone for it on 4th and 1 on their first drive, and b) Smart play by Darren Sharper to dive for Maroney’s legs while running beside him; shows that he knows Maroney’s signature move is the stiff-arm and was able to recall it so quickly. Also, Maroney did it once prior to that on the drive. And also, Sharper did it five plays later, only this time he was coming right at Randy Moss, and could have easily sent his kneecap into the stands. Geez. The Saints are pretty much hitting the #### out of the Patriots… who are still driving. They are amped up. I didn’t buy the “Superdome Craziness” argument they were pitching before the game, but seeing as this is the biggest game in their history, I think it was just a difficulty to adjust, on my part. The Saints’ D has the energy, but even on offense, the Patriots are hitting back. Kevin Faulk just ran down the sidelines for 15 yards and instead of going out of bounds, he ran smack into the man in front of him. Then Laurence Maroney bounced off three people on a 2nd and four. Yesterday was billed as the old school, phsyical matchup, but this game is far harder hitting so far. And now the Patriots have 4th and 1 inside the 10. And they’re going for it. Gotta love that symmetry.

Categories: Football
Tagged: ,

The Play, Continued

November 18, 2009 · 1 Comment

I love baseball statistics, and I love their modern updates, but I find some of their hardcore backers offputting. I’m happy that anyone has an opinion on baseball, and if they think Juan Pierre should be batting leadoff because he steals a lot of bases I find it amusing and cute to some degree. I generally find positions like this to be borne in the ignorance of value of a single player, and not ignorance of the sport as a whole, and there are so many baseball players I just let it go.

There’s also the baseball’s ficklness (is that a word?). You can make the wrong decision—like batting Juan Pierre leadoff againts anyone, but we’ll say Tim Lincecum—and he can go 3-for-4, and voila!, whomever you argued against feels emboldened. Rather than fight it, I try to appreciate baseball as a sport where odd things can happen and root for my teams to make the right decisions.

I don’t feel the same way about football, and the 4th-and-2 play called by Bill Belichick to win the game against the Colts. I liked the call when it happened, and now I’m so in favor of it that to hear anyone speak against it grates against me. Bill Simmons devoted the first 12 minutes of his podcast to whining about Belichick, with his sidekick calling Belichick both “arrogant” and not confident in his defense; funny that he’s arrogant and unconfident. I’m generally a Simmons defender, but this was an abomination. I’ve yet to hear one good explanation for why the Patriots should not have gone for it. Not. One.

Here are the reasons to go for it, one more time:

• Statistics

The numbers bear out the call, or make it too close to call. The NYT says 78% of the time going for it will result in a win, while punting it will net a win 70% of the time. Football Outsiders does some more math and calls it basically even. Still: no definitive reason NOT to go for it.

• Confidence

For all the talk of the Patriots “not having confidence in their defense,” isn’t this HAVING confidence in the offense? And as Joe Posnanski pointed out, isn’t potentially putting your defense on the field with a 30-yard stand ahead having MORE confidence in them? (I’m not sure this is actually true in this case, but it makes as much sense as anything a grown man who goes by the name “Cousin Sal” says.)

• Logic

As I wrote yesterday, you play to win the game. You work for months to get into a position to do so. Do you take the chance? Bill Belichick did. That’s what I want in my coach. The fact that it didn’t work should have no outcome on our appraisal.

I look at this like the Spurs’ loss to the Lakers when Derek Fisher hit that miracle shot in the playoffs. Two almost identically matched teams, rivals of a decade, the game ending dramatically and by a hair’s breadth. The Patriots are the machine that makes the good decisions, anchored by their consistent star. The Colts are built around one superstar, leading to high risk and reward. The Pats made the right decision and lost. That’s all there is to it.

FINAL NOTE?: Barring Barack Obama suddenly opining on this, I’m going to drop it, but not before linking to a clip of Merril Hoge defending the clip on ESPN. For all the criticisms you can level against Hoge, he nails it here. That’s good, but what’s telling is Josh Elliott’s absolute refusal to let him just say what he thinks. It’s like Hoge was on the O’Reilly Factor or something. It’s embarassing. For all the things ESPN debates that are completely pointless, here’s something that should be discussed, and the host tries to nip it in the bud. Well played, guys.

Categories: Herm's Rule · Patriots
Tagged: ,

The Play

November 17, 2009 · 3 Comments

They start in the spring. They being practicing as a mass, knowing that in a few months their numbers will be whittled to 53.

The summer comes along, and it’s time for cuts. Every day, the players but their asses to make the NFL. At the end of the month, some do, some don’t. The ones that do have one charge: win football games.

