Game Goats, 9/15 vs Seattle
- Thread starter Eddie Jurak
- Start date
Both of these are true, but the former can kind of explain the latter. Without a legit WR1 (I don't even mean stud, just legit) and with a merely servicable QB, the anemic passing offense is going to lead to bad offensive playcalling because we don't have the personnel for good offensive playcalling.
This assumes coaching isn’t part of the problem, which I admittedly have no idea about.
I honestly think reffing an NFL game would be extremely difficult. What delineates DPI from "hand fighting" is a really, really fine line, and these guys are doing it at high speed. But yeah, if you set the standard for DPI to be X, then it should be X the whole game.
I listened to Robert Mays on the Athletic football podcast this morning, he was really enthused about Geno's performance. He thought he was great. I didn't see it.
33/44 for 327 with 1 TD and 0 INT when you have zero running game and poor offensive line play?
Agree to disagree on that:
View: https://twitter.com/jagibbs_23/status/1835458483623194935
First half:
I thought Geno was ridiculous yesterday.
Gene was great. The receivers also dropped at least 5 or 6 very catchable balls. Former Jet QBs had quite the day.
Geno was great in part because the Pats couldn't get any pressure, and couldn't defend any of the ten million comeback routes that the Seahawks ran.
Geno punched them in the mouth like they were a $600 unpaid debt.
In part, yes, having not much pressure helped. He also made some ridiculous tight window throws. To me this is just an instant where you tip your cap and appreciate that the other guy was really damn good. Happy for Geno. Nice to see a guy like that succeed. @DanoooME your boys look really good this year. Excited for you. Still worry about your OL and pass pro and a little about your edges but no reason you shouldn’t be competing for a playoff spot or the division!
I’m in the camp of the defense being a significant goat yesterday. Despite some of their overall metrics looking solid, they failed badly in the most critical drives of the game. Situational failures like that can’t be waived off, just because they were solid in other moments of the game. That’s how many/most NFL games are won or lost. On a small handful of critical plays. As mentioned up thread, the lack of consistent pass pressure is already a significant problem . Obviously, much of that is being without Barmore, and the departure of Judon. Hopefully some of that can be corrected when CB returns, but they have not replaced Judon’s edge rush, and I’m not sure the guy(s) who can are currently on the roster. Agree with all the other observations about how utterly pedestrian the offense is as well. Positive notes for me would be their compete level, and that they appear to have cleaned up some of the stupid procedure penalties that plagued them last year.
I prefer a conservative approach to play calling with this team for obvious reasons, but I would have liked to see Mayo go for it on 4th down in OT. Seattle had been moving the ball pretty well to that point. Maybe a little too risky at this point in the season, but in the moment it felt like a strong, aggressive move to try and win the game.
I mean, sure. But the players do seem to play hard for Mayo and were clearly very happy for him last week. And I think, for the most part, players know if the coach ain't got it. The OL they could possibly have drafted, at the cost of trading up, was a turnstile for KC yesterday, so we never know--could Wolf have done better in FA? Maybe, but there wasn't much FA help out there.
This board talked all offseason how this season was gonna be a struggle and we hope that after 5 or 6 games the OL can at least settle down and then we see what Maye has. But nothing they do should really move us off the "take an OT early in the first" in 2025.
Agreed. Not even sure Dante could do much with these LT options. They just aren’t any good. Need a serious blue chip upgrade at that position.
Jury is out but FWIW, Scott Peters was the assistant OL coach for the Browns under Bill Callahan. Callahan is held in the same light as Scar in terms of OL coaches and Cleveland built one of the best OL's in the league under him.
Doesn't mean Peters will be good but at least there's a solid background, and obviously you need to pair good coaching with good players.
Yeah basically everyone who is a QB specialist was raving about the number of high level difficult throws Geno made yesterday. He's playing out of his mind.
Blocked FG is my goat despite how bad I thought the end of the 1st half unfolded. Mayo and Covington are rookies and I think are doing a great job.
