2018 Patriots Season Thread

Gurley isn’t hurt - they all said it and if you watched him run there was burst and no limping.

Regardless, what you think of Goff and that defense overall, the defense played great yesterday. All you need to know is the Rams offense was great most of the year and the Patriots made them look inept. This isn’t like them going agains the Bears this is them going against an offensive juggernaut.

Gotta say I feel somewhat bad for Jared Goff this morning. He didn't play all that bad. That Cooks play wasn't a perfect pass and it wasn't a tremendous read initially, but the ball was there. Just an all around incredible play by McCourty to save it. And even then, dude was getting punished all game and he had no time to pass the ball. On that INT there's a monster coming his way to murder him and he had no time to go through his mechanics appropriately. He's pretty young. I don't know, he got swallowed alive by an all-timer defensive performance. People are overreacting, he's still a very good QB. He outplayed Drew Brees in the NFC Championship game. There's a lot to like there.

Now the Gurley thing is f*cking weird. There's something we don't know in this story. I thought he looked slow out there. If he's not injured, his head is clearly not in the game.

My favorite part of that McCourty pass breakup in the end zone was how he hit the uprights and in one motion just popped up and ran back to the huddle without even a fist pump. Guy was all business.

What surprised me most about that game was how great the Rams defense played. I've never in my life seen Tom Brady confused or tricked by defensive coverages and he was in that game quite often. He actually looked like he was trying not to throw that INT in the 1st quarter because he saw the coverage was different than he thought as he was throwing it. They looked like they were on their way to building a lead before that pick.

But what I expected the Pats defense to do against the Rams is exactly what happened. It's not that Goff is terrible. He's just young and easily confused by one of the most complex defenses I've seen. They were faking blitzes with 3-4 guys on every play. Some of them would come (usually on stunts) and some would drop back, disturbing every play that can counter a blitz. So if Goff thought he had to get rid of it quickly because he read a blitz coming, he didn't have options when he had more time than he thought. Mahomes is 10 times the QB and they confused him as well.

I knew that was the gameplan since the first regular season game against the Chiefs.

Lights seemed pretty bright for Goff - great defensive plan going into the game. I think having two weeks to prepare allowed Ds on both teams to work on lots of things. I compare Brady, back in 2001 and his amazing poise, to Goff. No way to predict the future, but what we've seen since in Brady was on display way back then.

Romo kept referring to the way the Rams were disguising their D - whether zone or man - and Brady just seemed to have trouble reading it for the most part.

Having an essentially home team crowd (volume-wise) didn't hurt - the Brady chant in the 4Q was amazing.

Most fun low scoring game I've ever watched, I think!

So....Red Sox - Worlds series (beat LA). Patriots - Super Bowl (Beat LA). Bruins in the playoff hunt and Celtics catching fire - two nice shiny objects to keep us occupied until that first spring training game late February.

McVay just got a chess lesson from the goat, BB.

Pedro the whole play took like 6 to 7 seconds. We don't even get a look at when Cooks became open and it wasn't close to four seconds though.  In your mind Cooks was in the endzone the second the ball was snapped, which is comical. The ball stayed in the air longer than he wanted it too. Talk about a hindsight call. Lol so Goff choked because he doesn't have Brett Farves Cannon of an arm? If McCourty doesn't make an unreal play everyone is calling that a perfect pass. It was like 40 yards and hit Cooks in the numbers. I mean the ESPN guy is saying Goff might have waited too long, not that even did. He's certainly not saying he waited four seconds to find a wide open player. At most maybe he was a half second too late, but you can't even say that without a view of when Cooks got open. We only see him open when he's throwing the ball not before. That is not an example of a QB choking.

Go listen to Gilmore talk about his interception and you see why Goff really isn't to blame. He knew they were blitzing, he knew with the score Goff had to try and make something happen, so he baited him. Our defense was on fire and the Rams coaching just couldn't adjust. Gilmore made that interception because he knew we'd get pressure and force Goff to rush the throw. Without the pressure it could have back fired and been a TD. This was just like the Giants making Brady look bad even in his record setting 2007 season. I know you'll never admit you were wrong about our D, even though I kept pointing it out to you for months. Which is fine, it's what you do. No need to reply. I just needed to give our D the credit it deserves. One of the more dominant Superbowl performance in history of the game. I just watched a highlight tape and half of it is our D knocking Goff to the ground. 

Goff was selling play action and Cooks didn't get visibly open until he was crossing the five yard line, the coverage missed him around the 10. Cooks isn't open on the initial read, he looks to check down to the RB who is getting covered, and then he looks up, finds Cooks, and steps into the throw. When you say it took 3 seconds to look at Cooks, what are you suggesting exactly? Cooks wasn't open that quickly, and he got open while Goff was looking at Anderson. Only bad QB's lock into one receiver, he was going through his reads and properly identified the correct option. It's not like Goff should've expected the Patriots to blow coverage that far into his route. If McCourty doesn't make a great play it's a touchdown. It's not like it was busted coverage from the snap and he was the easy read. If there's any complaint with Goff it'd be his release time/velocity on the pass, not his inability to go through the progressions.

Teams need to win with a young QB before he gets paid or things get a lot harder. Look at Seattle, Wilson got paid the rest of the roster loses talent and now they aren’t that great. Baltimore won them paid Flacco. Green Bay has never been able to put a team around Rodgers.

The Rams have a huge decision to make on Goff as he’s rookie extension eligible. Do you pay that guy? If not then you need a new QB and if it’s a free agent then you’re paying for one. They loaded that roster to win today and they came up short. They will start losing talent. The Chiefs better win next year or the following before they need to pay Maholms and Hill. Eagles, have a window with Wentz. Cowboys are wasting theirs with Dak.

The Saints finally got back to something with Brees but that’s why these last 2 years were huge misses. Now that young talent price tag is coming due.

No team has figured out how to do what the Patriots have which is why we see them come and go after a couple good years.

For some of these teams its a tough choice whether or not to extend the QB, the Seahawks for example are playoff contenders almost every year. But did the Lions really need to give Stafford as much as they did? I understand its tough to find a QB but that just seems like bad cap management.

The teams with all time great Qbs like brady, brees and manning are able to hang around but middling QBs probably don’t deserve these monster deals.