By Michael Vallee
-Disqualifier Game: If last week’s game against Seattle was a yardstick game, a game where the Patriots got to measure themselves against the league’s best, this week’s game against the San Francisco 49ers was the opposite. A boring, empty, predictable formality of a 7-2 team yawning its way past a 1-8 mess, enroute to a 30-17 rain-soaked snooze fest. If we learned a lot about the Patriots last week, we learned virtually nothing on Sunday. Why? Because this was a disqualifier game – a game where almost anything that happens is immediately lessened or cancelled out by predetermined facts and perceptions. In other words, everything that happened Sunday has to be judged with the understanding that San Francisco is an awful football team:
-Tom Brady had another monster game throwing for four touchdowns and registering a passer rating of 114.6. Disqualifier: He did it against a god awful 49ers defense that ranks dead last against the pass and has such esteemed names as Nick Bellore, Ronald Blair and Tank Carradine (no relation to Kung Fu Master David Carradine).
-The Patriots rang up 171 yards rushing and averaged an impressive 5.7 yards per carry. Disqualifier: This was also against the pitiful 49ers defense that is also last in the NFL in total defense.
-New England scored 30 points increasing their season average to 27.1 points per game. They are averaging 31.7 points with Brady under center. Disqualifier: See if you can find a theme here. The 49ers also rank last in the NFL in points allowed. Somewhere Ronnie Lott is shaking his head in disgust.
-The Patriots defense held the 49ers to just 299 yards total offense. Disqualifier: The Niners offense is one of the worst in the league and is currently ranked 30th despite having offensive “super genius” Chip Kelly running the show.
-49ers QB and non-voting social justice warrior Colin Kaepernick completed only 8 of 21 passes in the 2nd half for just 90 yards. Disqualifier: Kaepernick sucks and aside from kneeling for the National Anthem he spends most of his Sundays throwing interceptions and losing football games.
-New England’s offense actually went 28 minutes and 24 seconds without scoring a point. Disqualifier: Normally this would be alarming against a team like San Francisco but this stretch occurred during a torrential downpour that was so bad it had Kaepernick gripping the football like it was a cantaloupe.
-The Patriots defense registered a season-high five sacks. Disqualifier: The 49ers have been sacked 26 times this year and their cutting edge Chip Kelly passing offense is ranked 2nd to last in the NFL and their top two receivers are Jeremy Kerley and some guy named Quinton Patton. Somewhere Jim Harbaugh is laughing his ass off.
-WR Malcolm Mitchell had a breakout game with 98 yards receiving including an explosive 56-yard touchdown where he flashed his 4.45 speed by blazing past San Francisco’s defense. Disqualifier: The 49ers cornerbacks are Tramaine Brock, Marcus Cromartie, Dontae Johnson, Keith Reaser and JaCorey Sheppard – two of which went undrafted and none of whom were drafted in the first three rounds.
And on it goes…
That’s what happens when you play a lousy team in lousy weather; you pick up a win and learn next to nothing about your football team. They should have had Leslie Neilsen as Lieutenant Frank Drebin standing in front of the stadium saying, “Nothing to see here, please disperse.” Unfortunately for New England they have some real issues on defense that won’t improve without getting challenged. Since throwing Jamie Collins out with the trash trading Jamie Collins, the Patriots run defense has had more holes than a wiffle ball and Sunday was no exception. San Francisco consistently ripped right through them, exploiting their undermanned linebacking corps and racking up 122 yards. And, since the Collins trade, running backs are also having a field day against New England in the passing game. On Sunday the Niners RBs had a perfect six receptions on six targets for 67 yards and a touchdown. If these stats had a disqualifier it would be this: The Patriots linebackers stink right now and the Elandon Roberts experiment appears to be going up in flames.
And don’t look for any defensive challenges in the near future as New England prepares to play the NFL’s worst (LA Rams) and fourth-worst (NY Jets) scoring offenses over the next two weeks. The best the Patriots can hope for is to simply take care of business and not pull a 2015, when they gave away home-field advantage with a string of bad losses brought on by a series of bizarre coaching decisions. As far as testing themselves and learning anything new about their team, that will have to wait while they finish navigating their way through the NFL’s bottom feeders.
