17 Points vs. the Patriots

MontanaHawk05

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1. Great win against an underrated team, a hostile referee crew, and a drop epidemic. Any two of those could usually combine to beat a team.

2. Geno's best quality today was taking what the defense gave him. There were dumpoffs, short crossers, slants, outs out of trips...Grubb is well aware of this OL's weakness and wrote up a plan to avoid relying on it, while Geno did his part and played within it. Took the checkdowns when he needed. Did everything.

3. That said, Smith made some big boy throws, particularly in JSN's direction, which is an encouraging sign of chemistry. The third-down completion after halftime was a doubled-covered inbreaking route, but you can make those if you've got the timing and the sheer zip (and the prerequisite pocket space), and Geno did. Team effort there, but that's a very nice sit-up-and-notice 3rd-and-long jailbreaker.

4. Fire Anthony Bradford.

5. Charbs ain't it as an RB1, but I like him. He had great value as a receiving target and Geno trusts him. Expect Grubb to keep using him there. You also have to give him credit for seeking out contact and hitting hard, and he's good for a comical stiffarm once per game and an epic blitz pickup twice per game. I was a little harsh on him earlier so I wanted to say this.

6. Like Metcalf on the short crossers.

7. New England is well coached on offense. Hunter Henry's stat line wasn't so much gameplanned as much as just he and Brissett playing out of their minds, with several improv connections (though in the end, Brissett's patented 3rd-down whimper throws killed them). At one point, Mafe and Spoon(?) both let Henry go to stop Brissett rushing...on a 1st and 10. Young-guy stuff. Plus New England is great at screen execution.

8. Mafe was awful close to bringing Brissett down multiple times, including on the 1-yard line. Needs to close. We don't need the Earl Thomas of Sacks.

9. Says a ton about the team character (and about Mac) that Mafe, Williams, and Love combined on consecutive plays to slam the door on New England's closer. Lesser teams would have been demoralized by that 45-yard gallop (which Mafe also whiffed on). That felt like the end to me, but the D wasn't having it. Hall and Dodson had nice contributions on their overtime drive.

10. There's still nobody in the league better at drawing PI calls than one His Excellency Tyler Lockett. And I love that at 57 years old or whatever, he's still out there blocking his ass off for DK.

11. Tyrice Knight getting lots of snaps!

12. Murphy's first sack: thing of beauty. Drives his guy back three yards, swims past, and nails Brissett. Williams contributes by physically requesting a piggyback ride.

13. Back to Geno: he's still got GREAT wheels. Is anyone else noticing how fast the dude still is and how much hay he's making with it?

14. Y'all can kiss my ass on Jason Myers, he hasn't missed yet. ;)

15. You were not wrong in thinking that the Patriots were holding the entire game.

16. Love, love, love the drive right before halftime. Mac got aggressive and gave Geno something he could execute where Pete would have idly muttered "just kneel" within his face in a mostly empty Double Bubble bucket.

17. Pharoah Brown needs to get healthy.
 

DarkVictory23

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7. New England is well coached on offense. Hunter Henry's stat line wasn't so much gameplanned as much as just he and Brissett playing out of their minds, with several improv connections (though in the end, Brissett's patented 3rd-down whimper throws killed them). At one point, Mafe and Spoon(?) both let Henry go to stop Brissett rushing...on a 1st and 10. Young-guy stuff. Plus New England is great at screen execution.
I swear this guy had like 2 different first downs that were Brissett just trying to throw the ball away in his direction to avoid intentional grounding. Like, he's running back like 7+ to the LOS to get to the duck Jacoby threw out there. It was just great personal effort on his part and it was unfortunate on our part just how many near sacks there were that Brissett slipped out of by this much.
 

hgwellz12

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Maybe Im the only one that missed the stat but I saw today that on his 32 yard TD run against the donks he was the fastest ball carrier of week 1. Like 22 mph and a nasty juke, not too bad.
Yeah, like 21.7 or something CRAZY like that. IIRC that's just a tick slower than the DK td against the cowgirls last season! Nuts!
 

nanomoz

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Great stuff. I have a higher opinion of Charbonnet, but he isn't Walker. A lot of Grubb's run plays are slow to develop. Especially that play in 4th and 1. It suits Walker more.

Jordan Love's blocked kick was glorious and crucial.

Mafe and Williams looked gassed a couple of times pretty early. Do they need to substitute more? They both came up with huge plays, however.

Nice to see a successful screen for once.

The Pats had very little confidence in Brissett. He made some dynamite throws early on. I expected them to take a couple more shots.

The Hawks had some luck today with dropped picks. At one point, Geno had completed like 15/18, and two of the incompletiona could have been picked. I'm not complaining. It happens.

