Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 12: Patriots vs Bengals

Things to consider while knowing exactly what I'll be most thankful for when I bow my head over a plate of comfort food this Thursday:

--This biggest takeaway from this one is the Patriots are good. Very good. They're the 1-seed for one very simple reason, and it's because they've earned it. Winners of nine straight. Beating good teams on the road and taking care their business against the weaker teams. They're just not good enough for any of us to take an opponent like Cincinnati lightly. I'm raising my hand to that. Guilty as charged. I thought this game would have all the violence and intensity of the movie about the singing witches your girlfriend is making you take her to. What I got was the alley fight from They Live. Two evenly matched opponents bashing each other's brains in with trash can lids and 2X4s. Mistakes made by both sides. Clutch plays made by both sides. A total war of attrition. With bodies strewn all over the field like popcorn and Reese's Pieces on the floor of the theater with the singing witches. Guys coming back into the game after looking like their season was over. Some who might not be back this year. Roster bubble guys stepping up to fill in admirably. And in the end, the better team came away with the win and seized the balance of power. But possibly at a terrible cost. 

--I mean, where does one even begin to describe this one? I'm going to start at 280 BC, when Pyrrhus of Epirus fought the Romans at Heraclea with 25,000 troops, 3,000 cavalry, and 20 war elephants. He won, but the losses he suffered were so devastating he famously said, “If we win one more battle against the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” Which is where we get the term "Pyrrhic Victory." Like winning 26-20 but potentially losing not only two rookie starters, but the left 40% of your offensive line.

--It's a reminder, in case you needed one, that the NFL is not college football. No matter how bad you think a team is, there's never going to be a Notre Dame-Syracuse matchup:

The Bengals came into this one with a historically bad defense. Playing without their best on each side of the ball in Trey Hendrickson (sports hernia) and Ja'Marr Chase (Hawk Tuah). The stands were practically empty, and Scott Zolak was reporting the stadium had less energy than a preseason game. But took a double digit lead early. Scored on defense, made a couple of huge stops and just as many big kicks. Only the fact Mike Vrabel has built a resilient, mentally tough team that kept making clutch plays in high-leverage situations and (Warning: Category 5 Sports Cliche approaching) knows how to win, kept this from being a total debacle. 

--Staying on the topic of the offensive line for now, hearing Pats fans and media lapse into widespread panic mode of the possibility of losing Will Campbell and Jared Wilson is, and I know how weird this will sound, oddly gratifying. I lived through the eras of both Matt Light and Nate Solder. And with each guy, it always felt like people tended to forget their great games while having a didactic memory for every sack allowed and holding call against. Like a spouse who can't appreciate you for all the times you didn't come home drunk and park on her rose bushes. And I was all prepared for Campbell and Wilson to get the same treatment, but that's not been the case. Anyway, if it was, any and all negativity directed toward them got blinked into the cornfield the minute Ben Brown and then Vederian Lowe came into the game. Then all the repressed memories of last season kicked in. Alex Van Pelt seeming to hand out his O-line assignments with all the care and thought of selecting The Price is Right contestants. Nothing will make you grateful for how solid and stable this unit has been like that sense memory coming back to you.

--That said, it's time to have an adult conversation about Doug Marrone's Guardians of the Galaxy. First, that they're good at their primary mission, which is protecting the quarterback. They're well coached, smart, disciplined. They're agile enough execute pulls, traps and counters, to chip a rusher and then bounce to the next level and take on a linebacker or safety. What they're not good at is blowing anyone off the ball. They don't move the line of scrimmage. The big defenders, the ones whose asses are two axe handles wide, give them a problem. And as such, they have no short-area offense. As was on full display when they had no less than 12 snaps in goal-to-go situations and came away with three points. Or as the analytics will point out,  0.25 points per attempt. 

--And that issue is not limited to just the starting five on the line, but throughout the offense. I'm not about to drag Hunter Henry when he just had a career day (more on that later). But he's a below average blocking tight end at this point in his career. Very good at getting out in front of a screen and sealing off a defensive back, but not someone who's going to stop a 260-pound edge defender in his tracks or put a DT on the ground. Josh McDaniels went with a lot of 2-tight end sets and some Jumbo packages with 22-personnel as a force multiplier, hoping to over power the worst rush defense in the league. And averaged 3.5 yards per attempt. On that note, I think the Jack Westover experiment is pretty much over. No disrespect intended, because he's a tight end being miscast as a fullback. But I honestly can't remember a single time when he hit a hole, took on some run force defender on his back foot, and opened a gap for a ballcarrier. He just kind of runs into the line and disappears, like a guy diving into a wave and getting swallowed up. I get that professional fullbacks are on the Endangered Species list and there aren't a lot of James Develin's breeding in the wild. But to pull off the kinds of dives and power runs McDaniels is attempting requires a Jimmy Neckroll. And Westover is not that guy. 

--Again though, the Prime Directive is all about protecting Drake Maye, and once again they accomplished their objective. Maye  was sacked once and took three QB hits. But for the most part threw from clean enough pockets regardless of who was lining up in front of him. Which made his weird bout of inaccuracy early on that much weirder. None were as un-Mayelike as the one on the second possession when he had TreVeyon Henderson all alone on a flare route, Austin Hooper running a slant behing him, both guys wide open, and the ball hit the ground between them. A play later he had Henry with a half-step on his man on an out-cut and overthrew him out of bounds for a 3 & out. That was followed by the throw he sailed to Henry on one of those wide open seam routes the two have been hitting since they first started working together:

It was surreal for a while there. The most accurate passer in the league suddenly morphing into a celebrity trying to throw the first pitch at a ball game. 