I'm pretty happy at how competitive our 4.5 win expectancy NEP are though! If we could somehow assemble an OL that gives Brissett/Maye more than 2 seconds in the pocket ...
I'm pretty happy at how competitive our 4.5 win expectancy NEP are though! If we could somehow assemble an OL that gives Brissett/Maye more than 2 seconds in the pocket ...
There was one dart that he made late to I think DK that was amazing. Faced tons of pressure and threw and absolute low dart to the WR who was being blanketed by Gonzo, I believe. Some real communication/execution issues for Pats but Geno was also very good as well. Bad combo when you’re trying to win.
I think an issue is defining "critical drives" and "situational failures". Sometimes we know (like any drive in OT) and sometimes it seems like those are defined after the fact.
Metcalf's TD was on their 2nd drive of the 1st quarter. Hardly critical or a situation. Perhaps we can define Seattle's late first half FG as that, but they also got the ball at midfield and only had to go 26 yards (in 6 plays, mind you) to get that FG.
Yes, they gave up a 9 play, 42 yard drive when Seattle tied the game. Of course that came immediately after the Pats O stalled at the Seattle 21 and had their own FG blocked. So the offense made the subsequent Seahawks drive more critical, so to speak.
I'm not saying the D was great. But they really did do enough. Hell, the Pats had the ball at their own 30 with 55 seconds left and 1 TO... and they did nothing.
20 points, 287 yards and forcing punts on 6 of Seattle's 10 drives seems like it should be good enough to eek out a win. And we almost did. 7 points in the 37 minutes of play from the O is tough to overcome though.
Apparently as ever I’m following your lead
Of course longest time to throw will correlate to on target throws. I’m not taking anything away from the guy, he made some chicken salad yesterday, but isn’t that really an indictment of the D? Maybe I missed something here…
Not trying to start something-- because you're right about the correlation-- I just find it interesting when certain stats can seem to contradict the conventional wisdom
Which is to say, the QB who has had the second-longest time-to-throw stat in the NFL this year? Jacoby Brissett
I mean, we all know why this hasn't been good news...
Ha, that’s awesome and feel free to start sumthin’, it’s all just spit balling : )
It’s probably all a combo of play calling and SSS anyway…
Time to throw doesn't really tell you much beyond... he held the ball, basically any roll-out is going to be a long TTT. Longer TTT doesn't necessarily mean more good throws (just look at Hurts in game 1, he was terrible on long TTT and good on STT possessions.) and in fact often can mean nobody is open, or your playcaller stinks and there are no good routes, no designed quick outs, or you are going through progressions to make a checkdown.
Sure
I think I gotta pretty deep archive around here of arguing that stats don't replace watching and understanding the game, although they can allow you to look at it from new ways
In this case of this year's Pats, Brissett having a long time to throw is messy indicator. Sometimes it has meant he's getting protection, sometimes it's meant he's running for his life, sometimes a broken play ends well, many times it doesn't. So, messy.
Last year’s league average was 21.8 points per game and 35% scoring (drives resulting in score)
So 20 points in regulation and 40% scoring is roughly average. Probably not going to be good enough often with a decidedly below average offense.
If the Pats D performs at yesterday’s level for the next 15 games, they will be lucky to win 3 of them. They need to generate takeaways, get good field position for the offense, and score points on D. They haven’t done that yet.
They didn’t make Smith uncomfortable and the WR were getting open. If they play like that Thursday, Rodgers will shred them and put up a lot more points than Seattle
There wasn't much in the 2nd round either though for LT. It came down more in taking Maye over someone in round 1. Suamataia was the only left tackle that made sense in round 2.
I don't think Wolf went into the season thinking LT was going to be good. He was hoping between Okorafor/Lowe/Wallace they could figure something serviceable out. So far, they haven't.