In an average football game, there are 125 plays, on average. You can lose the game on almost all of them, but you cannot win the game on most of them.

So when you get to 4th-and-”2″ (really 1) against the best team in football, in their stadium, with the statistics in your favor and an all-time great staring you down, and you finally have a chance to win the game*, do you take it? For months, you’ve practiced and practiced and been taught to execute. Would you take that one chance?

–

I would, and Bill Belichick would. I’ve heard talking heads say he “disrespected” his team and that he “didn’t trust” it. Nothing could be further from the truth. He trusted his team to make 4th-and-2, and win them the game. He played to win the game. He understands what he is there to do.

Too many times in football and outside of it, people make the easy decision to save themselves, to look better. Belichick did what was right, not worrying about the consequences outside the lines. He ought to be commended.

The one good thing about the Pats’ failure on the play (if they even failed) is it exposed so many football analysts and writers as just fundamentally misunderstanding of the game. The list is long. Bill Simmons. Rodney Harrison. Peter King. Tedy Bruschi. Tony Dungy. Tom Jackson. Keyshawn Johnson. More, more, and more.

Make no mistake — they are wrong. Bill Belichick played to win the game, and he lost.

* Despite what he said, there actually was no guarantee of a win. The Colts take their timeouts after two running plays, and the Pats run a third to move the clock down. That gives Peyton the ball on the 20 or so with about a minute remaining if there’s no first down. That, I could live with.

Categories: Herm's Rule · Innovation · Patriots
Tagged: , , ,

The Patriots Don’t Hate Their Coach

November 16, 2009 · 1 Comment

After the Patriots cut Lawyer Milloy, Tom Jackson said, “They hate their coach right now?”

Turned out they got over it. They won the Super Bowl, and Belichick has been beloved by his players ever since. And he’s hated Jackson for talking about stuff he doesn’t know about.

So all that garbage you hear from Tedy Bruschi, Trent Dilfer, Rodney Harrison, et al about Belichick insulting his defense or some crap like that, just ignore it. Two of those players used to play for the Patriots, so they sound credible, but the emphasis is on the past tense.

Time to move on. They sure have.

Categories: Patriots · really?
Tagged:

Baffling (UPDATE)

November 16, 2009 · 4 Comments

Of all the baffling things about the Pats’ loss last night, perhaps the least baffling is Bill Belichick’s decision to go for it on 4th and 2 from his own 28 yard line. Seems like a simple calculus: Will it be easier to get 2 yards or stop Peyton Manning? You play to win the game, not delay your opponents from winning it. I was all for the fourth down decision, and I thought it had worked. I was wrong.

Outside of that I’m completely baffled. I have no idea how the Pats lost, outside of Peyton Manning simply being incredible. It was just… I try not to get worked up about games any more. I try not to let them affect my outside life. Today I am a miserable failure. I had to compose myself for 30 minutes before coming to work on the off chance that someone mentioned anything to me about this game. This week is going to be brutal. I know, intellectaully, that the Patriots are going to bounce back, but if they feel anything like I feel I can’t imagine how that’s going to happen. The truth is they feel worse, I’m sure, it being their livelihood and all.

Maybe this corn muffin will bring me joy.

UPDATE: Numbers people Joe Posnanski and Brian Burke who are not as non-war-related shell shocked as I bring you explanations.

UPDATE 2: Nate Silver weighs in on the call, defending it. I only wish all this logic permeated the media I usually consume.

Categories: Herm's Rule · Patriots · Sports
Tagged: , ,

Brady vs. Manning

November 10, 2009 · 2 Comments

Not a lot of time today, so I’ll go down a well-traveled road: Brady vs. Manning.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Peyton Manning will finish his career with superior passing stats. He’s played in a pass-first offense his entire career, and he plays in a dome. I’m not making excuses for Brady here; I am, as always, just saying. Brady will probably finish with better winning stats, depending on how you define it. The three Super Bowls, the 16-0 season, the highest all-time winning percentage—they’re all his.

These guys entered the league around the same time and have matching career arcs, so they’re natural to compare more than, say, either one of them and Ben Roethlisberger (who came later), Donovan McNabb (who didn’t reach as high), Drew Brees (late bloomer) and the newer crop of Philip Rivers, Eli Manning and Matt Ryan (two of whom didn’t actually postdate Ben, but whose success did). Part of that contrast, for a while, were their styles: Manning ran the Blue Angels-like airshow, while Brady ran the crafty, surgical Patriots offense. Before Randy Moss arrived, the Patriots weren’t known as a team to blow out their opponents. They didn’t always win big, but they always won.