--But to his undying credit, Maye does not get shook. Or at least he doesn't stay shook. The subsequent drive after the Pick-6 consisted of a few successful attempts to run Henderson behind Westover, a checkdown to Henderson, a bubble screen to Rhamondre Stevenson, the tight ends executing a cross that went to Henry for 12, and Maye getting his juju back. And Drake and Josh collaborating on this little bit of wizardry. Demario Douglas motioned to the flat and Henderson ran an over-center sit to occupy the underneath defenders. Mack Hollins ran a post to clear out the deep safety, and Henry went unaccounted for on a corner route. Great play design that might have been based on a tendency of the Bengals secondary to overplay the underneath routes. (That's pure speculation on my part.) But flawless execution.

It's hard to overstate the importance of that drive and that throw. Because look again and you'll see Myles Murphy coming off the edge and Maye having to dust him off while keeping his eyes upfield. Murphy was in the backfield because that was one of the seven plays Morgan Moses was injured for. Maye almost got picked again on the first play Moses was out, which could've had this game and this win streak swirling the drain. Instead, they'd righted the ship. 

--And it was obvious from that point forward that Maye was back and fully dialed in. And no pass he threw drove that point home more than the absolute laser-guided missile that found Pop Douglas' gloves with Barrett Carter spooning him and Jordan Battle bracketing him deep:

--Though it gets competition from the one he put in Hollins' hands even as Daxton Hill was committing DPI:

I've never seen anyone consistently work that Cover-2 hole as consistently and effectively as Maye does. (And yes, I hear myself talking about working the 2-hole. You'd better get your mind out of the gutter before the relatives arrive Thursday, young man.) These secondaries are picking their poison when it comes to playing split safeties where he'll hit on these, or single high, in which he'll attack the corners like he did on Henry's touchdown. The problem of not being able to finish drives because they can't punch it in in goal-to-go situations is real. But with the threat of deep passes as real as Maye makes it:

… they're a nightmare for any AFC team in the playoffs.

--A few plays after that Henry TD, Marcus Jones gave them the lead they'd never relinquish:

Far be it for me to rip on Joe Flacco. He balled out. He'd later leave the  what appeared to be a separated index finger, taped it up, ended up missing all of one play, and came back in with the demeanor of a white suburban dad using up his Kohl's Cash. What he's done for the Bengals is nothing short of remarkable. But holy smokes was that an awful decision. He even pump-faked it a couple of times to make sure Jones had every opportunity to get in position before he uncorked the terrible throw. If you're lucky, you'll have someone in your life who prides themselves on gift-giving. Wrapping your presents with extra care because that's their Love Language or whatnot. If you do, I hope they're as generous to you as Flacco was. Jones owes him a nice "Thank You" card written in cursive.

--While Jones deservedly gets all the credit for turning the game around, let us all pledge to do our utmost to give credit to Carlton Davis, who single-handedly averted disaster on that final drive. He got his hands on three passes, two consecutive on the final set of downs. 

Then on the final snap it was Jones again, breaking up Mike Gesicki, who's 10-inches taller and 60 pounds heavier than he is. Unlike most of our elections, the Patriots chose wisely when they voted Jones a captain. And that contract extension already looks like a bargain. When Black Friday arrives, you can't go wrong ordering a No. 25 jersey for everyone on your list. 

--This was by far the worst this defense has done against the run. And they were particularly vulnerable to Chase Brown getting outside the tackle box because they lost the edge. In particular, Elijah Ponder was guilty of making the rookie mistake of diving inside and leaving the right side wide open. It happened on consecutive plays in the 2nd, but he lucked out because a big gain was wiped out by an offensive holding call. After that, they swapped him out for Jack Gibbens (another solid game) and Cory Durden (who's become a core player over the past month) and they cleaned it up. It was just surprising to see them allow a 100-yard rusher given how solid they've been against the run all season. It speaks volumes about how important it will be to get Milton Williams back. And let's hope whatever limited Khyiris Tonga to 12 snaps doesn't last long. 

--After a game or two where the Patriots drew the networks A-Teams, it was unnerving to get the broadcast crews who do the mop-up duty nobody else wants. Don't get me wrong, Kevin Harlan is a true pro. His radio call of Malcolm Butler's interception was the best of anybody's. But at one point in the span of consecutive sentences, Melanie Collins called Morgan Moses a guard and Brendan Schooler a safety. Which is the equivalent of calling Matthew Slater a wide receiver. Or Jerry Thornton a sportswriter. You have one job, Mel. Do your research or you'll never do a 4PM game with Jim and Tony.

--There's a quote attributed to Einstein where he supposedly said, “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute.But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours.That’s relativity.” While that's probably apocryphal, it's nonetheless true. But nothing makes the point better than how long a commercial break seems to last when one of your key players is laying on the ground with a medical team tending to him. Which seemed to happen twice a quarter yesterday. And when they ran that one for Jardiance, which may cause swelling between the anus and genitals, with the Patriots blowing yet another goal-to-go inside the 1, time came to a complete standstill. That's relativity.

--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote: 

Interviewer: "What's your prediction for the fight?"

Clubber Lang: "My prediction?"

Interviewer: "Yes, your prediction.]

Clubber Lang [Looks into camera]: "Pain!"

-Rocky III

--I'll end with another thing I'm thankful for. That as Vrabel pointed out, the Pats are the first team in the league to get to 10 wins:

And that in August, I had the optimism, wisdom and foresight to go on Draft Kings and take the Over at 9.5 wins. Even though I got mocked for it by some well-meaning souls who thought I was being a shameless fanboy and stuck to my guns. Now I'm laughing all the way to the 1-seed in the AFC. Amen.