Couldn't you just as easily view this move as a way for Belichick to protect his coaches? When something goes wrong, the media won't be questioning the coordinators because there are no coordinators.
Last year Dean Pees was the DC and one of the reasons he was let go may well have been his inability to control tools like AT.
Given that there are a number of instances of NFL players simply tuning out coaches and deciding that they don't have to answer to them, I have a bit of a leg to stand on with this concern. Your statement that "they are given a lot of responsibility by Belichick and the players see that" is a sentence that reflects your desire. It may be true, but you really have no inisight into that. You want that to be the case so you write it. There is a data point - last year Dean Pees lost control of his defense, driven by a guy who played directly under Patricia. Does that make Patricia unable to control his men? Not necessarily, but it puts a small red flag there. He certainly doesn't command the respect that a Pepper Johnson or a Dante Scarnecchia does, and if the team has a 2-3 game stretch where the team has a hard time putting things together then are Patricia and O'Brien able to keep the locker room? They may well be, but not giving them a badge sure seems like a risk.
I don't at all know that, and your hypothesis that he was angry only at Belichick is again, what you want to believe about a situation into which you have zero insight. I guess I could buy that a guy who grew up in the game being coached by very sharp defensive minds throughout his career (and in college too) could be irritated with a position coach and a coordinator that he felt was not providing him with the best opportunities and the best guidance. Why is that a leap?
I don't think he is assembling a sh*tty staff. I think he promotes from within the same way Parcells ran his system and, for the most part, the results have been pretty good. But not giving them the coordinator titles is a very curious move as it risks blurring the chain of command. If Bill Belichick told me last season that I am playing the Joker role in the Okie defensive set, so I am attacking the QB, and now Patricia is telling me that in the Okie I am playing a run stopping role from the same spot on the field......if I think I should be attacking the QB am I going to listen to Patricia or am I going to go around him for clarification to Belichick? Or ask Pepper Johnson who has been around the Belichick defense for about 25 years now? It takes away from Patricia's ability to, every now and again, just say "I am the f*cking coordinator, do it my way, OK?"
See what I wrote above. Oh, and get the sand out princess.
So, let me get this straight: anyone disagreeing with you is doing so out of a desire for the converse to be true, while you are a relatively objective observer in prime position to set us straight? Ok.
Did he even watch the play? Gronk is absolutely being covered on the TD catch. It's not even really open for debate, he had to make a nice catch jumping and turning around because there was a defender fairly tight on him.
No surprise that Easterbrook would take a shot at BB about this or that BB would decline to take any action that he didn't choose himself or that he didn't view as something that would advance the Pats chances of winning.
Whether it is a shot or not is arguable I guess, but it's complete misinformation to say he refused to wear pink.
I'd go ahead and email TMQ the Reiss tweet if I were you. He's actually pretty good at correcting this type of stuff the following week.
Oktoberfest TRADITIONALLY comprises the 16 days leading up to the first Sunday in October. IT HAS ALWAYS OCCURRED MAINLY IN SEPTEMBER. There's nothing worse than watching someone get outraged by something that they have absolutely no idea about.
Come on. Do you expect him to read the first sentence of the wikipedia article?
The Christmas creep shtick is annoying but harmless. However, his mistake about Oktoberfest is inexcusable on all levels.(the editor isn't immune to complaints here) That, coupled with his irrational Belichek hate, makes reading TMQ very difficult.
His movie criticism is what drives me over the edge. He doesn't understand the concept of suspension of disbelief. He watches a sci-fi movie and then bitches that everyone is travelling faster than light speed. He says sopranos sucks because there are an unrealistically high number of gangland murders in the series, when in fact not that many guys get whacked in really life. He spent a long time complaining about the fantastic four movie because the thing ran into a bear in the black forest in germany and really there aren't many bears there. WOW EASTERBROOK I GUESS YOU ARE AS SMART AS YOUR BROTHER POINTING OUT THAT STAR TREK IS TOTALLY UNREALISITC AND THAT LASERS **WOULD NOT** MAKE NOISE IN A SPACE BATTLE! Plus where does a football writer get off saying there's too much violent escapism in popular culture? If Joe Shmoe prefers Sons of Anarchy to watching a bunch of football players concussing each other, who gives a shit?
