Defense Struggles as Patriots Fall to Rams 36-35

But he made Gronkowski WORK for it.

GB-Indy combining for 83 points and 48 first downs. That is NOT a misprint.

The play itself concerns me far less than the attitude we saw after the D started getting a little sick of getting beat.

There was clearly no aggressive game plan. They played soft zone coverage inside the 5 yardline, and I didn’t see a single blitz that isn’t a standard Madden play.

If this defensive trend continues, the knock on this team is going to be “if you get up on them early, they’ll lie down and die.”

that the offense going 3 and out very frequently before that TD drive by brady, did not help the defense one bit.

The offense has to do it’s part.

I like Banta-Cain and Murrel.

Burgess didn’t do that much imo, even if he was only back for 10 days, I think to have seen more from him skill wise that may be better than murrel…

And obviously not too many people are noticing because the overall D performance was so poor, but Bradford almost never had a completely comfortable pocket. Credit to him for making so many fantastic reads and check-down throws, but the much-discussed need for a pass rush really isn’t playing out the way the “experts” thought it would.

TBC, Warren, Burgess, Pryor, Spikes, Murrel etc. are generating a pass rush just fine.

…but here’s what I wrote at the Ram’s blog:

“Brady only played late into the game because all of his drives, before his final, (resulting in either a punt or a touchdown) were 5 plays or under. I’ll repeat: The Patriots drives were all 5 plays or under. So while the game was high scoring, Brady really only had a seriously limited number of snaps.

Each pre-season game for the Patriots Offense has a different focus. Game 1 against the Saints was an attempt to try out new players against top competition. Game 2 against the Falcons was an attempt to get the running game working. This game against the Rams was to try and get Brady’s long ball back. You’ll notice that most of his passes were 20+ yards down the field- which also led to many 3-outs. Last year, Brady was extremely out of sync with his receivers, so he’s trying to get back some of the spark from 2007. The only problem is, if he throws a "successful" pass, that means the Patriots score a touchdown. That means that Brady doesn’t really get many reps. Which is why he stayed in the game so long."

So yeah. Brady played 18 snaps in the first half. 18. That’s ridiculous. The Patriots were working on the mid-long throws, which is why there were so many 3-outs. I wouldn’t worry about the offense.

The defense however…they’re in for a rough week.

saw him get burned 3 times on 3rd downs

we didn’t just see O’Brien Part II … pass pass pass predictable predictable predictable. I believe they had 9 running plays at the start of the 4th quarter.

regardless of what game it is. I hope to see some cuts today in response to this poor performance. And, that should help to remind the remaining players that their roster spot is also being assessed.

This team does not enjoy the privelege of turning it on and off as they freely choose. They were hammered last year by the Ravens to end the season. They have slipped into the second tier and no longer receive “elite status” billing from pundits across the NFL.

All that is fine – could be a posiitve – but it certainly reiterates the importance of their playing consistently and with passion every time they take the field.

After the 1st two games this young defense was looking pretty good, looking really sound. Obviously that’s inflated due to the preseason games and perhaps BB saw over confidence in his guys.

Or maybe he wanted to see what they can do from a base D standpoint versus a D game planned specifically for that opponent.

What ever it was, I’m about 85% sure BB was hoping to have film to work with this week -too much confidence too soon is a bad thing.

I agree with Dr Hill’s offensive assessment – I’m not crazy about the production of it but the theory fits to me. Defensively I think BB really wanted to give the boys something to work on.

It was nice to see Tate have some highlights. I’m just glad Tate didn’t slug Steve Burton for touching his ice during the post game interview.

but the 1st two games, the pats d had seen then in practice and for this game they prob didn’t have a good game plan for the game