Pape
Pro Bowl Player
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Julian Edelman Asks Question After Patriots' Wild Win Over Bills
Julian Edelman posed a question on social media after the New England Patriots' dramatic Week 7 win over the Buffalo Bills.
nesn.com
Jules asks a good question... Are we back?
The short answer is no...
The long answer is No, we are a 2-5 team approaching the mid-season mark... This weeks game, and even last weeks game to a limited extent, are a step in the right direction... but its going to take a bigger step forward to erase the lingering taste of 3-38 & 0-34 back to back thrashings by the cowboys and saints respectively...
The line showed promise... Kicking Onwenu out to the RT spot, combined that with the return of Cole Strange to the line-up & the line had the best game of the season so far... But I temper those thoughts with the knowledge that the Bills D-Line was without Ed Oliver, who had been wreaking havoc behind the line all season long... By far he is their best d-lineman... Yeah I get it, you can't make excuses for injuries, but given the spate of injuries we have had this year, we all know missing pieces can alter a game... so not an excuse, but an acknowledgement that its part of the game... However, it takes none of the shine off this game... We went out there and played well for the most part...
One thing in particular that was a noticeable improvement was the play of Sack Jones... I suppose he's earned the right to be called Mac this week... he didn't make any stupid, boneheaded plays, stepped into his throws for the most part, and was decently accurate... The continuing emergence of Pop Douglas will only help that moving forward... The most critical factor in Macs play this week was he didn't turn the ball over... No pick 6's... no fumbles or interceptions on bad sacks when things mattered most... Amazing how much more competitive a team can be when you don't start the game in a 10-0 hole... And he legit lead this team down the field in the last few minutes and scored a TD ( btw, nice catch Gesicki! ) to seal the win... Good on him... More of that in the future please...
The lone turnover was a fumble by Bourne... That was just good play by Buffalos defense... ball security is usually not a problem with Bourne, so I will take that as a one-off play... By limiting the turnovers, what we saw was a more balanced game... b32/ne28 top of possession split... while I would like to see a little more ball control to balance that out, or even tip it onto the positive side, the defense was better rested... they still gave ground in the 4th quarter, but they were not gassed this week... the TOP game vs Dallas & New Orleans gassed the defense in the back half of the games... I attribute that, at least partially, to limiting the turnovers... The Vegas game had basically the same TOP split as this weeks game, but remember the raiders first drive that game chewed up a full 15 minutes... an entire quarter... that's not how you want to start a game off...
Okay, so we had better play from offense... Going to shift gears here and talk about a bad trend that continues... We were flagged for 8 penalties this week... 6 defensive penalties, 1 short bus penalty and 1 offensive penalty (Vederian Lowe, Inelligible receiver)... Thats got to stop... This weeks series of blunders didn't truly hurt us, but the penalties easily could have... Got to be better fellas...
So, with that... Are We Back? No... not yet... Do what we did this week next week & the week after then we can think about starting to talk about being back... One game at a time... Lot of football left in the season, but we still have a tough road ahead of us... this years schedule is brutal, no doubt... But this win was a huge step in helping this team gain a little bit of confidence that they can build from...
Go Pats!
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