Belichick To Roll With Stidham And The Receivers He's Got, Because That Was His Plan All Along

May 8, 2020

So, Bill Belichick didn't select any wide receivers in this year's NFL Draft, but at least he doesn't have Tom Brady around to bitch about it.

In reality, however, Belichick's New England Patriots are pretty stacked at the pass catching positions, so long as his wide receivers and tight ends do the job that they are capable of - but with a new quarterback under center, nothing's a given.

Indeed, the Patriots are entering the 2020 season with plenty of mystery surrounding their receiving corps, with only greybeard Julian Edelman, sophomore Jakobi Meyers and passing back James White the only known quantity - and while we got a little taste of what second-year perimeter threat N'Keal Harry and veteran Mohamed Sanu bring to the field, they are largely question marks...

...as are newcomers Damiere Byrd and Marquise Lee, both with undeniable measurables and speed to burn, but both having underachieved thus far in their brief professional football careers - and the advantage that all of them have is working with the aforementioned new, young quarterback who doesn't seem to have the same obsession with perfection that Brady did.

Not that expecting your receivers to be where they are supposed to be on the route tree is a bad thing, but Brady's heat-of-the-moment, Sam Kinison-style of explosive expression seemed to make his young pass catchers tense up so badly that Harry looked like he was running with a corn cob up his ass near the end of the season.

Stidam is young, so he also needs his receivers to be where he expects them to be, but with the fear of pissing off the greatest quarterback of all time no longer dominating their subconscious minds, maybe they can relax a little and work on their craft instead of running away from it.

I love Tom Brady, make no mistake. What Brady gave to the people of New England - to the entire sports world - was nineteen years of the most clutch performances ever seen. When Brady signed with Tampa, my wife tried to peel the Fathead of Brady off of the cave wall, but I defended it like a wolverine and finally calmed her down enough to allow me to explain to her why it was staying in it's place of honor.

I told her of my admiration of Brady and reminded her of all of the excitement and joy he was responsible for, of how he turned us both into adrenalin junkies by making us stew in anxiety during the two weeks between Championship Sunday and Super Bowl Sunday, then really amped us up by making the crucial plays on the biggest stage in sports to win six of those world titles...

...and having his team in position to steal the three that he lost. He has been the one, lone constant on the field for New England for all nine championship runs, and I am thankful and humbled to have been able to witness every single throw.

One of the best passes I ever saw Brady make was the seriously filthy timing throw on a ten-yard out pattern to Danny Amendola, who was well covered by an Atlanta Falcons' defender on the winning drive in the overtime period of Super Bowl 51. The ball exploded out of Brady's hand with the requisite zip required of such a pattern, but with just barely enough loft to evade the nickelback's fingers...

...the Patriots scoring to win their fifth Lombardi Trophy, Brady taking the opening kickoff of overtime and shoving it down the Falcons' collective throat to complete the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, perhaps the greatest of all time. I recanted the tale to my wife, who looked at me thoughtfully and said, "He's still a dumb-ass for throwing that pick-six right before halftime."

Brady. You either love him or you hate him, but no matter which way you lean, you have no choice but to respect him.

Brady epitomized the not-so-well-worn cliché uttered by the old-school "Voice of God", NFL Films' narrator John Facenda who said, "Great players aren't great all the time; they're just great when they have to be.". My wife understood this, finally, despite being an insane female hybrid of Oscar Zeta Acosta and John Cleese, who would fly into a sputtering, animated rage when Brady threw an interception (see above).

But as crazy as it sounds, the way that Belichick has stocked the offense over the past half-decade was in preparation for life without Brady - unfortunately for Brady, that meant the offensive personnel last season was geared more towards a power-based philosophy, or at least it became that way when the offense lost their center, both fullbacks and Harry for half of the season...

...while Edelman played broken after missing a few games, and Sanu never really became part of the offense, dealing with a bum ankle that required offseason surgery - the tight ends didn't do squat, leaving the undrafted rookie Meyers as the only healthy receiver, making it easy for defenses to take away the Patriots' running game as well.

That said, the caveat for this season's offense will have to be the well-worn cliché "If Healthy".

