Is Tom Brady part of the issue in New England? Is it possible? Is his arm still up to it? No, I think Brady is still all right, and will continue to be so for another 2-3 years (wow, let that settle in for a second).
But, looking at the picture on a whole, things seem a bit more disturbed. Tom is being hurried, and no QB likes being uncomfortable and required to deal with a crumbling pocket and minuscule windows to throw the ball, even Brady. Predominantly, Brady who is known for his statuesque pocket poise firing TDs from a small 2 foot box behind the center. But he is not getting the protection that he has become accustomed to in his 13 years as a Patriot. The Patriots O-line is no longer nearly as good as it once was.
They wanted to get him filled in with some nice long ball threats for him to sail down the sidelines, but when the O-line is collapsing like a sand castle around you, and you don’t have the time to launch it deep, it clearly excludes the big time vertical passing game they wanted to add in this offseason.
The Patriots offense has gone through obvious alterations in the last several seasons. But have the Pats become too comfy with their position? Have other teams begun to get more comfortable with the Patriots as well? Is their era of being a 12-14 win team starting to phase out? No team stays on top forever, and Belichek has had nothing short but an astonishing run with the Pats in his tenure as Head Coach. But the Pats aren’t that routine blowout victor anymore. They are certainly to be respected, but they don’t make teams tremble like they used to. Especially, again, without a genuine RB to carry the ball, teams know they are going to chuck the ball 38+ times, regardless of the game conditions. It makes a team slightly easier to prepare against, especially a young team, that’s recently developing, with a 35 year old non mobile QB.
The Wes Welker situation hasn’t been easy to deal with, Welker, who was reborn in New England, is 31 years old, and they are going in another direction, that doesn’t include his game style any longer. They signed on 29 year TE Kellen Winslow, in frantic necessity of a TE. Who, in his career, has amassed a total of only 23 TDs, averaging 62 catches a season. The big sign, in WR Brandon Lloyd, they hoped would become the perilous deep threat that Brady hasn’t had since Moss in 2007-2009.
New England losing TE Aaron Hernandez with his ankle injury is a severe blow to the Pats. In 2011, he was 47% of the TE receptions on the team, as well as careening in 7 TD catches as well, 3rd on the team. Simply put, out of Brady’s 611 passes attempted last year, 237 were attempted to either Gronk or Hernandez.
Ya, 39% of his pass attempts.
The schedule is problematic for New England during the 1st half of the season, in December a very tough patch. A cornered animal is always dangerous; are we sure we want to see the Pats cornered, maybe sitting at 7-5 and needing a big run to make the playoffs late? Would you completely count them out?
It’s still very early to kick them to the side, and I don’t expect them to be rolling along at peak performance yet. We shall see again, during the stretch in November and going forward when they have 10-11 games under their belts with each other, maybe we will all be talking different about the Pats. Or, maybe not, will it be too late?
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