Sunday, September 09, 2007

Off to a Good Start

The Pats looked sharp and only had a couple of blunders on their way to dismantling the Jets. There were a couple of mistakes made and timeouts wasted because plays were not given to Brady in a timely manner, but that is to be expected in week one. All in all it was a great day in Patriots Nation.

First let's look at what went right:

The Randy Moss I told you about in training camp has officially arrived in the regular season. I was shocked to find out that his 183 yds is the most in one game in his career.

The O-line was FANTASTIC protecting Brady. If he gets that kind of time all year the Pats will go undefeated.

The D was stout against the run and did a pretty good job on the Pass rush.

Besides his drop, Welker showed his value.

Sammy Morris looked good running the ball and on special teams.

Dumb play by Hobbs to carry the kickoff out from 8 yds deep but it all worked out for him.


Was there any bad to speak of in this game?

Chad Pennington had his way with the Pats secondary, going 16 of 21 for 167 and 2 TD's. Thats 10 yds/completion and a whopping 76% completions. The Pats better improve that before the likes of Palmer and Manning come calling.

Some of the guys I watched the game with commented on something we saw last year that was evident again today. It weemed like the O-line didn't block well for Maroney, but when Morris got carries there were gaping holes. The same seemed true to us last season with Dillon getting holes. Regardless, Maroney was thoroughly unimpressive and I hope it ws a matter of the Jets gameplainning to stop him. He was not explosive, decisive nor impactful. I wonder if he's still a little hurt. Not much else was wrong with the Pats game today.



Let's not get carried away, it's one game and like I mentioned in my season preview, the Jets aren't that good. It was a good start, something to build on, something for the Bolts to think about for next Sunday.

One last tangent if I may.

Look, I'm the biggest opponent of Pennington when he's playing against us, but I've got to give the guy credit. He makes very accurate passes to make up for his lack of arm strength. He plays with heart and determination and today he even played hurt. The Jets fans are a bunch of Jackasses for cheering when Pennington got hurt and struggled to get to the sidelines under his own power. Then they cheered even louder when Kellen Clemens, his backup, took the field. That was absolutely classless of the Jets fans. Nobody wants to win more than Pennington and that's what he gets for it. Was it Pennington's fault the Pats put 38 on the board against Manjuvenille? Typical New Yorkers.

2 comments:

Russ said...

I agree on the secondary, I didn't think they were very impressive at all. I'll add the caveat that I only got to see the game in tiny snippets, and the only full drive I got to see was the first Jets touchdown where Pennington picked apart the Pats secondary like a pee wee squad. All the times I saw Maroney, I was really unimpressed. I almost hope he's still hurt and that his performance is going to get better.

Mike said...

I couldn't agree more. That was absolutely classless of the Jets fans. They should be ashamed of themselves, but I fear that New Yorkers don't know what shame is.

Please just give Macaroney a hole to run through at least a couple times so we can see what this kid actually has. It seems like as soon as he gets the ball he hits the wall of guys. Not even LT could do anything with that blocking.