"If Healthy", the Patriots have the receivers to force any defense to defend the entire field, with Harry working the perimeter, Sanu the intermediate routes, Edelman and Meyers working the middle and either Byrd or Lee clearing out the trash as deep threats. To make matters even worse for defenses, Belichick drafted two capable tight ends to handle the seam and safety valve responsibilities.

And, of course, all of that opens up room for the real star of the passing game, running back James White, who along with his battery mates Damien Harris, Rex Burkhead and Sony Michel, will also work in the power running game behind an offensive line built to plow the row.

All Stidham needs to be is proficient, the rest has been done for him. Just get the ball to where it needs to be and let his weapons be weapons. If he can command his troops on the field, earn their respect and manage the game plans, the Patriots have as good a chance as anyone to win the AFC East.

Belichick Tanking 2020 Season? Complete And Utter Hogwash

May 6, 2020

There's a lot of talk going around in the media that New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick is going to "tank" this season in order to get a high draft pick in the 2021 draft - and the notion is so un-Belichickian that it is prima-fascie absurd...

...a fraud on it's face, and the so-called "AFC Evaluator" who started the rumor is either a complete lunatic, knows nothing about Belichick, or is a disgruntled fan who is in deep mourning over Tom Brady being shown the door - and perhaps a combination of all three. Then again, he could just be some douchebag blogger who cited this unknown and perhaps completely fictional "evaluator" just to gain page views.

The blogging community is full of irreputable frauds who pretend to have some sort of anonymous insider contact, posting outrageous claims and knowing that they have a fifty-fifty chance of being right - and if they are wrong, they can blame it all on their anonymous contact to maintain their own credibility.

At issue, of course, is the minimal trust that most fans and media have in Brady's heir, second-year quarterback Jarrett Stidham, maybe trying to make themselves feel better about the future of the Patriots' offense by presupposing that Belichick is going to tank the 2020 season in order to log such a horrible record that they can select one of the elite quarterbacks coming out of college through the 2021 NFL draft.

But here's the thing, and there's really no getting around it: Jarrett Stidham is the starting quarterback for the New England Patriots, and Bill Belichick doesn't give two shits if you like it or not.

Belichick passed on every quarterback avaiable in the draft, and wouldn't even take calls from the Cincinnati Bengals, who were trying to get any value at all out of mediocre quarterback Andy Dalton before finally releasing him. Belichick hasn't even made inquiries of free agent signal callers Jaiemis Winston or Cam Newton.

Perhaps all of this is why some ding dong started the "tanking" rumor, doing their own demented brand of math to connect the dots - but Belichick would never do such a thing, for several solid reasons...

...the most prominent of which is, well, he's Bill Belichick - and Bill Belichick is all about winning, and the amount of losing it would take to obtain a top-three pick in next year's draft would send him into a spiriling, sputtering funk - and if you think he's terse with the media now, addressing them after losing so many games would be like watching an episode of Judge Judy.

But as bad as that would be, tanking would also destroy the culture of the Patriots that Belichick has propogated for the past two decades.

Losing creates a culture that impacts everything and everyone, from the team owner to the guys cleaning the toilets. Losing is a cancer that invades the very core of a sports franchise, and although he played doctor with the Cleveland Browns back in the mid-nineties and brought the franchise to the brink of remission before being uncerimoniously dismissed, he'd rather not put himself in position where he would have to go through that again.

Not to mention that destroying that culture would have a residual effect of making New England a far less desirable destination for free agents, many of whom in the past have wanted to sign with the Patriots simply to escape losing cultures and to have a shot at a title - not to mention the effect it would have on current players, many of whom have taken less money as a free agent over the years to re-sign with the team.

To lose while being competative is honorable, if also dejecting, but to lose by holding back is sandbagging, a dishonorable ploy that no one except lawyers respect, no matter the advantage it brings.

And about that, Belichick cares very much - but even if he didn't, the idea wouldn't sit too well with the veteran players on his roster, affecting the aforementioned culture to the point that those players wouldn't be racing to get in line for new contracts or extensions to hang around.

To that point, there would eventually be some sort of pushback from the players, and chaos would ensue, eventually driving both them and Belichick himself out the door in short order.

