Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 2: Patriots vs. Seahawks

Things to consider while realizing the greatest closer in Super Bowl history deserved an ending on the level of his intense bell-ringing game:

--We came into this season with an offense that was a total Mystery Box. And now that we've gotten a two-game peak inside, we've learned that what Alex Van Pelt has cobbled together out of the league's most offensive offense in 2023 is a one-trick pony. Very good at one thing, inept at pretty much everything else. They'll blow teams off the line in the run game. But can't pass protect, get the ball to the wideouts, or throw deep. They're Dickensian. A Tale of Two Schemes. "It was the best of lines, it was the worst of lines. 

--Right now, they're limited to the one thing they can do well, which is run the ball. They're a one-legged guy in a karate tournament. They're Spinal Tap after Nigel left, and all they could do was a free-form Jazz odyssey. They're Artie Lange in that story he tells about the time Norm MacDonald booked them into a theater show in San Francisco and told him he couldn't do any gay jokes. (I'll finish the story below.) They're like a Patriots blogger who ran out of metaphors two paragraphs in and has to go all meta with self-references. 

--You can respect how good they are at that one, admittedly limited skill. While at the same time you question exactly how far we can expect it to take them in this era of football. We're about hit the quarter pole of the 21st century. Winning games entirely on the ground went out with landline phones, travel agencies and literacy. It's trying to dogfight an F-22 Raptor with a WWI biplane. You might come out on top, but you're going to catch a ton of lucky breaks to pull it off. (There. I squeezed one more analogy out of this. I didn't think I had it in me.) 

--I don't mean to come across like I'm saying this is a disaster. Far from it. Van Pelt's offense put 20 points on the board with no turnovers by their defense and no big special teams plays. That's something that was unthinkable for long stretches of last season. Lest we forget, this team had a three-game stretch in which they surrendered 26 total points, and lost all three. The equivalent of a weekend series in which your pitching allows 7 total runs, but you get swept. And we'll get into those scoring drives momentarily. 

--But first, let's dive into the glaring deficiencies. The entire wide receiver depth chart combined for 3 receptions and 19 yards. That's one more catch than we've seen assassination attempts on one of our presidential candidates. (You're right. Too soon.) By way of contrast, DK Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba alone combined for 22 and 246. That's asymmetrical warfare on a scale that is unsustainable. If anything, it's remarkable that they stayed as competitive as they did.

--Yes, their inability/unwillingness to get it to the wideouts was a major factor. And the reason this team isn't off to a shocking 2-0 start. But not the only one:

1. The aforementioned lack of pass blocking didn't help. Jacoby Brissett was sacked three times, hit another eight, and was pressured on roughly half his dropbacks. As a result, the passing offense herkledurkled after the half, racking up only 32 yards in the 2nd half and overtime.

2. Despite averaging 5.1 yards per rushing attempt, they never managed to take advantage by implementing a play action game. Afterwards, Brissett said he felt like Seattle's defense was onto it every time they tried to use play action to open up the deep passing, dropping into a 2-deep safeties look instead of taking the cheese on the play fake. 

3. The coaching. Bad clock management. Van Pelt calling for an inside gap run against a loaded box on 3rd & 3. Jerod Mayo having to burn a time out because thought the clock would be reset after a fumble recovery. A final possession in the 4th that only took 0:40 off the clock and gave the ball right back to Seattle with a chance to win. Then a 3rd & 1 in overtime that not only failed to convert, but Caeden Wallace drew a flag for failing to report. 

4. The officiating. Rhamondre Stevenson got cavity searched in the end zone by Jerome Baker, who never turned his head back on the ball, with no DPI call. That was a 4-point swing as they settled for the field goal instead of 1st & goal from the 1. But then this was a penalty:

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That was, objectively speaking, a horrendous call. Don't take my word for it. Tyler Lockett agrees:

--And yet in spite of it all, the Pats were a blocked field goal away from winning in regulation. Last year I took all talk of Moral Victory, placed it in a shoe box, brought it outside, and respectfully buried it in the backyard. And where I'm at now is really not concerning myself with any kind of victory, moral or immoral. I'm just looking for the sorts of improvement that give us reason to hope this will be a playoff team next year and beyond. For the 2024 Patriots to walk so the 2025 Pats can run. And two games in, we're seeing some early indications. 

--Take, for example, Hunter Henry's 35 yard catch and run. A great play call by AVP, executed to perfection. I believe I detect subtle notes of Josh McDaniels in the way he sold the flow of the play to the left, with a pulling guard and ghost motion going that way, then came back to the weak side. Plus I get a strong essence of Rob Gronkowski in the way Henry held his block on Trevis Gipson just long enough to go unaccounted for by the secondary, then turning on the afterburners:

--And credit to Brissett. The issues with him ghosting his wide receivers aside, he's demonstrating exactly why they brought him here to be our Bridge to the Drake Maye Era. Despite the relentless pressure, he's finding ways to escape, extending plays, mpt turning the ball over, and getting positive yards on plays out of structure:

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Which is a thing that started to become standard operating procedure around the league a good 5 to 10 years ago. But is still an alien concept around here. It'd be nice if we didn't have to rely on him doing it so often. But this is the duty he signed on for. 