It looked like Haynes came in for Tomlinson. I hope this continues. And that Bradford is replaced by Laumea or Curtis or someone. Two more penalties on Bradford today, no? He's not good enough to keep in the lineup if he's making mistakes like that.

Pharoah Brown will indeed be a huge boost in the run game and in max protect.
 

Torc

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Has anyone else noticed that they hardly ever show Macdonald on the sideline? They'll show Grubb, but Macdonald is so stoic that he's boring. I kind of like it. :)
 

onanygivensunday

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AJ Barner needs more sand in his pants.

Maybe Bradford can donate some from his gut.
 

Mick063

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Grubb deserved that game ball. He learned from his Denver mistakes.

Last week he called slow developing plays when the Denver defensive line was fresh, and this put Geno into impossible situations early. In the Patriot game, Grubb went "hurry up" early, prevented defensive line substitutions which contributed toward defensive line fatigue, and gave Geno another tick of time to survey the field. It was an outstanding adjustment and a tactful means to help his beleaguered offensive line.

Further, Geno continued to identify the coverage by using pre snap motion on almost every passing down, transitioning from an empty set to a one back set. The team had two plays called ("check with me") and Geno called out the adjustment at the line of scrimmage dependent upon what the pre snap motion was telling him. This is veteran quarterback play that puts extreme pressure on opposing coverages. The Patriots attempted to counter the Geno (check with me) audibles by changing up their coverages at the last moment and this led to miscommunication and a coverage breakdown for Metcalf's 56-yard touchdown. After that, the Patriots were less inclined to get tricky with their countermeasure defensive audibles. The end result was two Seattle receivers with 10+ catches for over 100 yards each. A team first.
 
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themunn

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The only thing I really didn't like about the game as called was the decision to go for it on 4th down. Or at least the playcall. Our running game was stuffed all day so to go for it with a Charbonnet run always felt like a risky move, and also the decision not to put points on the board could have been costly if not for Love's blocked FG later on, which would have left us needed a TD on the next drive to take the lead rather than a FG to tie.

Thankfully it all worked out, but if we are going to be aggressive and go for it there I'd prefer us to be more aggressive with the playcalling too, especially given Geno was on point all game.
 

AROS

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1. Great win against an underrated team, a hostile referee crew, and a drop epidemic. Any two of those could usually combine to beat a team.

2. Geno's best quality today was taking what the defense gave him. There were dumpoffs, short crossers, slants, outs out of trips...Grubb is well aware of this OL's weakness and wrote up a plan to avoid relying on it, while Geno did his part and played within it. Took the checkdowns when he needed. Did everything.

3. That said, Smith made some big boy throws, particularly in JSN's direction, which is an encouraging sign of chemistry. The third-down completion after halftime was a doubled-covered inbreaking route, but you can make those if you've got the timing and the sheer zip (and the prerequisite pocket space), and Geno did. Team effort there, but that's a very nice sit-up-and-notice 3rd-and-long jailbreaker.

4. Fire Anthony Bradford.

5. Charbs ain't it as an RB1, but I like him. He had great value as a receiving target and Geno trusts him. Expect Grubb to keep using him there. You also have to give him credit for seeking out contact and hitting hard, and he's good for a comical stiffarm once per game and an epic blitz pickup twice per game. I was a little harsh on him earlier so I wanted to say this.

6. Like Metcalf on the short crossers.

7. New England is well coached on offense. Hunter Henry's stat line wasn't so much gameplanned as much as just he and Brissett playing out of their minds, with several improv connections (though in the end, Brissett's patented 3rd-down whimper throws killed them). At one point, Mafe and Spoon(?) both let Henry go to stop Brissett rushing...on a 1st and 10. Young-guy stuff. Plus New England is great at screen execution.

8. Mafe was awful close to bringing Brissett down multiple times, including on the 1-yard line. Needs to close. We don't need the Earl Thomas of Sacks.

9. Says a ton about the team character (and about Mac) that Mafe, Williams, and Love combined on consecutive plays to slam the door on New England's closer. Lesser teams would have been demoralized by that 45-yard gallop (which Mafe also whiffed on). That felt like the end to me, but the D wasn't having it. Hall and Dodson had nice contributions on their overtime drive.

10. There's still nobody in the league better at drawing PI calls than one His Excellency Tyler Lockett. And I love that at 57 years old or whatever, he's still out there blocking his ass off for DK.

11. Tyrice Knight getting lots of snaps!

12. Murphy's first sack: thing of beauty. Drives his guy back three yards, swims past, and nails Brissett. Williams contributes by physically requesting a piggyback ride.