In truth, however, Belichick may have come dangerously close to alienating the veterans on his roster last season, and did alienate Brady - or maybe it was Brady alienating Belichick by showing up at post-game pressers looking like someone pissed in his granola and not so subtly bitching about how inert the offense was...

...which wasn't necessarily by design, as Belichick brought in help in the form of Antonio Brown (briefly) and Mohamed Sanu - but Brown turned out to be a post-juvenile delinquent who was all flash (pun intended) and no substance, while Sanu broke as soon as he arrived in Foxborough and contributed next to nothing.

So, it's not like Belichick didn't try to appease his star quarterback, but injury crippled his offense in a way that nobody could have survived, not even Brady - but the good news was that the Patriots were in every game that they lost, a missed play here and there dooming them to having to play in the Wild Card round of the playoffs and an early exit from the tournament.

And I'm off subject a bit, but it is important to know that Belichick never broke stride in his plan for life after Brady - even to the detriment of the offense last season - and, if Stidham turns out to be a good-to-very-good quarterback in the system that Belichick has set up for him, the Patriots will still be in the hunt for a division title and more.

Early Morning Pondering Of The Patriots' Offense

2:17am, Lewiston, Maine

I stay up late when it's raining. I love the weather here, especially this time of year when we get a good rain storm a couple of times a week and the temperatures dip into the 40's at night. I sit out on the deck that during the daytime treats me to an explosion of color as the leaves turn, but tonight, nothing but the cool blackness that brings me comfort.

I just finished watching the Patriots' victory over the New York Giants for the second time and made many notes, now sitting on the deck, a canopy protecting both man and machine from the weird misty rain that is indigenous to Maine. Every week, I watch the replay twice - first to study the offense and the second to do the same with the defense.

The last three weeks have been a struggle for the Patriots' offensively, but we've seen this before.

In 2015, the New England Patriots made it to the AFC Championship game against the Denver Broncos with Julian Edelman being the only healthy receiver left on the roster and with no lead back to try and take all of the pressure off of quarterback Tom Brady and the passing game.

Brady took an epic beating, yet nearly prevailed anyway on sheer determination and by riding one of the main tenents of Belichickian philosophy, that of wearing down opposing defenses with large snap counts and superior conditioning that eventually gives him the upper hand.

And that's what the Patriots are all about. How many times have we seen the offense seem like they are an 11-man mosh pit early in games and then come on like gangbusters late to overpower their foes?

The most vivid example of this was in Super Bowl 51, where the Patriots were completely dominated by the Atlanta Falcons through most of three quarters, then staged the greatest comeback in NFL post-season history - erasing a 25 point deficit in eighteen minutes of game time...

...the turning point coming at the end of a 13-play drive in the second quarter, Brady throwing an interception in the red zone that was returned by the Falcons for a touchdown - then the Patriots taking the ensuing kickoff and driving down the field again on a 12 play drive.

By the time that 25 play sequence ended on a Stephen Gostkowski field goal to make the halftime score 21-3, the Falcons' defense was so gassed that they just couldn't keep up with the relentless Patriots' offense in the second half, scoring at will after Atlanta had taken a 28-3 lead coming out of the room at halftime - to the point that when the Patriots won the coin flip to start the overtime period, there was no doubt that they would drive the length of the field and win the game.

The same thing happened during last year's AFC Championship game, when New England wore down the Kansas City defense to keep pace with the powerful Chiefs' offense, then scored easily in overtime to advance to Super Bowl 53, where they used the same ploy to wear down the Los Angeles Rams' helter-skelter attack to eventually pull out another title.

It has worked so well for so long that head ball coach Bill Belichick always builds his teams with superior depth on both sides of the ball so he is able to rotate players in and out of the lineup to keep them fresh, maintaining his game plans throughout with the knowledge that his well-conditioned and fresh players will eventually gain the upper hand and crush their opponents into submission in the latter stages.

Other than Brady, the Patriots feature no superstars, just a collection of players who buy into Belichick's philosophy, knowing that if they just continue to stay the course during games, that they will have a chance to win, no matter the opponent - and that's exactly what we are witnessing six games into this 2019 season...

