It's not chicken little stuff, I just don't understand the difficulty in saying the Pats are the better team and should win this game. If the Eagles had Wentz, then that's a whole different ballgame, and of course Philly has the horses to keep it close, or even to pull off an upset, but that's what it would be: an upset.
Oh man, I’m not even capable of using dumb words to say that I’m not even capable of simple math.
Pretty much everyone here is picking the Pats, it is just that most people feel like the game is going to be close, like right around the point spread. I don’t see how that is outrageous or being a chicken little. The Pats have played close Super Bowls regardless of whether they have been the superior team. I know that past Super Bowls don’t mean anything insofar as what is going to happen in this game, but when it comes to predicting a game in a sport where “Any given Sunday” is a real thing, I think psychologically the past Pats close Super Bowls do have an influence, and a prediction of a close Pats win is hardly a chicken little outlook.
The Pats are rightly the favorites. Best player in the game, who has proven it so many times on this stage, even when the chips have been down. For Philly to win, they're going to have to drive a stake in Brady and bury him for good.
Hilarious. It's OK if you're not a mathlete. Nice prediction logic though.
Yeah. But devil's advocate: Gronk was gone for most of the game, and the Jags got a gift turnover. Despite those two bonuses, the Patriots won.
Yes and no. With the Eagles winning big over a bye team, and the Pats struggling to beat the 3 seed, it wasn't hard to predict that recency bias would tilt the narrative as it has. As I mentioned in another thread, when the Colts put up 49 points on Denver in the WC round the 2004 playoffs, the doom and gloom folks were saying that the Pats D was going to have a tough time stopping that mighty offense. All they did was hold them to 3 points in the divisional round. I am NOT making direct comparisons. There are clear differences all around. But the ability of fans and mediots to fixate on the last game as an indicator is as old as the hills.
Strangely, the offense played much better without Gronk. Make of that what you will.
I'm sortof math-adjacent. I actually do a ton of (simple) math at work. Spreadsheets with linked functions all over the place...but nothing more than additional, multiplication, division (multiplication's tricky pal), etc.
Totally get it. Reinforces my point, one football game can be fairly random and the Eagles aren’t the Browns.
I've been wondering something, but am entirely too stupid to know if it is true. If different playing styles/game plans (either offensive or defensive) can not be sustained over an entire game does Belichick withhold optimal playing styles/game plans for the second half?
I don’t know what to make of Bettor X. For the uninitiated, he/she is the person who let $ roll in the World Series, cashed out before the last game and walked away with $14 million. Is baseball acumen — or luck — transferable to football? All I know is that it’s not supposed to be this easy. I am more interested in the trend of high stakes bets — smart money — generally, but don’t have a handle on that. And in any case, just as Vegas can be wiped out in one game, so too can the sharpies.
I don't exactly agree with this. The offense was pretty good the first drive, then obviously struggled until late in the half. They got the penalty on Gronk, and then the penalty on Cooks and scored the TD, but they did absolutely nothing in the 3rd quarter despite some good field position. Let's not forget they were still stuck on 10 points with about 11 minutes to play and facing 3rd and 18. From that point on, obviously they played great. But they went more than a quarter not doing a thing without Gronk. If he was in the game they may have already had the lead at that point, who knows.
211 people picked the Pats and more people think the Pats will win by more than two touchdowns than think Philly will win at all. Seems about right to me on a Patriots-centric board but where we know we have at least some fans of other teams (and maybe some nervous/superstitious Patriot fans).
I agree. Gronk definitely would have helped. The Pats came out with their usual strategy of throwing short and counting on YAC, but it didn't work because the Jaguars tackled unbelievably well. Brady was 19 of 25 on short passes for the day ... but for only 130 yards. Dion Lewis had 7 catches but for only 32 yards, and 20 of that was on the trick play. The adjustment the Pats made was throwing deep. The second-quarter drive featured 47 penalty yards on deep throws. The second TD drive had deep to Cooks for 18, deep to Amendola for 21 (on the 3rd-and-18) and deep to Dorsett for 31, and the final TD drive was set up by a DPI on another deep pass. They gained 160 yards on 7-for-13 passing deep and that doesn't count penalty yardage or the deep bomb that Cooks dropped. Gronk obviously helps the Patriots attack downfield.
I'm only part way into it, but I thought this was really interesting, on the question of whether superb playoff performances carry over to the next game:
I wonder if that is an example of:
Well, the fourth quarter counts too. I'm not going on what MIGHT have happened, nor am I remotely arguing that they're better off without Gronk. I'm just pointing out that in fact, the offense did better without Gronk than with him.
This is true, but minus the personal foul hit on Gronk, all that deep stuff happened with him out of the game.
The latter point was made in the context of the Giants' success this season on offense against the Eagles, and the Giants played fast, used no huddle or "muddle huddle" and thereby limited the Eagles' ability to rotate D-linemen.
You forgot the most important stat here. NY ran 79 hurry up plays. PHI faced only 65 more in all of their other games combined. That is just amazing to me. Add in the fact that Brady is a master at running the hurry up and it makes me much more comfortable with the offense’s chances of moving the ball. I don’t think they’ll be pushing 40 points but I think it’s completely reasonable to expect 25-30 points here.
I think the Patriots could use this to their advantage. I remember way back when Miami beat Nebraska for the national championship 31-30 (I think was the score), one of the big factors in the game was that during the season, Nebraska crushed people so badly that their starters only ended up playing half to 3/4 of each game. And so they were conditioned to only play half or 3/4 of the plays in a game.
When was the last time the Pats lost because they couldn't contain a big back? Without looking at the numbers, that seems like it's been Belichick's #1 strength as a defensive coach over the years.
There's no reason to think Bettor X actually has a skill here versus just a Wyatt Earp effect.
I agree with most of this, but what do you make of it? Should Pederson be credited for a good chunk of Wentz' performance, in which case that should extend to Foles (and thus the difference between the two is less than 7)? Are the Patriots getting too much credit for having been there before? Was the initial line (6 vs the 4.5 it is now) more accurate and the money coming in has overreacted to what happened in the CCGs?
Maybe, finally, for the first time in forever... the Pats interior OL will actually play well. That'd be nice.
This is my feeling as well. BB and Brady have been great over the years at doing hurry up. I could very much see the Pats putting in a series of plays once they see the Philly D set up in a way they like.. not allowing them to sub. The pats are notorious for conditioning.. and if a particular Philly line hasn’t played 4 or 5 or whatever plays in a row.. that seems like something that can be exploited. Not allowing them to run as fast as possible and get out and get a sub. They haven’t had to think about conserving energy all year potentially.
This is a good point. Cox and Fletcher played 90% of snaps against Atlanta and 80% against Minnesota (in a blowout). The rotation probably affects the other guys (Long, Curry, Jernigan, Barnett) more.
+1.
Andy, clock management weakness or not, is pretty fucking smart and Pederson, in comparison, doesn't sound so bright. Thinking about the greatest coaches of all time: Belichick, Lombardi, Paul Brown and Walsh for a few, all sound, or sounded smart. Whatever, is head coach smartness of first degree importance, second, or what? If sounding smart is very important, we should kill them.
I would credit one smart guy’s opinion about another guy who I think is smart, detail oriented and thus far appears to be handling this week pretty well. And no, I don’t think Bill is blowing him to send a message internally or to kill Pederson softly with bouquets.
I like to think of this as a scale:
