Patriots 23 Ravens 20: Grading the Offense

brady’s game wasn’t nearly as bad as his passer rating. passer rating is stupid. for example, if one of those picks is dropped, and his rush TD was actually considered a pass TD, his rating jumps to 80. stats can lie. after the game, when i heard him say “i sucked,” i was pretty much in agreement with him. but then i watched the game again a couple of times and it really was a fairly solid performance. don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t by any means great, but he wasn’t awful, either.

quite frankly, he only made 3 bad throws. the miss to gronk, and the two picks. i hammer him on the decision for the first pick (a floater to 5’8 julian edelman), but even so, that was a great athletic play by lardarus webb. if you go back and watch the game tape, the second pick was a bad throw – but the play was actually there as slater had separation to the outside. not a bad decision, but a bad throw. and again, it was another great play by the defense. most of the time, those 2 balls fall incomplete. give the ravens some credit.

his overall impact on the game was fine. they moved the ball at will against the ravens D, until the red zone. very uncharacteristic of them, but they still went 2/5, which is 40%. and for the 3 FGs, each of those drives in the red zone had a drive killing play (sack, tipped ball, running play just short). that’s what this ravens D does, and why they were #1 in red zone percentage for a reason. and let’s not forget that when he needed to respond (after the woodhead fumble/fg, 20-16), the pats immediately drove down the field for a TD.

we’ve set the bar so high, it’s incredible. i fully expect a monster game from brady in the superbowl.

if they stayed with the run. BJGE was ripping off 7+ yard carries with great run blocking. The O-line was dominating the Ravens D most of the day. When the run game is going that well, why stop doing it? Do it until they stop you two times in a row. They did stuff a couple runs (mostly woodhead) but rarely two in a row. The strength of two TE’s is the defense has to consider the pass and the run. This is how Gronk routinely gets wide open or routinely eliminates a LB from a run play. I can’t complain too too much because they did run the ball more than usual (in the first half). But they should have used it more in the 2nd half. I think it would have opened up some things in the passing game, as well as tired the Ravens more and kept them off balance.

Most teams whose O scores 23, leading a game-winning drive to comeback in the 4th Q – they’d be happy. A C+ or B-. (But maybe a C for Brady by himself due to turnovers)

A lot of analysis for this game was simple – Protect Brady and we will win.
We did protect Brady against one of the best pressure fronts in the league, but we didn’t anticipate Tom being so inconsistent. Still, our O-line won the day, and if we do that again, we will be feeling good.