...the main difference between those teams of the recent past and this years' incarnation is that Belichick has finally built a defense that will not allow the Patriots to fall behind, no matter how incongruous the offense looks - and knowing that sticking with their offensive game plan will eventually cause the opposing defense to wear down enough for the aging Brady to work his late-game magic.

That said, the start to this season is the personification of this Belichickian philosophy.

Three yards and a cloud of dust is not just the calling card for the running game, but applies to the offense as a whole. For all of Belichick's tenure, he has stated matter-of-factly that the short passing game is simply an extension of the running game, and he employs running backs who can produce in both facets.

With one notable exception, his receivers have always been of the variety that finds the sticks and make good use of the field between the hashes - his longest gainers usually down the seam, but those are shots taken just a few times per contest, and normally only after Brady has lulled the defense to sleep with his methodical, incessant approach.

The results stemming from this approach usually has the Patriots' offense at or near the top of the league in both plays run and time of possession. You see where this is going.

For example, in last Thursday's match up with the New York Giants, New England ran a whopping 75 offensive snaps, compared to 46 for New York, and the time of possession was fully double that of the Giants. New York played admirably, but deep in their hearts they knew it was for naught...

...that Brady, for as docile and ordinary as he looked, was just setting them up for the kill by running 44 plays in the first half, then finishing them off with an absurd 16 play, sixty yard drive in their only third-quarter possession that kept the Redskins' defense on the field for nearly ten minutes.

That drive resulted in a missed field goal attempt, but the damage was done and the purpose well taken.

That's what New England does to people. That's what they did to Denver in that AFC title tilt in '15 and to Atlanta in Super Bowl 51 and to the Rams last February - and what they have done to every single opponent so far this season, and what they will continue to do to the rest of the teams on their schedule.

And good thing, too, as injuries have dictated to the Patriots' offense in much the same fashion that they did in 2015. In fact, the hurts have left the Patriots' pass catching corps so thin that in the second half against the Redskins, they were left with only one personnel package featuring Edelman and rookies Jakobi Meyers and Gunner Olswezski - not to mention that they were trying to function with only one healthy tight end and no fullback, both staples of the offense.

Even Belichick will have a tough time grinding out yardage and scores with such a bare cupboard, but with ten days off before their Monday night showdown with the hated New York Jets, he has time to develop a game plan to attack a decent Jets' defense.

Time is also on the side of receiver Josh Gordon, who suffered what was apparently an MCL sprain to his left knee on Thursday night - or even work out a pass catcher or two, or maybe even swing a trade for a veteran receiver on another team as Belichick has plenty of capital to barter with, but not a lot of cap dollars to spend.

There is also the presence of rookie wide out N'Keal Harry on the I/R with a bad hammy, who has a designation to return and can do so this week should the team choose to activate him - and there's really no reason not to bring him back to the active roster, unless the hamstring hasn't healed. If it has, he gives the offense a large perimeter target with the skill to haul down those back-shoulder throws that Brady loves.

If nothing else, he's a physically imposing target who specializes in fighting for the ball in the air, with the size and wingspan to collect a good percentage of 50/50 balls - and once he establishes himself as a legitimate threat, just his presence will free up more room for Edelman, Gordon, Meyers and passing back James White to operate in.

It also helps the running game by forcing defenses to eliminate a linebacker in favor of a fifth defensive back, making one less big body for the patchwork offensive line to deal with - and with left tackle Isaiah Wynn eligible to be activated off the IR as well, the protection of Brady's backside and run blocking on the edge would become a strength rather than the weakness that it is now.

Some even want the Patriots to bring back troubled Antonio Brown, citing the fact that New England owes the mercurial receiver a lot of money, so they may as well bring him back and make him earn it. For Brown's part, he has requested that the NFL hurry up and make a decision in regard to punishment for alleged sexual abuse allegations so that he can continue his career without that storm cloud hanging over his head.

Will it happen? Who knows? Certainly none of  us know what goes on behind the closed doors at One Patriots' Place, but the odds are in favor of Belichick running with what he has, using superb running backs James White and Rex Burkhead as wide receivers, which will most likely give the Jets all kinds of knots to untie.

But what they have now should do fine against the Jets, particularly given that the offense shouldn't have to score an exorbitant number of points with their "Boogeyman" defense suffocating opposing offenses.

But that is a topic for another night...