13. Back to Geno: he's still got GREAT wheels. Is anyone else noticing how fast the dude still is and how much hay he's making with it?

14. Y'all can kiss my ass on Jason Myers, he hasn't missed yet. ;)

15. You were not wrong in thinking that the Patriots were holding the entire game.

16. Love, love, love the drive right before halftime. Mac got aggressive and gave Geno something he could execute where Pete would have idly muttered "just kneel" within his face in a mostly empty Double Bubble bucket.

17. Pharoah Brown needs to get healthy.

Great stuff. I am a touch alarmed that we gave up the edge and allowed as many rush yards as we did. Scary considering they knew that was going to be their plan of attack and they still gouged us there.

As sound as we looked last week on defense, they showed old tendencies yesterday. I hope it's little more than early game/travel fatigue. Don't take my word for it, Love said as much in his post game presser.

Overall, they showed resilience and tenacity to get the win. A tougher game than we would have thought months ago.

2-0. Keep choppin' wood.
 

Mick063

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The only thing I really didn't like about the game as called was the decision to go for it on 4th down. Or at least the playcall. Our running game was stuffed all day so to go for it with a Charbonnet run always felt like a risky move, and also the decision not to put points on the board could have been costly if not for Love's blocked FG later on, which would have left us needed a TD on the next drive to take the lead rather than a FG to tie.

Thankfully it all worked out, but if we are going to be aggressive and go for it there I'd prefer us to be more aggressive with the playcalling too, especially given Geno was on point all game.
The new center got manhandled on that play. Keion White for the Patriots is a bona fide stud. Connor Willams may not be fully back from his injury and the Patriots probably have a comprehensive scouting report/player profile on the former Dolphin. He did fine with the QB sneak though.

I would have preferred a field goal, but I also like the willingness to gamble. I didn't like the play call more than I didn't like the gamble to go for it.
 
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keasley45

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Grubb deserved that game ball. He learned from his Denver mistakes.

Last week he called slow developing plays when the Denver defensive line was fresh, and this put Geno into impossible situations early. In the Patriot game, Grubb went "hurry up" early, prevented defensive line substitutions which contributed toward defensive line fatigue, and gave Geno another tick of time to survey the field. It was an outstanding adjustment and a tactful means to help his beleaguered offensive line.

Further, Geno continued to identify the coverage by using pre snap motion on almost every passing down, transitioning from an empty set to a one back set. The team had two plays called ("check with me") and Geno called out the adjustment at the line of scrimmage dependent upon what the pre snap motion was telling him. This is veteran quarterback play that puts extreme pressure on opposing coverages. The Patriots attempted to counter the Geno (check with me) audibles by changing up their coverages at the last moment and this led to miscommunication and a coverage breakdown for Metcalf's 56-yard touchdown. After that, the Patriots were less inclined to get tricky with their countermeasure defensive audibles. The end result was two Seattle receivers with 10+ catches for over 100 yards each. A team first.

If Grub and Geno (Genubb) continue to grow together and our line can provide reasonable protection, our offense is going to br hard to stop.

Geno's smarts are ubderrated by a lot.the thing i love is how he and Grubb get the team to the line early which allows Geno to read the D and get into the play that best exploits the coverage. Its not JUST audibling. I get the feeling theres a good bit of the playbook available to him given our personnel and he has the authority to do what he thinks will work. That kind of at-the-line adjustment is what made the Brady led Pats and Rodger's led Pack so hard to stop.

With the wrs we have, plus K9... having an offense that can adjust tempo to exploit sub packages not being made and that is broad enough to adjust at the line to every schematic weakness a D shows...we should have the strategic advantage against most of the defenses we play.

We did what we did against a Pats D who's strength was their D backfield and a line that is still a work in progress.

33-44 complete with a handful of critical drops, and big play conversion after big play conversion.
 

bigskydoc

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Maybe Im the only one that missed the stat but I saw today that on his 32 yard TD run against the donks he was the fastest ball carrier of week 1. Like 22 mph and a nasty juke, not too bad.
He reminds me of Kaepernick deceptively fast. (obviously not the same stride). Doesn’t look like he’s moving all that fast, but he is.
 

Maelstrom787

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The new center got manhandled on that play. Keion White for the Patriots is a bona fide stud. Connor Willams may not be fully back from his injury and the Patriots probably have a comprehensive scouting report/player profile on the former Dolphin. He did fine with the QB sneak though.

I would have preferred a field goal, but I also like the willingness to gamble. I didn't like the play call more than I didn't like the gamble to go for it.

Keion popped off the screen. Everything from his college tape is translating to the pros now. Textbook stud interior penetrator.
 

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