Nice article on "The Patriot Way", or why Belichick is so successful: https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...24486280311_story.html?utm_term=.86fce4d8ca83 The title really sums it up: The Patriots' secret is focusing on every little detail, basically outworking the opposition. Players and coaches that have seen how the Patriots practice first hand say there's a marked difference between them and other teams. Shows why it's so difficult to replicate, even for former assistant coaches. You basically need a hard working and totally driven perfectionist at the helm. Let's hope Flores is that guy.
Goff, and McVay are both overrated IMO. Goff benefits from McVay treating him like he's a college QB and reading the defenses for him with the staff before the snap, and before the headset shuts off... They do most of the work for him. I think you can easily say the shine of McVay has been tarnished a bit tonight. There's getting beat by someone better, and there's being incompetent. Through their playoff run, they showed themselves to be the later. I don't think he's what everything thinks. They didn't belong in the game anyways (NO should have been there, same with KC), and they sure as hell showed that tonight.
They did show up on defense and completely shut the Rams down- I didn't see that coming at all. That was an extremely boring game to sit thru and of course, the ending sucked.
What?? Your saying if you had a change to get McVay as the headcoach in Miami you wouldn’t take him since he’s overrated? Credit where it’s do. I hate The Pats but they are without the best coached football team in my lifetime. Really hope brian brings some of that to Miami!
I've already shown through historical stats that on average it's offense that's more important in the SB and in the playoffs. But yes today it was defense that won. Using z-scores we're now at 19 SB's won by defense (z-score for defense was better than z-score for offense) and 34 won by offense. And 8 of the ones won by defense were the 8 consecutive SB's from 1968-1975. Personally I thought that was an utterly boring game. I've seen exciting defensive games but this wasn't one of them (at least for me).
Exactly it's not like the Patriots made great plays. It looked like the Rams had no idea what they were doing at all.
I'm wondering how accurate that is though since you'd really have to look at the game within the game. For instance, a lot of Super Bowls have been blowouts (like Pats/Falcons started out) and most teams simply aren't built to come from behind. When the Falcons took the early lead, they didn't keep attacking and it was actually their late offensive scheme that cost them that game. We saw a similar thing with Seattle- they played safe then had to catch up at the last second. I personally feel like it's more the situation of the game itself more than the O or the D.
It's accurate if you go by overall production of each unit relative to league average, or relative to that own team's regular season averages. What you're asking for is more fine grained: to basically sum up all the changes in win probability per play when each unit is on the field. On average that should give the same results as looking at production but it might be different for individual games, especially ones where offensive and defensive production were similar. However.. note that humans are notoriously bad at this kind of analysis so I'd be careful about relying on human intuition here. People often only talk about the last "crucial" play in the game and don't know how to take into account all the other plays that individually did little but whose cumulative effect was huge.
I think it was Cooks. The defender held Cooks' I think left arm preventing him from being able to catch a sure TD.
Thai is a hard one for refs to see. The good corners are great at getting away with those calls. Richard Sherman was a master at them
I never said that at all. I'm not sure why you think that? I said I think he is overrated. I'm just saying I think the hype train around him that's driving the current NFL hiring trend of find the next McVay (Kind of like it was when Gase was such a hot topic as a QB whisperer) is kind of stupid. I'm not sure he's done anything too insane. Seems like a good coach, he's gotten alot out of Goff, more than I thought anyone would. What did they really do when the playoffs rolled around though? They shouldn't have beaten NO. They struggled with the noise and couldn't get the calls in, and defense read for his QB before the headset gets killed. At least that's my assumption. I thought it was pretty obvious that's what McVay was doing for Goff against Philly. Goff missed a wiiiide open TD because he was Tannehill late seeing it, and throwing it. Next year for them it's going to depend along on Goff. Can he keep developing? McVay has he luxury right now of a talented D, some big contracts for bigtime players, and a low QB cap hit. That's not going to last forever. I'm just not buying the hype on the guy the way ESPN makes it want to see like he's the next Bellichik. They said that about Gase too, and many others.
That's still true, and I'm not sure it's ever going to change. I'm not about to call it a great game, nothing too special happened. The defenses were both good, but neither did anything... "exciting". I think that's the problem most people are having with the game today. Defensive games can be ok if there's alot of big hits, or even some defensive scoring, lots of sacks, etc. etc. Last night was just, run stuffing, and tight coverage and it bored people I think because it made them think, wow, these offenses suck today... rather than going, wow, these defenses are playing insanely good. The typical fan response type things didn't happen much. There were two INT's, sure, but neither were "spectacular" plays. I'm with you.. I get what you're saying, but the average fans that tune in to the Super Bowl and casually pay attention the rest of the year (ya know, Pat's fans. ) were likely bored out of their minds because they wanted high scoring, and instead saw faltering offenses, and fail to recognize the defense causing it, because there weren't alot of big, flashy plays. Whatever, it is what it is... either way though, the first point holds true, and last night was the perfect example of it because that game could have gone either way because they were both playing great D.
How is Jones only 31? I feel like he's been 31 for 5 years now. Am I the only one who has always felt hes older than that?
It does feel like he's been on the team longer than he has! Probably because, technically, he's been here under five different head coaches, lol. How many different GMs? Last year was his ninth on the team, and his eighth as a starter. He was drafted a year after Wake was signed. His body has been breaking down every year for a while now too. Hes missed signifigant time every other season since 2014.
I thought it was a phenomenal game. I loved the defensive play. I loved some of the old-school plays as well. My favorite was the Pats tight formation, play-action pass to Gronk over top the LB (with basically no one else going out) - pass went about 5 yards, play went for about 15-20. It was on their TD drive (but not the long pass to Gronk). I ran that play both as a QB and an end in my days as Jr high / Sr high. The game was about blocking and tackling and tough coverage and great defensive coaching on both sides. I could not get enough of it.
Me too. That's old school. Belichick is smart to be a contrarian. If teams start getting fancy and passing and starting with a bunch of nickel packages, he throws a FB at them with a physical OL (and 3 RBs who all complement each other).
A really useful and fun tool at Spotrac is you can manage a team's roster (you can cut and sign players). If you would go there and manipulate that, it would save a lot of bandwidth on here as well as far as educating the board a bit as to what the actual savings are. I released Tannehill, Quinn, Parker, Branch, and Alonso. That saved $47 million in cap space, even with the dead cap #s. And, those cuts gave the team $58 million in cap space (this is before signing James). With more cap savings coming next year b/c of the Tannehill dead cap $$, I think they can afford to sign James and perhaps a QB. And, it doesn't re-sign Wake but I have to wonder what Flores wants to do with Wake. He may want to sign him to play a Trey Flowers position or just be be a John Simon type player. Of course, they may want to keep one or two of those for simple depth. But, I just don't see any of them as fixes. It's possible they may do better in Flores D and with his work ethic expectations. But I'm particularly ready to see Branch, Parker, and Alonso go and I just can't see a rationale for keeping Quinn (though I like him as a speed rush DE) at $12 million. Here's the link to the team's cap #s and roster without those guys: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/tools/roster/miami-dolphins/2019/8254bf71b79003f2a8d32651fe31e94b/ And here's the link to what the team looks like going into next season: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/miami-dolphins/cap/