Questions, questions …

By Os Davis  |   Tuesday, September 23, 2008  |  Comments( 5 )

New England Patriots
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It was a matter of time before someone from our instant history age applied superlative status to an off-Sunday. ESPN's Chris Berman proclaimed Monday that this coming weekend marks the most important bye week ever for the New England Patriots.

A bit more down to earth on the subject after the 38-13 Sunday shellacking doled out to the Pats by Ronnie Brown – sorry, the Miami Dolphins – was Rodney Harrison: “I'm always going to enjoy my bye week. You work hard. All the guys put in a lot of effort. You're not going to come in and win every single game. It's just not going to happen, so you learn from the mistakes you had and you get better. That's life and that's the nature of this game. You get better. You get bitter or you get better, or you get both."

Commentary: After the New England faithful ended the Sunday debacle at Foxborough by – incredibly enough – booing their boys, most New Englanders are certainly hoping master Bill Belichick emerges after two weeks with suitable tweaks to his game plan. One loss, and Patriot backers have questions like:

• Will Laurence Maroney be ready? And where is Kevin Faulk? Just after it seemed as though Belichick & Co. were ahead of the current vogue to divide running chores between two studs by essentially employing four specialists, Maroney went down (again) and Faulk was next to nowhere to be seen. Going with a two-headed “monster” of Sammy Morris and Lamont Jordan resulted in a running game that earned fewer yards than Ricky Williams. Winning in the NFL without a passing or running attack is pretty difficult.

• How can Randy Moss be used properly? It all looked so good: A pumped-up Moss catching short passes on in-routes, easily burning defenders before the double team could set. Then the first Patriots drive ended, the rout was on, and the media buzzards started circling over Moss’ attitude. Ugly.

In 2001, the Patriots and young Tom Brady switched to a palette comprised mostly of the in- and cross-routes over the middle as in that first drive on Sunday. In 2006, when the depth chart at WR in New England was topped by Reche Caldwell, the New England brain trust squeezed a crazy amount of success out of three-tight end sets and player substitutions. With certain key positions paper thin this season (two active TEs?), the latter is clearly not an option, while employment of the former served only to show Matt Cassel’s limitations as a quarterback.

• What happened to you, coach? Aside from his meetings with Mike Shanahan, it ain’t often that Belichick is out-coached. Of course, to err as an NFL coach is to punish, and thus Harrison may not be enjoying his bye week so much after all.

The fans should be optimistic, though, because here’s to thinking they could see a dandy couple of trick plays from the offense when the Patriots take the field in two weeks against a soft San Francisco defense.

• Was the lack of morale a one-game thing? You didn’t need the hype to perceive the rapid, deep demoralization setting in among the Patriots while Brown and one insane game plan gradually took them apart. You don’t need to get too abstract to realize the impact Brady’s absence is having on this team. And you've gotta wonder if this very obvious psychological hurdle will be overcome.

• It’s nothing to worry about, because this sort of thing happens all the time, right...? Right? Hello? Coach Belichick ...?

Fantasy Football Impact: Damn, what a mess the 2008 Patriots – who claimed two of the top 10 draftees in most any fantasy league – have become. Suddenly, nobody seems a viable starter except maybe the Wes Welker, and he only amassed 74 total yards against Miami; in one particularly point-stingy league, Welker’s performance equaled two fantasy points.

While clever observers of the RealFootball365.com in-house league should have seen Jabar Gaffney’s touchdown coming this week (Os Davis’ team released him before the game, you see), surely this won’t be happening too often. Going into the bye, Cassel seems to be getting as many virtual pink slips as he got pickups the prior week.

Owners of Patriots may enjoy the bye week like Harrison. As for Week 5, the 'DST' should run up a few sacks and interceptions against J.T. O’Sullivan and the 49ers. Other than that, wait and see on every other Pat. Except Welker, maybe. And perhaps Morris ...
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's ...
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