-How the Mighty have Fallen: I bet Seattle has enjoyed the precipitous collapse of the 49ers more than anyone. It wasn’t long ago that San Francisco had a great coach, a dynamic young quarterback and an elite defense and was going toe-to-toe with the Seahawks for NFC supremacy. And then, POOF, the QB’s game vanished, half the defense retired or got arrested and they replaced their coach with some Ron Jeremy look alike. While Seattle probably has derived a lot of pleasure from watching their rival fall I have to think that some small part of them misses the old 49ers. Most people respect a worthy adversary and nothing prepared the Seahawks more for the playoffs than those two battles every year with Harbaugh’s Niners. The Patriots would have benefited if they had a similar situation in the AFC East.
-A lot has been, and will be, speculated about why starter Jabaal Sheard was not only benched but not even allowed on the plane: He has an attitude problem……he is not following his assignments……he is angry about the release of Jamie Collins……the coach is trying to send a message……he told Belichick he voted for Hillary……etc., etc.
I have no idea why one of their best pass rushers is suddenly in Bill’s doghouse but the bottom line is this: Sheard is one of many players on the Patriots defense that is not having a good year and at some point, as those numbers swell, the accountability has to fall on the coaches, including the exalted one, Bill Belichick.
-Hits from the Bong: Let’s see how many different slang words for marijuana we can squeeze into this next story: The Patriots defense took another hit when it was reported Monday that DT Alan Branch was going to be suspended four games for violating the NFL’s wacky tobacky policy. Apparently Branch likes to smoke a little cheeba in his down time. Actually Branch likes to smoke a lot of the laughing grass because in order to get suspended you have to test positive for gange multiple times before you can be suspended. So who looks dumber in this scenario, the NFL or Branch?
Tough call. Let’s hear opening statements:
-NFL: What the hell is the NFL doing still testing for mary jane? And yeah, I get it, any private sports league has the right, through individual contracts or the CBA, to ban anything they want, but that doesn’t mean they should. Testing for sticky icky has not only lost the NFL multiple players to suspension and basically ruined the career of the wildly talented Josh Gordon, but it has been a PR disaster on multiple levels. With many states recently voting to legalize recreational use of the chronic the NFL looks like a stuffy outdated organization that is about 20 years behind the rest of society. You can almost picture them showing the 1930s comically outdated anti-marijuana propaganda film ‘Reefer Madness’ at the rookie symposium. All this policy does is put the words “NFL player” and “marijuana” in the same sentence in multiple news reports for fans and kids to read. How come we never hear about NHL players smoking blunts? Because the NHL doesn’t prohibit the use of pot.
And the NFL looks even worse when you consider the pain factor. When people watched Nick Nolte’s character in ‘North Dallas Forty’ smoking a spliff in a bathtub the day after a game, do you think their reaction was, “It is so morally wrong of him to manage his pain by smoking some hooch” or was their reaction, “The NFL is a brutally violent sport and I totally get why someone would puff a fatty if it in anyway relieved them of their crippling pain”? I have a feeling it’s the latter. And that was not some sensational Hollywood depiction. There have been recent reports that possibly as much as 75% of players smoke doobies, and many don’t do it for social reasons but simply do it to deal with the physical discomfort of playing NFL football. For the league to hand out opioids by the bucket or shoot the players up with god-knows-what, just so they can make it on the field, then tell them they can’t smoke a little homegrown is the worst kind of hypocrisy.
-I’d like to word the Branch argument as an open letter to the player: Dude, what the hell were you thinking? How dumb are you? I know it’s completely unfair that the NFL tests for herb but it’s not like it’s a pop quiz. They only test you guys once a year and they tell you exactly when that test will be. How the hell could you possibly manage to get caught? And if your DUI arrest put you in the substance-abuse program, thus subjecting you to random tests, then here’s an idea – quit. It’s not like bud is addictive. This suspension is going to cost you over a million dollars. That is a shit-ton of money. You couldn’t give up weed for a million bucks!!! Look I ain’t judging you. If you want to puff a little Panama Red or fire up the Kentucky Blue, I get it, but is that worth hurting your team and costing yourself a million dollars? Have a little will power. For a million dollars I would give up alcohol, sex, pizza, and chocolate.
-If you had the number of slang words used at 19 then you get a gold star.
-I was going to play an NFL game, but then I got high: Recently, some ex-players have admitted that they smoked marijuana before actual games. That absolutely shocks me. As somebody that has both smoked weed and played football at some point in my life I cannot imagine combining the two. And how exactly does that work? With coaches, media members and NFL security walking around, not to mention 60,000+ fans, where could you possibly smoke a joint before a game without getting caught?
OK, let’s put down the bong and get back to the game….
