The New England Partiots’ 2008 season came to a crashing halt on the first weekend. Or so it would appear. Tom Brady is out for the season with a knee injury. It was bound to happen eventually – he takes more hits per season than just about any other quarterback. Fortunately, Brady takes excellent care of himself and will no doubt be back in 2009.
But where does that leave the Pats? Contrary to popular opinions at the moment of the injury, they did not go out and get a veteran quarterback to replace Brady. No Chris Simms. No Cullpepper. No Flutie, even. They stuck with Matt Cassel. For now anyway. Matt Gutierez was brought back on to the team as the 2nd/3rd QB after being released just a few days ago. So the team heads into the 2008 campaign with basically three quasi-rookie quarterbacks.
Yeah. OK. But didn’t this same team win a Superbowl with a semi-rookie quarterback in…
The Patriots play the Vikings tomorrow night, and then host the Colts next Sunday. So two big nationally televised games in two weeks for the Pats. This is nut-cutting time, though. If they win these next two games they’ll be 7-1 and no worse than tied with Indy for the Conference. And a lot of other teams will suddenly take them seriously.
But this has been an interesting week in the NFL. So many of the “mighty” have fallen. KC beat the injury-riddled Seahawks, who may have a tough time getting back to the playoffs. Atlanta beat Cinci; for all the Bengals bluster and trash talk they’re only 4-3. Philly lost to the Jags; Jacksonville always play strong defense and McNabb can only do so much. The damn Tuna and the Cowboys beat Carolina; Romo did well but for how long?
In the AFC, Denver let the Colts steal one. They just kept running their standard defense and let the…
Despite what a lot of New England reporters are saying, I think the Patriots did well in the draft. No one objects to the first day’s picks. A solid running back, a great receiver, and a very good tight end.
Day Two is where the griping started. The fourth pick was another tight end. Then a kicker, to replace Vinatieri. The next four picks were split between the offensive and defensive lines; and the finally a safety.
So why isn’t this bad? Why is it OK that they didn’t focus on linebackers and the secondary?
About the only good thing I can say is that the better team did win. Holmgren completely mismanaged key parts of the game. And the Steelers did execute better overall.
I’m happy for Bettis and Ward who are both class acts. I’m even happy for Cowher who, up til the last couple weeks, I thought was a complete blow-hard. But after seeing some of the pieces done on him – the person behind the jutting chin – I changed my mind. Even Rodney Harrison of the Patriots likes the guy. So for those guys, congratulations.
It was a cleaner game than I expected too. But …
