Ask Pats Pulpit

Never found her all that attractive. On a football note, how do you feel about Moss leaving, and how has it affected the team? Also, how’s the Defense? I haven’t payed much attention this year but the great Pats teams of a few years ago were built on their D. Has the team’s philosophy changed?

The rookie OLB Cunningham had a very impressive strip-sack of Flacco after shucking Michael Oher (which is saying something). He also drew a flag when he got around Oher and Oher was basically forced to tackle Cunningham instead of giving up the sack. He also was the direct cause of two interceptions in previous games – he got a body on the QB mid-throw both times, resulting in misfires that were picked off. His snap-count keeps increasing each week, so his output should also increase.

Banta-Cain has 2 sacks on the season and shows savvy in getting to passers (but he’s a bit limited against the run). Gerard Warren’s shown some grunt on passing downs, too, with 2 sacks to his credit – surprising, given he’d never played 2-gap 3-4 before.

Overall, they’re getting just enough pass-rush to keep QBs off-balance and occasionally uncomfortable. Given the age of the D, it really ought to improve – they’re very athletic (far faster than previous Pats defences, anyway), and their skills and overall tightness as a unit should improve with time and experience.

Pats fans have a unique appreciation of the value of 3-4 Nose Tackles, so I’m sure that’s taken into account.

Merriman? Eh. Brady’s one of the best (if not the best – Aaron Rodgers thinks so) of being pocket-aware, so while Merriman’s absence is fine, I’m not sure Brady would lose sleep over his presence, either.

The potential loss of Gates is huge – the Pats surrendered a TD to Jermaine Gresham in week 1, 100+ yards and a TD to Dustin Keller against the Jets in week 2, some key third down plays to Anthony Fasano against the ’Phins in week 4, and some big conversions and a TD to Todd Heap in week 6 against the Ravens. The better TEs have shown Pats to be vulnerable at times, mainly because the Safety the Pats used in one-on-one matchups to great success in 2009, Brandon McGowan, is on injured reserve.

As for not having to face Floyd and/or Jackson – phew. The Pats secondary is thin and young – two first-year CB starters (a rookie and 2009 special teamer), a first-year SS starter (2009 special teamer), and third-year Safety Brandon Meriweather, who’s gone from being a 2009 Pro Bowl player to being a guy who’s been benched several times for ad-libbing horrible plays, making horrible shots on players and generally playing stupidly.

RG is Steve Neal, who’s solid in the run game and pretty good at pass protection. The knock on Neal is that he’s fragile – he’s 34 and has missed at least several games (and many plays during games) over the last few years situationally.

C is Dan Koppen, and he’s a worry. He’s caught the eye in a bad way lately – he surrendered two sacks personally last week (although partly due to being beaten up by that freak Haloti Ngata), and is generally being manhandled in a way that’s uncommon for Pats linemen. He’s getting on in age and has lost a step, which is less than ideal. Still has decent technique, but the horsepower is lacking.

Average age is somewhere around 25 years old for our defense.
Ty Warren, Leigh Bodden and Brandon McGowan are all on IR (drops the average age 0.3 years right there).

In the last game, McCourty (a rookie), Butler (2nd year), and Mayo (3rd year) played all of the snaps.

At times, they play like they’re young. At times, they play like any Bill Belichick coached defense.
They’ve played pretty well the last couple of games, but the Chargers should be a good test for them.

with emphasis on taking away the opposition’s best weapon and forcing them onto plan B or C. They did it successfully in week 1 and negated the Bengals rushing game; week 2 they took Shonn Greene out of the game and forced the Jets to use Sanchez (unfortunately for the Pats, Sanchez did well). Week 3 they restricted the Bills run-game and cut down CJ Spiller (although he scored on STs); Week 4 against the ’Phins they shut down the Ronnie Brown/ Ricky Williams combo pretty effectively. Week 5 they took Ray Rice out of the game – he only ran at 3.1 ypc, and the Ravens overall ran at less than 3ypc.

For the Chargers, then, I’d expect particular emphasis at taking Ryan Matthews away (and thus negating the Phillip Rivers playaction and all that), and probably some emphasis on taking away Gates via TE-eating sub-packages. That’d invite Rivers to spray it around to all his WRs – which he’s probably capable of – but as a philosophical idea Belichick always intends to take away the oppositions best weapon, and if he can manage it, the second-best, too.

In that vein, you might see a lot of the ‘Big Nickel’ package they used against the Bengals – four 3-4 D-linemen on the line (instead of 2 D-line and 2 OLB/DEs), and then a Strong Safety (perhaps Jarrad Page) lined up on Gates one-on-one the entire game in order to plug him in on the snap.

It’ll be interesting, however – the Pats might try to blitz the Chargers to disrupt Rivers. I could see this as a possibility, but I’m not sure Belichick will be sold on the blitz given how occasionally ineffective it’s been thus far. I’d tend towards taking away the Chargers toys instead of trying to flatten Rivers at this point in time, just because the blitz hasn’t worked so well (and the regular pass-rush has done okay).

A Jersey thing, or a jersey thing?

The 4 seeded Bolts will host the 5 seed Pats and then, the team will be on its yearly roll.