-I have long argued that in this modern pass-happy NFL where teams, more and more, rely on the short rhythm passing game that gets the ball out of the quarterback’s hands faster than ever, the pass rush and sack totals are increasingly overrated. On Sunday New England sacked Kaepernick five times in the first half yet he finished the half with a near perfect QB rating of 155.8. In the second half the Patriots sacked him zero times and he finished the half with a QB rating of 67.6. The key to stopping NFL passing attacks is with coverage not pressure. The Carolina Panthers and Tennessee Titans are currently tied for third in sacks in the NFL but neither team’s pass defense cracks the top 20.
-Julian “If only I was Gisele” Edelman was targeted a staggering 17 times on Sunday. Surprisingly this was not a career high for Edelman who twice in his career has had games with 19 targets, against Miami in 2013 and against Buffalo in 2015. The previous high for a Patriots receiver this year was 10, also by Edelman.
-Unambiguously Bad Duo: The broadcast team of Greg Gumbel and Trent Green was particularly awful calling the Patriots/49ers game. After a Brady touchdown pass Gumbel told the audience that Brady had thrown his 199th touchdown pass and was now only one away from tying Peyton Manning’s all-time record. It took several minutes (and I bet a lot of help from his producers) for him to correct his statement and inform the audience that it was actually career wins, not touchdowns, that Brady was on the verge of tying. How does Gumbel not instinctively know that 200 touchdowns is not even close to the NFL career record? For Brady, that would be about 14 TDs a year. As for Trent Green, if he was a color commentator during the days of the Roman Coliseum he would somehow manage to make it boring.
-Fool Me Once…: Has Belichick not learned his lesson? Last year against the Broncos, with a double-digit lead, he allowed a rookie punt returner to return a 4th quarter punt in the middle of a blizzard, resulting in a game-changing fumble that helped cost New England the game and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. So what does he do Sunday? With another double-digit lead he sends out rookie fumble machine Cyrus Jones, in the middle of a rain storm, to return another 4th quarter punt.
-In a close playoff game will anybody feel confident when Stephen Gostkowski lines up for an extra-point? Me neither.
-Wide Right: In all, there were 12 missed extra points on Sunday which is being touted as a win for the NFL and their surrogates that supported the rule change that moved the extra point back 13 yards. It is completely lost on me why any of this makes the NFL more exciting.
Election 2016:
–Kraft officially completed the Patriots troika by, sort of, kind of, endorsing Donald Trump for president. Like Brady and Belichick, Kraft hasn’t officially said much on the record but he did fly down to New York to visit Trump Tower and presumably met with the president-elect. Kraft was reportedly there for just 30 minutes which doesn’t seem like a lot of time. What was this brief visit about? Did he go all the way down there just to kiss Trump’s ring? Some have speculated that Kraft might be angling for an ambassadorship, possibly to Israel? Many have been quick to shoot this down, but is it so crazy? Kraft and Trump are very good friends, with Kraft going so far as to credit Trump with helping him deal with the passing of his beloved wife, Myra. Kraft is a smart and highly successful businessman who has not only accomplished more than he ever could have dreamed as an NFL owner but has a very capable replacement to run the team in his absence, his son Jonathan. This rumor might not be that far-fetched.
-Deflategate also resurfaced this past week with Trump reiterating his support for Brady by declaring in an interview with TMZ that he is “totally innocent”. Of course the real deflategate news from last week was Tom Brady’s funny Foot Locker commercial where he managed to tweak the NFL and state his case without naming names. It’s all part of Foot Locker’s “Week of Greatness” ad campaign that has produced multiple classic spots.
-He’s Baaaaaack: Now that he has been elected president, Trump’s twitter exile has ended and he is making up for lost time. This week he blasted Saturday Night Live on Twitter over its Alec Baldwin depiction of the president-elect. Set aside the fact that there is nothing less presidential than complaining on Twitter about SNL (seriously are you the soon-to-be leader of the free world or an overwrought teenager?), Trump complained that SNL was not being balanced in its attacks, “Equal time for us?” he tweeted. Donald, buddy, the election is over. You won. There is no more “equal time”. You are going to be President of the United States. It’s time to put your big boy pants on and get used to the jokes, criticism and scrutiny that comes with the most high profile job in the world.
-Vice president-elect and automaton Mike Pence recently attended the hit Broadway show ‘Hamilton’ and was booed by the audience. I’m not a big fan of some of Pence’s creepier beliefs but really, who heckles a guy just trying to see a show with his family. I think this election has caused people to lose their collective minds.