10 Things We Learned Yesterday
In no particular order, here are 10 things we learned about the Patriots in yesterday’s game, a 10-0 win over the Buffalo Bills:
1. No Patriots’ fan should be shocked at the outcome of yesterday’s Miami-New York game. Brett Favre could have been Rick Waits to a generation of New England football fans, saving the day and allowing the locals to stretch out the season into January. Instead, he was, well … Brett Favre, slinging the ball recklessly much of the afternoon and giving everyone heart palpitations. He ended up going 20-for-40 for 233 yards, one TD and three interceptions on the way to a loss to Miami that ultimately doomed both the Jets and the Patriots to a January free of football. Thus, the season for New England, which, despite going 11-5, will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2002 … which was the last time the Patriots needed help from Favre to get into the playoffs. New England didn’t get any help from No. 4 in 2002, and he damn sure didn’t give them much help yesterday. “As disappointed as we are that the season is over, I remain very proud of this team,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said in a statement issued by the team last night. While Miami takes home the AFC East title, they become the first NFL team since the 1985 Denver Broncos to win 11 games and not make the playoffs. However, you will hear no complaining from New England, who will watch an eight-win team — San Diego, which clinched the AFC West title last night — go to the postseason. “It’s the way the system is set up,” shrugged fullback Heath Evans after learning about the outcome of the Jets game. “People complained about the BCS for years. I don’t think there is going to be a cure. You are going to have different division winners with different records. The AFC East was a tough division this year with some good teams. You can’t say enough about the Dolphins doing what they have done this year and coming so far in a year. So, hopefully they will represent this conference well and the division well and go far.”
2. While there will be disappointment over not making the postseason, it’s important to remember that the Patriots ended the year playing their best football. Even though it was a case of too little, too late, yesterdays win over Buffalo put the capper on a very good month for the Patriots. It marked the first four-game winning streak of the season for New England. The Patriots averaged 33 points per game in the month of December, and allowed just seven offensive TDs over the four-game span. There were missteps, but for the most part, New England played controlled, efficient football over the final month of the regular season. They weren’t playing world-beaters by any stretch — only one team of the four will be headed to the playoffs — but after getting backed into a corner, the Patriots ran the table in December. “I am definitely happy with how we finished down the stretch,” said running back LaMont Jordan of New England, which is now 24-2 since 2003 in the month of December. “We finished strong. After our last loss, we knew that we needed to win the rest of our games to even have a shot. We knew if we lost one more game we would be finished. I think it showed the focus of the team. I think it showed how committed we were to winning.”
3. In the most important game of the season, two of the most important guys on the field for the New England offense were … Heath Evans and Russ Hochstein? Evans was the leading receiver, with a pair of first half catches that went for a career-high 31 receiving yards, but his biggest contributions came in the running game. That’s where he was at his straight-ahead best, helping clear the way for 168 rushing yards. (Sammy Morris had 85 yards and Jordan ended up with 64 yards and a touchdown.) Hochstein was also a big part of the success of the ground game — a week after becoming an offensive spare part that helped give the New England running game a boost against the Cardinals, the versatile lineman was everywhere again yesterday against the Bills, doing his part to keep the Patriots season alive.
4. If yesterday marked his final game in a New England uniform, Matt Cassel will leave Patriots’ fans with a positive memory. For Cassel, the year began in earnest with a forgettable exhibition outing in Tampa where the ex-backup was hooted at by “analysts” Marshall Faulk and Sterling Sharpe on the NFL Network. “This guy could not get this team a win if Tom Brady got hurt and they had the lead,” chuckled Faulk that evening, a night where Cassel struggled to go 6-for-10 for 57 yards passing in a 27-10 loss to the Bucs. Yesterday, his season ended as one of the hottest potential free agent quarterbacks in the league. He’ll likely finish in the Top 5 in the AFC in passing yards, touchdowns and overall passer rating — overall, he was 327-for-516 for 3,693 yards, 21 touchdowns and 11 interceptions on the season — and will command great attention if he hits the open market. It has been a long, surreal season for Cassel, who idly speculated about his journey after yesterday’s game. “I didn’t know how this year was going to go when it all started,” said Cassel, who went 6-for-8 for 78 yards yesterday. “I stepped into this role, and I had some big shoes to fill. But to come out here and put ourselves into position to possibly be in the playoffs and to win 11 games was a big accomplishment, not only for myself, but also this team and this organization.”
5. Matt Cassel can punt. It was a pretty good day for the New England special teamers. In the savage winds, Stephen Gostkowski connected on two of three field goals, and Chris Hanson averaged 45 yards on three punts. In addition, they limited dangerous kick returner Leodis McKelvin to just five yards on one return after a November game where he had three returns for 138 yards. (There was a possible McKelvin fumble recovery on a punt return with just over nine minutes left in the first quarter that was botched by Matthew Slater, but it didn’t come back to haunt the Patriots.) One of the biggest special teams moments of the year likely came when Cassel delivered a surprise quick kick on a third down with 5:16 left in the fourth quarter and the Patriots up 13-0. The ball was drilled perfectly, carrying nicely with the wind gusts. It ended up being a 57-yarder that was eventually downed on Buffalo’s two-yard line, effectively ending any shot the Bills had of scoring. Belichick said Cassel did a “great job” with the punt — the first surprise kick from a New England quarterback since Tom Brady delivered a 36-yarder against Miami back on Dec. 7, 2003. “I was a punter in high school,” Cassel told reporters after the game. “I think I have a pretty good average right now, so I might be looking to switch over.” The biggest wind-related compliment after the game came from Belichick who praised Hanson for delivering a 46-yard boot in the second half. “To me, the play of the game was Hanson’s punt,” Belichick said. “In those conditions, that punt was a hell of a kick.”
