It had been 11 years since Patriots’ fans watched their team lose a season opener. It was 2003 and Drew Bledsoe and the Buffalo Bills decimated the Patriots, 31-0. It was so long ago that Tom Brady is the only player still on the Patriots’ roster that was there. While Sunday’s 33-20 loss to the Miami Dolphins doesn’t look as bad on paper, it certainly felt just as bad. The first half was fine, as the Patriots’ took a 20-10 lead into the locker room. Two guys returning from injury, Shane Vereen and Rob Gronkowski, each found the end zone and the re-vamped Patriots’ defense came up with a couple turnovers that led to points. If it hadn’t been for a blocked punt that gave the Dolphins the ball in the red zone, the score could have been 20-3. All was going just fine until the teams took the field for the second half.
The dolphins marched into the red zone on their first possession but settled for a field goal, making it a one-possession game. On the ensuing possession, Tom Brady was strip sacked and Ryan Tannehill found Mike Wallace for the game-tying touchdown three plays later. The Pats got the ball back and were punting just one minute later after going three and out. The Patriots would pick up just one first down in their next four possessions, punting all four times. Their next first down came at the 2-minute warning, when they were down by 10 and out of timeouts. Though the run-defense was atrocious in this game, I have a hard time blaming them when the offense moved the chains just one time from the start of the second half until the two-minute warning. In fact, the Dolphins scored two of their three touchdowns directly off of turnovers that resulted in field position inside the Patriots’ 35. So I’m going to go ahead and put this loss on the offense.
There are only two games in my memory that I’ve seen Brady look as bad as he did in the second half on Sunday. The first was the aforementioned season-opener in Buffalo when he was in his third season as a starter. The second was in November of 2010 when the Patriots travelled to Cleveland and got shellacked by the lowly Browns, 34-14. With a quarterback as good as Brady, there is a short list of horrific games and Sunday’s game easily cracks the top three. While a lot of his shortcomings can be blamed on the offensive line (trust me, I’ll get to that), plenty of it was on him.
I find his biggest flaw to be his trust issues. His inability to see past the jersey number of his receivers and just throw to the open man has really hurt his game last season and again on Sunday. Last year I understand that he had a lot of rookies who often dropped the ball, but that doesn’t mean he should be forcing the ball into double coverage to a rusty Gronk. Three times on Sunday Brady locked in on Gronk and threw incompletions into double coverage when he had open receivers elsewhere on the field. Brady completed just four of 11 throws to Gronkowski and five of ten to Kenbrell Thompkins. Meanwhile, newcomer Tim Wright caught every ball thrown his way, including one quite athletic catch, yet Brady gave him just three looks. Amendola was open and ignored on multiple occasions.
What perplexes me most was Brady’s reluctance to go to Julian Edelman in the second half. Edelman is by far the best receiver on the Patriots’ roster and had a great first half on Sunday. He secured six of eight targets and one of those incompletions was a terrible overthrow by Brady. Yet he had exactly zero receptions in the second half and was inexplicably ignored by Brady. Edelman is fully ready to take over Wes Welker’s role as Brady’s go-to guy in mid-range third down situations, Brady just needs to give him the opportunity.
If Brady is going to turn things around he’ll need some help from his offensive line. Football games are won and lost in the trenches, and this game was quite obviously lost up front for the Patriots. Brady was dealing with pressure in his face all day and ended up being hit 26 times in the game. The line wasn’t much better at run blocking as none of the Patriots’ running backs had any space to run. The last thing the Patriots need is to regret trading Logan Mankins. I’m not sure Mankins would’ve been the difference on Sunday given the universal porousness of the line, but he certainly couldn’t have made it any worse.
Minnesota
Now we turn our attention to Minnesota and the Patriots’ week two matchup with Matt Cassel and the Vikings. The Vikings stomped on the St. Louis Rams on Sunday, which isn’t saying much given that the Rams are without a starting quarterback and generally lack talent on offense, but it’s not like the Dolphins are a juggernaut either. The Patriots’ will once again have their hands full with the Vikings’ pass rush, as their head coach, Mike Zimmer, is a specialist in frustrating quarterbacks. He did it to the Patriots last season as the Cincinnati Bengals’ defensive coordinator and will do it again on Sunday. Luckily their secondary is not very talented and the Patriots should be able to create mismatches all over the field. The Patriots will need to establish a running game and make quick passes to throw the Vikings’ pass rush off their game and they should be fine. I can tell you, however, that if Brady drops back to pass 56 times again, he’s going to get pummeled, just like last week.
Defensively the Patriots have two focuses: Adrian Peterson and Cordarrelle Patterson. While guys like Greg Jennings and Kyle Rudolph are certainly not slobs, Peterson and Patterson drive the offense. This will certainly be a test for the Patriots who gave up 191 rushing yards to the Dolphins. Peterson is still the best running back in this league and Patterson, though a wide receiver, ran for 102 yards on Sunday, including a 67-yard touchdown. Vince Wilfork and Joe Vellano will have to step up their game and control the line of scrimmage for the Patriots’ defense. Too many times on Sunday the Dolphins’ running backs were able to travel six or seven yards before feeling any contact. The linebackers will also have to do a better job of shaking blocks and making solid tackles. If the Patriots allow that kind of space for a runner like Peterson, they will be in for an extremely long afternoon.
In the passing game I would like to see Revis get matched up with Patterson and simply eliminate him from the game. His reputation as the best shutdown corner in the game is something that many are doubting he still has and it would be nice to see him give it a shot. With games on the schedule against the likes of AJ Green (Bengals), Brandon Marshall (Bears), Demaryius Thomas (Broncos) and Calvin Johnson (Lions) it would be nice to know that Revis still has that shutdown quality before he takes on that kind of talent.
My Prediction: I’m really nervous about this game to be honest. It’s a sad day to be nervous about Matt Cassel and the Vikings, but the Patriots did almost nothing to inspire confidence. I can see this game going one of two ways. The first is the one Patriots’ fans fear. The offensive line can’t hold up, Brady really is over the hill, and Peterson runs all over the defense as the Patriots get chased out of Minnesota with an 0-2 record. However, I think the more likely outcome is that the Patriots bounce back and put together a much better effort. It was just a few weeks ago that I was writing about this team as a Super Bowl contender, and, on paper, I still believe they are. They have always struggled winning games in Miami and I would like to chalk that season-opener up as a fluke. This team is better than they showed last week and Brady is a lot better than he played. Hopefully the return of Aaron Dobson and Josh Kline can spark the offense to be a bit more consistent. I like the Patriots in a close one 28-24.
Conrad's Corner Sports 