There is nothing more annoying than the "playcall X was wrong". Really, Easterbrook would have picked a better play than the one BB did? I can buy Easterbrook saying going for it on fourth down makes sense but I don't think he (or any media observer) really knows enough about the team, the other defense in place, the defense's tendencies, the maze of mirrors of what the Pats' own tendencies suggest the Pats will do and what the Pats would expect the Chargers to do in response, etc. Plus it seems that Easterbrook is saying you should do some wonky trick run when a straightahead power run is a pretty good idea.
Ummm....do you know how dumb this sounds?
Really, one of the best football writers out there just because he recognized that Football Outsiders has valuable information? No. He was pretty good when he noticed that, but at this point, he repeats everything over and over and over again. It's gimmicky to point out everytime there was a poor punt decision. It's silly to be criticizing plays with no real meat behind the criticism (unlike FO who actually do a great job diagramming plays and explaining the various roles players have in schemes, supplementing greatly their statistical analysis). Being the iconoclastic version of Peter King only works if you have greater substance to your musings.
A34, your modesty precludes you from saying this, but I think your "race to the bottom" posts are funnier than, and almost as substantive as, 2010-era TMQ. TMQ is repetitive, but he does evolve - he deserves credit for continuing to think creatively on the concussion issue.
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No, it's not off-limits but critiquing individual playcalls generally leads to crappy analysis. The plays are pretty complex, there are a lot of moving parts, and most of the people on the board (myself included) are nowhere close to qualified to judge the reasons why a playcall was actually made. Here the criticism is it was a run but the Pats should have called a fancy run with some unspecified misdirection that would trick the defense. This is shallow, stupid, results oriented analysis done in hindsight. Connolly blocks Applewhite and the playcall looks smart.
Easterbrook is pretty consistent on this score, that defenses gear up and are good at stopping straight-ahead runs on 3rd- or 4th- and 1.
One of the best football writers out there? Hardly. And I'm not even talking about inserting his own external agendas into articles, his sanctimonious attitude, gimmicks in his articles, or general writing form. I'm just speaking solely in the factual correctness of his writing. Scroll through the pages of this thread. If you go through his list of sweet and/or sour plays in any given week, you will almost always find one play that did not, in fact, develop as he states it did. Whether he's making mis-statements about records, yardage, or things like "wide open", I can only describe his dedication to working for detail as "Carfado-esque"
Absolutely nothing save the fact that 95% of its residents would prefer to live in Chevy Chase or Potomac. Kind of like having as a brother one of the most just renowned federal jurists in the last quarter century.
Yes, Ms. Schreiber became quite the hero to fans like you on this board. It is a shame that she didn't have the balls to retract her comments when the things he said would happen actually played out later in the season. He covered himself in the glory of someone who stuck to his guns and was right, but the news cycles are too short. The league did a terrible job with the initial investigation and it was reopened. It had to be done even if the Pats were innocent, the stench of cover up was there.
I guess you missed where he is a successful author and a Brookings Fellow, and when his column was bounced from ESPN multiple sites clamored for it.
You take this much too seriously; we're just having fun.
Was a Brookings fellow. He got canned there. Rumours abound as to why; either that he had become a joke as a science expert or that his political idealogy was slanting more and more right and he was canned because he was too much of a partisan guy (or as he defenders would say, he was punished by a left leaning group for being too conservative).
He does deserve credit for a lot. His earlier stuff was funny and refreshing. Not really subtle, but a well constructed mockery of Peter King. Starting with the name and continuing with the loose form repeated from week to week. His tone is even a reverse, less self deprecation, insider information, and deference to the conventional wisdom and supposed expertise of the NFL elites, more bombast, outsider commentary, and criticism.
Joe Posnanski is not a fair comp to anyone. He is, at this point, getting in the GOAT discussion. he is an incredible beat writer (more daily columnist, but stick with me here) for the Royals. He is a fantastic blogger. He is a tremendous columnist (obviously an understatement). I have read a bunch of Red Smith (gifts from well meaning relatives) and obviously while you need to adjust for the times it is hard to say that he is better than Posnanski.