6. When it comes to Bill Belichick, it’s always important to remember history. The wind, clocked at 55 MPH, tilted the goalposts and played havoc with both offenses all afternoon. Early on, both sides were reticent to try and pass — there were only eight pass attempts total in the first half, the lowest amount in an NFL game since 1991. No one attempted a pass into the wind until the 5:09 mark of the third quarter, when Cassel found Wes Welker for an 11-yard gain on a key 4th and 5 situation. The conditions had Belichick thinking about another wind-swept afternoon, the NFC Championship Game between New York and Washington held at the Meadowlands on Jan. 11, 1987. As a Giants assistant coach that afternoon, he saw New York take the wind, putting up 17 first-quarter points. As a result, the Giants were able to dictate the tempo and blow out the Redskins. So it wasn’t a shocker when the Patriots won the coin toss, but decided to defend the south goal at Ralph Wilson Stadium and take the wind. “I’ll never forget that game, and I’ll never forget that decision that [Giants coach Bill Parcells] made in that game,” Belichick told reporters after the game when he was asked about the 1987 contest. “I thought about that before this game. This wind was every bit as strong as that game, maybe even stronger.” (For what it’s worth, New England’s last four regular-season games were played in a back-to-back rainstorms, a furious snowstorm and wind gusts that reached 55 MPH. Talk about finishing the season in style.)
7. Doesn’t matter who you’re playing against — allowing just two touchdowns over nine-plus quarters is good defense. There were two meaningless touchdowns in the last 2½ games — garbage-time TDs by the Raiders and Cardinals — but in the last two-plus games, the New England defense has played very well when it has counted. The Patriots pitched a shutout yesterday, their first of the season. (In fact, it was New England’s first shutout since blanking Green Bay 35-0 on Nov. 19, 2006. Overall, the shutout was the sixth for the Patriots since Belichick became head coach in 2000.) Against the Bills, the best defensive player for the Patriots was defensive lineman Jarvis Green. Playing in place of Richard Seymour, Green had a pair of sacks. The first one was the most important — in the third quarter, Green neatly beat Buffalo left guard Derrick Dockery, slipping into the Buffalo backfield and delivering a strip sack on the blind side of Buffalo QB Trent Edwards. Mike Vrabel recovered the ball at the Bills’ 43-yard line to give possession to the Patriots, and set up a touchdown drive that ended with a two-yard scoring run by Jordan. Green added another sack in the fourth quarter to record his fourth career multiple-sack game and his first since the 2007 regular-season opener.
8. Jerod Mayo may have had the most impactful rookie season of any Patriot in the Belichick Era. The rookie inside linebacker finished a great first year yesterday against the Bills, registering with seven tackles. He was at his best when he tracked down Edwards from behind in the fourth quarter, chasing him down just beyond the line of scrimmage — Mayo just missed a sack, as Edwards gained a yard, but the play showcased Mayo’s terrific speed. Over the course of the season, Mayo took on more and more responsibility, and played almost 95 percent of all the snaps. He finished the year with a team-leading 136 tackles. While the future of veterans like Tedy Bruschi and Junior Seau remains a question mark, it appears Mayo will be the bedrock that the New England linebacking corps will be built around for the next 10 years.
9. The Patriots won’t be challenged by the Bills any time soon. Where to start with Buffalo? There was hideous clock management at the end of the first half that cost them a shot at a field goal before halftime. How about the play-calling? And they did a poor job of maximizing their chances when they had the wind at their backs.
10. In the end, without Brady, these Patriots were very good, but not great. And in New England, where the bar is always set higher than almost anywhere else, that’s probably going to mean the 2008 season will ultimately be remembered as a mild disappointment. Any team loses its No. 1 quarterback on opening day, sends 14 players to injured reserve and trots out a whopping 43 different starters over the course of a 16-game season but still finishes 11-5 would be celebrated as one of the feel-good stories of the NFL season. And many aspects of the 2008 Patriots deserve to be celebrated, particularly their resilience and determination. “You look at all the good things that came out of the season, everything we overcame from Week 1 and then losing Rodney (Harrison) and losing Adalius (Thomas) and losing Laurence (Maroney),” Evans said. “I’m proud of this team, proud of this coaching staff. We’d love to keep playing, but you’ve got to keep your head high.” But in New England, if you don’t make a serious run at a title, the season is considered a bummer, and Sammy Morris said as much. “I don’t think we started off saying we wanted to be 11-5 or whatever. We want to win the Super Bowl,” Morris said last night after it was determined that the season was done. “Eleven and five on paper is a good record, but, again, it’s not good enough.”
Christopher Price has covered the Patriots for Boston Metro since 2001. His book, “The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower” is current available from St. Martin’s Press in paperback. He can be reached at christopher.price@metro.us.
