Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 5: Patriots vs. Dolphins

Things to consider while focusing on the positives:

--Let's just all be grateful to Fox for flexing Tom Brady out of this game and letting him do a real banger like Arizona at San Fran instead. After all he's done for us, he deserves better than being subjected to seeing his old team at its worst like this. I would've been like Eugene Levy walking into the kitchen and catching Jimbo nuts-deep into an apple pie. It was best for all involved to just have Mark Sanchez and his man bun handle it. 

--Where do we even begin dissecting this corpse? Let's start 4,600 years ago. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2,600 BC. The only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World, it was the highest man-made structure on Earth for its first 3,800 years. It's 481 feet high. Made from 2.3 million blocks, some weighing up to 80 tons, mined from a quarry 500 miles away. It has a lower chamber carved deep into the bedrock 100 feet below, and two upper chambers with massive blocks laid so precisely you can't fit a slip of paper between them. But it's true majesty is in its science. Its base is aligned with the compass directions so perfectly that its northern wall is withing 3/60ths of a degree of true north. It's located in the exact center of all the Earth's landmass. And its proportions demonstrate constants such as Pi, the "Golden Ratio" Phi, Euler's number e, sine and cosine, thousands of years before these concepts were thought to be developed. No one can explain how it was built, or be certain it could be done today. And yet in 4,600 years later, with $56 million in cap space to spend, Eliot Wolf couldn't find five offensive linemen who can pass block.

--I know that was a long way to go to make a point. Thanks for sticking around for the payoff. It's just that this team is rapidly driving me insane. I used to know what I was doing. I understood what I was looking at. Even when things weren't going 100% right I knew the concepts of what they were trying to accomplish and could make sense of it all. Now I look at the notes I took and the look like the Zodiac Killer's writing. So please bear with me as we get through this. 

--Before we go any further, if you've come here expecting me to bellyache about the call in the endzone:

... forget it. You've come to the wrong blog. Love it or hate it, the rule is spelled out explicitly. That wasn't a touchdown. Besides, between N'Keal Harry, Kayshon Boutte and Ja'Lynn Polk, rookie receivers getting called for being one inch out of bounds has become a tradition around here. A major part of post-Dynasty Patriots lore.

--Spoiler: No one's coming out of this unscathed. It all starts with the GM and The Wolf's negligence with respect to the O-line. But with this game, there's plenty of blame to go around. The coaching especially. For all their faults in pass protection, the line of (L to R) Vederian Lowe, Michael Jordan, Nick Leverett, Michael Onwenu and Demontrey Jacobs were opening holes in the power run game and providing cutback lanes in the zone blocking schemes. The backs set a franchise record with an astonishing 7.9 yards per attempt. While the passing attack was generating an unimpressive 4.1 yards per dropback. So the simple solution when you're playing with a lead is to keep pounding the rock, right? Wrong. The formula Alex Van Pelt settled on was a run/pass mix of 19 to 36. I don't know if Sun Tzu or Vince Lombardi ever said, "When you're in control, keep doing the thing you're not at all good, while avoiding at all costs that thing you're doing exceptionally well." But AVP can surely lay claim to that pearl of wisdom after this one.

--As a result, we got 13 1st downs on 11 possessions. Ran 60 plays to Miami's 78. Possessed the ball nine fewer minutes. Went 4-13 converting 3rd downs. If ever there was a magic potion you could brew up to lose to the lowest scoring offense in the league, at home, while not turning the ball over, that's it. And Van Pelt discovered it. That's 10 points to Slytherin. 

--It wasn't just how much they decided to throw, but when. The end of the half, up 7-3 with under 2:00 to go from their own 5, and Rhamondre Stevenson hits the A-gap to give them a 2nd & 2. So they have Jacoby Brissett go deep twice. Take no time off the clock. And a punt gives Miami the ball on New England's side of the field with just under a minute to play and all their timeouts. Only the fact the Dolphins have become that team that says, "Pfft! You think that was stupid? Watch us cock this up!" and botched the field goal twice kept it from resulting in points. But make no mistake: AVP handed them the gun. They just misfired. 

--And this came one possession after a 3rd & 15 at the Dolphins 16, which prompted Jerod Mayo to call a timeout. And after a meeting that easily could've been an email, the plan they came up with was to go four wide, see that Miami was coming with an overloaded fire zone blitz, kill the play and check to a Stevenson stretch run that never had a chance. The reason I bring up these two sequences is it illustrate the point there seems to be no plan in place. No scheme to speak of. No discernible philosphy. No - to fall back on the cliche - offensive identity. In the Week 1 win in Cincinnati, Van Pelt repeatedly went big with two and often three tight ends and forced the Bengals to load up and try and stop them, which they aren't built for. The Pats lived by the old Bill Parcells philosophy that says if you don't control the line of scrimmage, you don't control anything. The coaches yesterday signed a unilateral treaty surrendering the LOS without demanding any concessions in return. 

--But enough of beating up on Van Pelt:

… Mayo is a man who takes responsibility and holds himself accountable and he's going to get plenty of both. There's no questioning how his players respond to him. They play hard. They're tough. They don't take plays off (with the exception of Tyquan Thornton's business decisions on some blocking assignment last week, and you'll notice you didn't notice him being around this week). But that doesn't mean they're taking the field fully prepared. They picked up 12-men penalty the first time the punt return team came out. If your special teams are settled on anything after a week of practice, it should be who's on the unit and who isn't. I guarantee you the Ancient Egyptians knew which 11 guys were on the 80 Ton Brick Dragging Team.