--The lack of production from the wideouts is definitely a concern. And part of the solution may very well be for Van Pelt to wean himself off his 2-tight end habit. Or at least cut down a little. save it for special occasions like goal line and short yardage. He doesn't have to go Cold Turkey, go to a total spread formation. But if he could try vaping in a few 3-WR sets, it might be a healthier alternative. If nothing else, he and Brissett managed to get more production out of Ja'Lynn Polk with one pass than we've seen out of a couple of dozen rookie receivers in this part of the country:

--And like I said, there are always opportunities to mix in some Jumbo and Tank formations. The move by AVP to put Nick Leverett in as fullback in the red zone, and then switch to Wildcat on 1st & goal worked fabulously. On Stevenson's direct snap touchdown, Leverett was on the edge, blocking down. Wallace got knocked back a bit, but Michael Jordan pulled to smother strong safety Rayshawn Jenkins and Stevenson was never challenged:

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--Though Jordan was slower to get to the outside on a run that should've been blown up by Boye Mafe, Antonio Gibson instead turned it into the play of the game for the Pats:

Which should've been enough to put the game away:

But still. On a team that hasn't had a true 3rd down/change of pace back since James White's last productive year, Gibson is a welcome addition. (Ezekiel Elliot had that role last season and was more of a built-in redundancy with Stevenson.) Van Pelt brought him in to start the 2nd quarter and the move immediately paid off. He twice got outside on stretch runs for 4 and then 19 yards up the sidelines. He too is under-utilized in the passing game (1 target, 7 yards) and that will have to be addressed. But he was sneaky one of the best pickups of the offseason.

--Defensively, the plan appeared to be all about eliminating big plays, at the expense of giving up the underneath stuff, the flats and curls. Hence Geno Smith completing 75% of his passes. Obviously that plan went tits up with the blown coverage on Metcalf's TD:

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Kyle Dugger took the rap for that one, saying he got a bad read on Smith and checked to a zero blitz. Which resulted in the hardest thing for Metcalf to do, which is go unnoticed in an NFL secondary. Far be it for me to disagree with Jonathan Vilma, who I think is a pretty good analyst (for a guy who's stuck doing the grunt work that is Seattle at New England), but he said that was the first time the Patriots were in zone all day. I beg to differ. I thought they went to it quite a few times. Including on a pass breakup Jaylinn Hawkins had on Smith-Njigba to end the Seahawks' first possession. Even Josh Uche was in the deep middle zone, which you rarely if ever see. I thought what happened on Metcalf's score was they were trying to disguise the call and ended up outsmarting themselves. 

--Which brings me to Christian Gonzalez. We're no longer operating off a small sample size. Week after week going back to his promising start last year, the man gets great results against elite competition. This game was no exception. When he was in man against Metcalf, he gave up 3 catches on 7 targets for 24 yards. And despite Metcalf's size and freakish athleticism, stuck with his man all over the field:

It might be time to sort of dial back the Mr. Spock 5-level chess and just do what they used to do with all the great No. 24s in Foxboro, from Ty Law to Darrelle Revis to Stephon Gilmore. Just line Gonzalez up on the opponent's WR1, tell him to blanket the guy, then worry about everybody else. 

--You can have your Aidan Hutchinson. Your Bosa brothers. Your Watt brothers. My favorite White defensive end is Keion. From this early sack, where he came inside from 3-technique, got his upfield shoulder into Laken Tomlinson and drove him all the way back and into Smith's 7-step drop:

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… to this diving stop over the 3rd base bag:

… to his career-high 5 pressures, 7 tackles and 1 TFL, he's quickly becoming the best player on this roster. And a huge reason they were so comfortable with trading Matthew Judon. On top of that, in his postgame presser, White put this loss on his own defense, saying the offensive side did enough to win. So his leadership role appears to be more than you expect out of second year players. I'm predicting now there'll be a lot No. 99 Patriots jerseys under the tree this Christmas.

--League wide, there's two things I'd like to eliminate, starting immediately. First is the Static Kickoff, which isn't working. It has simply not had the intended effect. Second, is I'd like to reduce Jason Kelce's screen time by about 75%. It didn't take long for the Likeable Kelce to become insufferable once he got overexposed. Scarcity would really help. But I'm willing to be flexible on that. If he takes time away from Travis instead, so we stay sort of Kelce brother carbon neutral, a deal can be made.

--In honor of us being one game closer to Drake Maye starting, and the saddest celebrity death in recent memory, here's This Week's Applicable Movie Quote: "The Force is with you, young Skywalker. But you are not a Jedi yet." - Darth Vader, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

--Oh well. At least we'll always have this:

--*(The kicker of the story is Norm opened his set with, "What about this AIDS, huh? Y'know, I heard them say that 'AIDS doesn't discriminate.' Which is kinda nice. … Where are you all going?" I hope you appreciated him while he was still with us. Norm's kind passes this way but once.)