Volin's Folly? Brady, trust issues, and the future of Danny Amendola

[Shelterdog]

I get that these kind of context-less lines can be frustrating for readers and that this is an internet message board not the congressional record. And I probably should have led my post by saying "If true."

But stating that Volin just "made this up" is baseless and, frankly, lazier than if he actually did make it up.

Obviously Volin heard something -- no probably not in a press release from Patriots.com or from Brady directly (tho who knows). But he's a capable, if sometimes uninspiring, beat reporter for a well regarded sports desk with a major paper. Those kind of guys aren't above sensationalizing a story and creating mischief but they're highly unlikely to concoct stories out of thin air.

Maybe, yes, Brady has never really had chemistry and trust with DA. Or maybe DA backslid during the year in some ways. Most likely, he's drawing a conclusion based on a lot of different pieces of information he's assembled. But as the second two pages of their thread suggest, there's plenty of widely available evidence he's not just pulling shit out of his ass.

 
That's not obvious.  That's why there is a problem.  In fact if he did have something to report you'd expect him to make an actual story of it because it's a BFD ("sources inside the Pats organization say that Brady has lost faith in Amendola..." )  I suspect his evidence is the lack of targets in Denver, the quote Frisb used, the failure to look to Amendola on the Slater play and a few other plays where Slater was open.  But as I said above it's so vague we don't know what he's basing his story on, and I'm not going to assume a young reporter at a Boston paper has awesome journalistic ethics.

 

[Corsi]

Well, we have an answer.  Volin answered my question on Twitter:
 

 based on lack of targets and play time

https://twitter.com/BenVolin/status/428579270257295360

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

ie based on nothing.
 
41 out of 59 snaps in the AFCCG (4th)
40 out of 73 vs Indy (3rd)
 
Regular season: 579 out of 1200 (3rd). Obviously missing a few games with injury.
 
Volin's a dolt. Notice he didn't say "I talked to people in the org who feel this way," etc. He's coming to a conclusion on his own and common sense tells me he's wrong because the snaps indicate a player who's trusted plenty.

 

[TheoShmeo]

I think it was reasonable to conclude from Volin's piece that he had more to go on than what we could all see when we watched the games. 
 
Volin should have written "Based on X and Y, I think it's reasonable to conclude that Z" rather than putting it out there as if he had some silver nugget that he wasn't sharing with us. 
 
Down with Volin.

 

[Shelterdog]

Well, we have an answer.  Volin answered my question on Twitter:
 
https://twitter.com/BenVolin/status/428579270257295360

 
Great work. Holy shit Volin is worthless.

 

[CaptainLaddie]

Worthless is probably a strong word.

 

[mandro ramtinez]

That sort of hackery shows how lucky the Globe and readers were to have Bedard while he was there.  Bedard showed his work and seemed to base his opinions on worthy research.

 

[Dogman]

Worthless is probably a strong word.

 
I'd agree that it may not fit him just yet.  If his work continues like this, he may well earn that moniker pretty quickly.

 

[Koufax]

Bedard-lite might be more accurate.

 

[Stitch01]

I think looking at snaps and targets and digging around to see if there was a story there would have been perfectly fine.
 
I think presenting Brady losing trust in Amendola as a fact based solely on targets and playing time is a pretty bad job.

 

[Eddie Jurak]

I think looking at snaps and targets and digging around to see if there was a story there would have been perfectly fine.

I think presenting Brady losing trust in Amendola as a fact based solely on targets and playing time is a pretty bad job.
I think Amendola's problem was very obviously the injury.

How often did Brady throw to Amendola on quick slants? Lots in game 1, when Amendola caught 10 passes, was the hero, and got hurt. Pretty much never again for the rest of the season.

 

[Shelterdog]

Worthless is probably a strong word.

 
Perhaps but he presented his opinion as fact on a pretty important issue.