It seems like forever since the New England Patriots were dominated in a football game. In yesterday's 38-13 loss to the Miami Dolphins, dominated doesn't even begin to describe what happened on the field. Miami punched the Pats in the face not once, but, like, 50 times. And each time, New England failed to respond.
The fact that they struggled on offense is not surprising, given the fact that Matt Cassel is playing in place of Tom Brady. However, raise your hand if you thought the defense would have trouble with the Dolphins. Yet, time and time again, play after play, Miami ran the ball down the throats of Bill Belichick's defense. Mortal Ronnie Brown and the infamous Ricky "Don't Bogart that Joint" Williams chewed up six, seven, eight yards at a time. On average, the Pats gave up six yards per carry on the ground! Last year, we were on record as saying Richard Seymour stole money by seldom showing up in games. Yesterday was more of the same. Even worse, teammates Vince Wilfork and Ty Warren joined Seymour in his favorite game of "Yes, I will line up on the field, but I don't really feel like playing today!"
On offense, there are three areas of concern:
1. Cassel was off target on nearly every throw yesterday. Compare that to Chad Pennington, who six weeks ago was unemployed. He completed 17-20 passes (85 percent!). We know Cassel's not Tom Brady. But we shouldn't expect him to throw the ball like Kyle Brady, either.
2. The inability to get the ball to Randy Moss. The Moss Man had (yet) another ho-hum game yesterday -- catching four passes for...wait for it...24 yards. After three games, #81 has 12 catches and one TD. Last year, that was a typical game for Moss. Yes, he is being double teamed, but he has battled that since middle school. At some point Cassel needs to simply heave the ball up and have the confidence that Moss will go get it.
3. How long will Moss be a team player? No one will say it, but all of New England is holding its breath to see if Moss will become Bad Randy. With the Vikings and Raiders, when things didn't go well for Moss, he became, well, he became a turd. Last year, he was the Model Citizen. But it's easy to be that when you and Tom Brady are breaking records left and right. How will Moss respond as losses begin the mount, but receptions don't?!?
Onto the Ryder Cup...
We don't hide our lack of interest in golf (either watching or playing), but we do enjoy the Ryder Cup. Saturday we watched for a bit, in between heavy doses of
college football (shocker!). Yesterday, we digested a lot of the links. During commercials of the Patriots game, we clicked over to the golf. Once the football game was over, we went exclusively with the Ryder Cup. There's something about individuals coming together in the name of Our-Country-is-better-than-your-whole-damn-continent! that makes for fascinating viewing. We are Americans, so we pull for America. Heading into the weekend, we knew a whopping total of four out of the 12 guys playing for the Stars and Stripes: Phil We don't lock in for the entire three days, but we definitely follow and enjoy the Ryder Cup. As W says, God Bless America.
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