This is the story of the game for me, and the season so far. If the QB has no time, he won't succeed no matter how good he is. Brissett is obviously limited, but he's actually been...fine. The pass blocking has been disastrous and that's convincing people he's been terrible.
The defense has allowed 33 points in 2 games. Both opponents scored fewer points against the Pats than against the other team they played. In the first game, they had no major breakdowns and forced a key turnover. In the second game, the forced no turnovers and had had several major breakdowns. Whether the defense is good depends on whether they make big plays or give them up, and it is too early to say.
Probably my famous recurring element of the Belichick video breakdowns after wins where he would frequently emphasize that, even on a successful play, they couldn’t say with full certainty why something worked without knowing what the opponent’s play call was. Seemed like Zo especially often wanted BB to be like, “Yeah, we nailed this,” and he wouldn’t; can’t be sure what they intended so we don’t know where the breakdown was, etc.
No Barmore and no Bentley is going to hurt. Puts a lot of pressure on the secondary and while there is talent there, no defense succeeds without good play from the LBs and line. They won't be able to cover up all the warts. I'm afraid the Pats will make Rodgers look really good ths week and it will be annoying, as usual.
The thing I keep thinking about with the defense is how quickly rosters turn over. They are (probably) above-average now, but it's not an elite unit and by the time they hopefully get the offense sorted in a year or two they are going to be looking at losing guys on the other side of the ball. And, they understandably didn't put much draft resources into defense this year. You really just have to hit on picks every year or you start to fall behind very quickly, especially when you don't have one of the superstars that is well worth their market value second contract (Barmore may be that and Bentley is a good player, definitely lots of bad luck there).
Robinson was looking for a leak inside. He shouldn't be. Often that is a sign of an OL looking for an easy out (or unsure of play) instead of running at the shoulder of the chipped.
RT (Onwenu) either doesn't know his job is inside first (unlikely), or he's trying to do too much which I think is it.
The season is young, but the coaching isn't locking them, the OT, in.
Coaching can only do so much when one of their supposed anchors at tackle decides to deprioritize conditioning and the player next to him is still a rookie, and when their 2 best inside players are hurt.
The roster turnover thing applies to every rebuilding team (and contending teams as well). Both Gonzalez and Keion White look like long term pieces (White looks like he could be Pro Bowl caliber in a couple of seasons), and Barmore can hopefully come back next season strong and healthy and play for a while (similar to David Andrews). Eventually, they will need to add pieces via the draft and free agency. But it's also why they cannot afford to have picks like Polk, Wallace, and Baker be busts; the opportunity costs of busts at those picks starts to add up (not saying they are busts; we are just unlikely to see much of either WR this season).
I know. It just seems like a lot of people are thinking "Oh, we don't have to worry about the defense" in the rebuild, but we need to worry about everything.
Perennially contending teams tend to have a real superstar like Chris Jones or a Bosa / Watt that creates matchup problems or can neutralize opponents' skill guys and makes everyone else's job easier. Maybe that's Gonzalez, White and/or Barmore but maybe not.
Perennially contending teams tend to have a real superstar like Chris Jones or a Bosa / Watt that creates matchup problems or can neutralize opponents' skill guys and makes everyone else's job easier. Maybe that's Gonzalez, White and/or Barmore but maybe not.
"Barmore can hopefully come back next season strong and healthy"
Do we know that he's gone for the season? Haven't seen any news about it.
Do we know that he's gone for the season? Haven't seen any news about it.
It's an assumption based off some recent precedent. David Andrews was diagnosed with blood clots during training camp in 2019 and missed the entire season, though back then I don't think they could designate players to return (or it was only 1 or 2 for the season).
The team did desginate Barmore to return when they placed him on NFI so the door is open but I think the safe expectation is we don't see him until 2025.
The team did desginate Barmore to return when they placed him on NFI so the door is open but I think the safe expectation is we don't see him until 2025.
Certainly plays a part; coaching won't fix lack of conditioning. My points were things that coaching can and should correct, the correctables.