Game Review: Patriots @ Chargers

Our inability to pressure Rivers was our defensive problem. I actually thought the secondary did an ok job considering Rivers had all freaking day to scan the field. On the two big Deltha passes, he did actually have his arms in the mess but wasn’t able to break it up, so I felt he at least was fighting for it.

I didn’t see many Belichick blitzes, so it’s possible that coaching shoulders some of this blame.

Cassel looked horrible…on the 4th and 1 Watson is wide open and he tries to run it in? Cassel seems to have lost confidence in his arm so he just runs instead of trusting his arms and his receivers hands. After the first step there were like 4 chargers on him. On the first play he could have probably scored on a bootleg to the right, but he looked left and then through the ball away. He just does not seem to see the field at all, so he just goes to dump passes because they are safe. He also holds on to the ball too much, refusing to trust his arm or throw it away or to a place where there is a low interception chance. I appreciate Brady more today that’s for sure.

I wanted to support him but I feel like his play was atrocious, when you compare him to Rivers he looked like he was in high school.

I felt our Oline did alright…the running game was generally good for not having good running back depth.

looked confused at times, definitely didn’t get any pressure on Rivers, and with the CB and S situation, PR ate our lunch and took our milk money. Matt still at times has that look and body language like the old dog on the Looney Toons: “Which way did he go, which way did he go?” He is having to learn so much, and I’m not talking about the playbook, he should have extensive knowledge of it, but I mean timing. The only way to get that game speed timing is to play as much as possible. He is still holding the ball a tad longer than he needs, but he got through some of his progression fairly well, just wasn’t anything there. Quentin Jammer put on a pro bowl performance against RM. I don’t know if the coverage was really that great or if Cassel’s ball placement by not getting the ball deep enough had an impact. Just my opinion, Cassel needs to try to overthrow RM and let him run to the ball instead of holding him up waiting on the ball. Getting Randy deep and completing the pass needs to be priority number this week and every week from here on out. Stretch the field, put them on their heels, put in the back of the defenders minds that you can cheat up if you want, but we are gonna burn ya on a long one every chance we get. I’m not ready to give up on these guys yet because I see tons of potential on both sides of the ball. We got to catch a break with the injuries though, or we aren’t going to have any bodies to replace our losses.