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I’ll get this out of the way quickly. It’s impossible to look at the Patriots defense right now and say that their performance is acceptable. They’ve been bad. Very bad.
According to Greg Bedard in the Globe today says that Sunday’s performance against the Bills “had to be among the worst performances by a Bill Belichick defense in his tenure with the Patriots.”
OK, maybe it was. But then the next sentence is “In an effort to quantify how bad this was, we went through our data, which goes back to the start of the 2011 season in this regard.”
I’m not really sure how you can compare 12 ½ seasons with less than two years worth of data, but hey, knock yourself out.
I’m not trying to pick on Greg too much, because I do think he does a very good job overall, but on Twitter the other day he said he hadn’t watched the film from the game yet because he was “afraid.” That’s just silly. It feeds the panicked element of the fan base.
To his credit though does acknowledge something that anyone who has actually followed the team over the years realizes. They’re likely to get better. Maybe not this week, but soon.
The stuff you see on Twitter, and heard on the radio and read on websites is just mind-blowing. It’s as if this is the very first time people have ever watched a football season.
The defense is bad right now. Can anyone remember a season ago? Their stats are almost exactly the same as they were last year at this time. This is a much younger team. Right now six rookies are seeing significant playing time on defense.If they look lost at times, they are. They’re rookies. But they’re probably going to get better.
The defense is creating turnovers, and they seem to happen right when they need them the most. (Some thanks to this guy.) That’s not luck or coincidence. The offense isn’t turning the ball over. If they can tighten some things up over the second half of the season, they’re going to be fine.
It kills me to see Troy Brown and Ty Law killing the Patriots week after week. Some of it we can attribute to, as one reader put it, the “letterman” status. The retired players who look at the current squad and think they can do nothing right, certainly nothing approaching what they did back when they were playing.
If Law and Brown were commentators back then, what do you think they would say about this game? Offense jumps out to a nice lead, the other team comes charging back, shredding the defense, and is driving for the winning score when they are stopped on the last play of the game. How about this one – holding a 28-17 lead with under three minutes to go, and losing? You can say sure, those games were anomalies, but they happened. There are others, too.
It’s hard to win in the NFL, and I think 90% of fans and media forget that. Just calm down, everyone. Things are going to be fine.
Just a few quick links this morning:
Avery key cog for Celts – I think the Celtics have missed Avery Bradley in the early going. Steve Bulpett has Bradley eager to get back on the floor.
Kalish hopes Sox look within – Joe McDonald has outfielder Ryan Kalish knowing that he has a lot to prove.
Fishing for Trout: Do Red Sox prospects move too slowly? – Alex Speier looks at whether the Red Sox keep their prospects in the minors too long.
Get all links at PatriotsLinks.com and CelticsLinks.com.