Then 2007 hit, and Brady was doing his Manning impression. He wiped Manning’s 49 touchdown record from the books in a game ya boy was at (and at which he was egged for wearing a Welker jersey), and led the Pats to within 90 seconds of the Super Bowl title. Then he got hurt eight minutes into the following season, left to watch his backup lead the Patriots’ spread offense to a respectable 11-5 record, two wins better than near Super Bowl Champions Arizona Cardinals.

Brady returned this year against the Buffalo Bills hoping to spread-offense them into submission, and the Pats won only because they got bailed out by a (typical?) Bills error (see number four here). Then they lost to the Jets, who blitzed dropback Brady into submission, and the Pats went back to the drawing board. The new Pats gameplan would look a lot like the one that won them three Super Bowls: more running, more play-action, a greater mandate to eat time away and set up big plays rather than go for them on every down. It’s something of a Classic Brady offense, even if it’s more Classic Belichick scheming: use what you’ve got. The Patriots are short on wide receivers, so this is the best plan for them.

At 6-2, the plan seems to be working. Now we’ll see how the contrast in styles with Manning’s Colts works this year. No longer do Brady and Manning look like the same quarterback, as they did in 2007. Brady’s back to being The Guy That Wins and Manning’s brought his aerial attack to another level. The contrast in styles is back, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s Pats/Colts, and it’s as big as ever.

Categories: NFL · Patriots
Tagged: , , ,

The Wildcat: The Patriots’ Kryptonite

November 3, 2009 · 3 Comments

The Patriots aren’t Supermen anymore, but they still have their Kryptonite, and it’s still the Dolphins. Miami has always given New England fits, but at first because they were just better and then because their home field, combined with Jason Taylor, turned Tom Brady into… well, whatever quarterback the Dolphins had at the time. The 16-0 season seemed particularly improbable because beating Miami twice has always seemed like a tall order. And all that was before the current era: with Miami as a team designed specifically to take down the Patriots.

The Dolphins of Marino were the most “warm weather” team there was; now Miami runs the most “cold weather” offense in the last 10 years, the Wildcat-heavy crux of which they unveiled last year in Foxboro. The game plan ruined the unsuspecting Patriots, who nonetheless got revenge in Miami behind a spread offense and their backup quarterback. The teams had basically become mirror images of what they’re “supposed” to be, climate-wise, but the balance is once again changing.

Tom Brady admitted this week that the 2007/08 offense is basically being scrapped for good, not because of the departure of Josh McDaniels but because Joey Galloway was a total bust and Julian Edelman injured. No extra receivers equals no spread offense, and that means more running plays, and a reversion to the playcalling of the early Brady years. More play action, less shotgun. That ought to help against a team that feeds off time of possession. Paint the Phins into situations where they think they have to pass, and good things will happen, because they’ve been built to play against the pass. The Wildcat aims to drain time from the clock, forcing you into foolish plays on offense. The prototypical Wildcat game was against the Colts, where they had the ball for 48 minutes. The game plan played right into their hands… but since they were playing Peyton Manning, they lost. You can only do so much.

The Wildcat is not easy offense to operate in the NFL. Every team runs it (or ran it) after the Dolphins unveiled it last year, with decreasing marginal returns to the point where some teams have scrapped it altogether. Not Miami: they doubled down, instilling more plays for Ronnie Brown at quarterback, and running it for entire drives and games. There is something completely awesome about this, and evocative of Chuck Klosterman’s essay on innovation in football. But it’s not all good.

The bad part is that the Dolphins are still very beatable. Can they  win this game? Absolutely. Do I think they will? No. Does their Wildcat scare the absolute piss out of me? Yes. Why? Because this team seems single-handedly devised to beat the Patriots, like a good boxer who wins the belt because they match up well with the otherwise better champ (I’m thinking Vernon Forrest*). Unfortunately for the Phins, this approach won’t win them a Super Bowl; the Steelers would absolutely ruin them. Sparano hasn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but in a league with Peyton Manning, Adrian Peterson and Brady, “good” isn’t going to cut it in the end. This week? It might.

As the years tick away for Belichick, games like this will show how much the Brady Patriots have left in them. The Pats were never about dominance; they were about adapting. Now that the division has adapted to them (become more defense- and run-heavy to match their firepower), the Pats have to tack back toward being an all-around team that changes styles based on opponents. As they turn the defense over to youngsters, they’re vulnerable now to targeted attacks like Miami’s Wildcat. They’ll probably win the division either way, but if they can survive this week’s broadside, the whole league needs to watch out. If the teal-and-orange Kryptonite can’t get the job done, can anything?

* RIP

Categories: Patriots
Tagged: , ,