Patriots 2021 Offseason Thread

Dare I say Cam looks shockingly good throwing the ball right now?

Mac looks quite good. One bad pass at the beginning of his outing where he stared the guy down but other than that he’s doing quite well

I agree that the Cam offense is not so different than the Mac offense. Both will include a lot of play action, short throws and defined reads. Cam will get a few option plays and designed QB runs, especially in the red zone, but that's a handful of plays.

Their offensive line and running backs looked really good last night, almost across the board.

Matt Judon is a huge addition. If Gilmore plays and they generally stay healthy, that defense will be really good.

Cam Newton was tied for most rushing attempts on the team with 137 last year, that's 9.13 per game. Every time they ran an RPO, he ran the ball. You will never just eliminate Cam Newton running, that's just stupid. Yeah Cam Newton when everything is going right can look good. Yet his mechanics come and go. Usually right when you need him the most because it's big passing plays and he's facing pressure. His pocket awareness is about the opposite of Bradys. He gets flustered, so he either runs or rushes his throws. Here's a crazy projection you won't have many games with zero sacks and one QB hit. The Eagles look bad.

I will be darn happy to be proven wrong. I just won't buy it, till I see Cam Newton be able to consistently throw with accuracy for a bunch of complete games in a row. When the other team is pressuring him all game long he needs to prove he can make those short to medium throws consistently. You know the ones he kept throwing at people's feet last year and bouncing the ball to them. I'm certainly happy he looks good, yet nothing he does in the preseason will change my opinion of him.

As for the people that think nothing will be different, Newtons career low rushing attempts is 90 in 15 games, 14 starts. If you really believe that, you are expecting to see a Cam Newton we've never seen before.

Judon is really, really good

Okay fair enough likely a bad choice of words. Yeah it's the same offense, yet it's how you use it and what the players get used to based on the play. Example the RPOs from last year, that really were just option run plays because Newton hardly threw out of them and 90% of the time ran it himself. Same play, yet with Mac Jones you get almost no QB runs and he's going to throw a ton out of it, that's what he did in College. So it's the same play, yet it won't look the same and players will have to adjust. Which parts of the playbook you use and how much you use it, will change drastically. Unless you think Newton has completely changed and I truly do hope your right.

You can have the same set plays say 120 just for an example, I have no clue what the amount truly is. Yet the offense is which plays you use, how you use them and how often you use them. So while it's likely the same plays that our in the offense, it will look totally different and some changes will be huge.

Pro Football Reference lists Newton with 23 rushes and 13 passing attempts from the RPOs called last year. I don't know how accurate those totals are, but do you have a more reliable total? Unless they are way off (which is possible) it doesn't feel like a huge part of their offense. I don't think the skill guys have a big adjustment in terms of what they're asked to do, it's just whether they get the ball or not (except less blocking downfield if Mac runs less, but that's about it). If the verbiage or their routes changed it'd be different.

I'd also like to point out the lack of talent in the skill group last year and their inability to separate in coverage made it more tempting to run the ball. Hopefully improved WR and TE play will make a big difference even if Cam doesn't take a big leap. If the TE's stay healthy I really like the combo of Henry + Smith + Agholor + two of Meyers/Bourne/a running back on any given passing play - there might not be a #1 target there, but all five targets are solid or better NFL starters.

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Former 1st round receiver, hardly used.
Stud in practice, in game, not so much.
Injury prone, although nothing life threatening.
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First bid, he's all yours. Please.

There’s a difference between read option and RPO. Read option is a running play, it’s the QBs job to read the line of scrimmage and decide if he keeps it or gives it to the running back. And RPO is a play action hybrid where the QB reads the line backers and decides if it’s a run or a pass he should execute. Most of what Cam did were read options that were running plays the entire way, he just decided who was going to run.

Fwiw, the offense that Cam would run is far less sophisticated than what Mac Jones is already running. Adding or subtracting the same read options Newton has been running at Auburn isn’t going to be a huge loss of time and/or effort. There are 18 year olds at Vanderbilt who learned those plays in the Spring.

Sure. I’m just saying that the read options are not the sophisticated part of any offense. I might quibble and say varied offenses under the same playbook. It’s not like they are calling read options that Mac is checking out of.