--But that was just the first of an even dozen penalties for 105 yards. One of the best players on this defense at the moment is Keion White. And he committed two personal fouls on the same drive, three snaps apart. One of the best players on this offense over the past few years is Hunter Henry. And he committed two presnap penalties on the final drive. White's kept a Dolphins drive alive and led to a field goal. Henry's put them in 2nd & 21 and 4th & 15 with the game on the line. And led to this inexplicable decision by Brissett to end it:

Brissett might as well have just lobbed a Hail Mary into the end zone. Or pooch-punted it and hoped for a fumble. Or keistered it and tried to smuggle it into end zone. The one thing that wasn't going to work was the one thing he actually tried. The point being this team isn't disciplined or mentally tough. Especially in the big moments with a chance to pull out a game. 

--And it's not unfair to question their conditioning. For all the talk of them running the hill in training camp, as these games go on, they are running on fumes. Mayo said as much after the game that his team was worn down. It showed in the Dolphins 11-play, 80-yard, 7:36 touchdown drive to take the lead. That one included seven consecutive run plays, all for positive yards. Meanwhile Mayo and Van Pelt's offense was going punt, punt, turnover on downs, end of game. Still better than the 59 yards they gained over six possessions. But a sign that their opponents are stronger as games go on than the Pats are. And you can remember the last time that was the case, you definitely have a "1" at the beginning of your birth year. And probably a "197."

--Though to be fair to the defenders, 78 plays from scrimmage is a ridiculous number. By way of comparison, that's more than the Patriots had against the Legion of Boom in Super Bowl XLIX. And just to refresh your memory, Miami had the worst offense in the league going into this mess. (Though I think we can honestly say there's a new king of that hill.) 

--Unlike the 49ers game, where they went to a 7-man box to keep Kyle Shanahan from running the ball, only to get torched, they went back to their base Nickel and dared Mike McDaniel to keep it on the ground. Marte Mapu saw his first action of the season and played every snap at hybrid LB/S, which is more than double the most snaps he's ever taken in a game. They often had him dropping into the deep middle for a Tampa-2 look. Which seems to fit his sort of tweener skillset. And worked a damned sight better than last week when it was Jahlani Tavai chasing George Kittle back there. Jaylinn Hawkins and UDFA rookie Dell Pettus were your split safeties, and Raekwon McMillan next to Mapu as off-the-ball LB. 

--But if we're looking for positives here, and I could certainly stand seeing a delivery of those on my doorbell camera right now, we again get to turn our lonely eyes to Christian Gonzalez. His pick was intended for Odell Beckham, Jr. Gonzo had outside leverage to force OBJ into the middle. Stayed on his hip. And then showed that closing burst on the ball the way Stephon Gilmore or Ty Law used to. And I don't make those comparisons lightly:

I'll be curious to see the matchup numbers were and how many times he ended up iso'd on Tyreek Hill. But given Hill was contained (6 catches on 9 targets for 69 yards) when under Belichick they used to assign an elite commando unit to cover him, that's a win for Gonzalez. Plus he was in solo coverage on Hill repeatedly. Once on this deep shot, where there was never an inch of separation:

Then there was that ball he almost picked off but Hill played DB and knocked it out of his hands:

 And the one where Hill stepped out. Which led to this golden moment:

So there's your bright spot. Hill didn't score. No fans splooshed a beer in his direction like happened that one time. And early reports indicate seven women in that section got positive results on their EPT tests this morning. It seems only Christian Gonzalez can stop Hill.

--Oh, what the heck. Let's keep this party going. Positive vibes only. We could use the boost. Stevenson's touchdown was an athletic and artistic triumph. A pin-pull scheme, with Onwenu bouncing out to seal off Emmanuel Ogbah. And the big block coming from Boutte (who saw by far his most significant playing time since Week 1 of last year), who locked up Kendall Fuller and sustained it through the whistle:

--It's important to bear in mind that, as bad as things are, this is not a roster without talent. Starting with Pop Douglas. If the rest of this offense could somehow begin to gel into a cohesive, semi-functional unit, it will all run through him. He's there every play, running himself open, gaining separation, and getting himself on the career trajectory of all the great slot guys who came before him. But 20 things have to go right on every play in order for the ball to come his way. And so far we're lucky if a half dozen things go right at a time. As was the case on this crucial down:

For years we've been talking about the Pats needing a "weapon." Someone opposing coaches actually have to expend energy gameplanning for. Douglas is that guy. But the offense he's in has become every DC's bye week.

--Draft order aside, I really wanted to win this one just because one of my simple pleasures in life has become watching Mike McDaniel fail. He's been compared to many things. Starbucks barista. Member of the Geek Squad. But to me, he's that guy who hung around the Student Union building and was probably a reliable weed hookup. But he only had girls for friends, played Hacky Sack, and was a smarmy know-it-all who laughed at his own jokes. And this season without Tua Tagovailoa was going to expose him as just another Flavor of the Month. I'd rather watch 50 local and New Hampshire political ads than see McDaniel succeed. But by blowing this game, the Patriots have delayed his utter humiliation another week. 

--Oh, wait. The kids listening to their parents through the bedroom door in the phone commercial think they're talking about mom's vibrator. I get it now. What a fun gag for all those guys sitting next to their 9-year-olds at 1pm on a Sunday. I'd pay a premium for a streaming service that shows the game, but runs nothing but old "Tastes great, less filling" ads during the timeouts.

--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote: "Just remember what ol' Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol' storm right square in the eye and he says, 'Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.'" - ol' Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China 

--The O-line that I derided at the beginning of all this managed to stay together and play an entire game. Maybe they can build on that. Such is the thin thread my hopes are hanging on at the moment. 

--Now can we have Drake Maye? Or do things have to actually get worse? Yes there are risks. Ships are safer in harbors. But that is not what ships are built for. I guess I just want this team to be presentable for the time Tom Brady really does show up.