Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Week 3 Guest Column By Mike Scanlon
Special They Aren’t
by Mike Scanlon
If you are looking for an elegant win, one with long arcing completions and stout defensive stands, then this game wasn’t for you. A win though is a win, last I checked, so let’s see how the 2-1 Patriots managed to defeat the sophomore Falcon quarterback Matt Ryan.
The game was characterized by lots of sustained drives, mostly running out of gas within the red zone (only 1 in 5 inside the 20 resulting in a TD), and chip shot field goals. While Steven Gostkowski was a busy guy on Sunday kicking 4 field goals, his sharpshooting capabilities were never tested as he never had to boot one from more than 33 yards.
Another hallmark of this game was the extremely poor play of the Pats special teams. Especially on kickoff returns, the Pats allowed 25, 33, 26, 34 and 23 yard returns throughout the game. These lapses resulted in decent to very good field position for the more than capable Matt Ryan. Ryan had a decent game connecting on 17 of 28 for 199 yards, though luckily enough also had his problems punching through to paydirt. Atlanta’s only score came with 8:48 remaining in the 2nd quarter with a 2 yard plunge by Running Back Michael Turner.
What we haven’t discussed so far was the play of Tom Brady. The reason why is that while he didn’t any big mistakes, he didn’t make many game breaking plays either. Brady went 25 for 42 and 277 yards and a touchdown. Several times during the game he went deep, though each time the team came up short. Balls just off fingertips or just off the mark seemed to be a play that repeated itself during the course of the game. Tom seemed pretty ticked off most of the game with the cameras focusing on him yelling at his teammates, with his jugular vein throbbing on national TV.
Tom certainly has his work cut out for him, not only is his defensive corps depleted, he is missing his main go to guy in Wes Welker, who was out again this week. Its tough to make up the 10+ catches and 100 yards of offense that Welker would typically pick up week after week.
This brings us to a couple of the bright spots of the game.
1) Randy Moss. #81 was thrown at 16 times, and caught 10 balls for 116 yards. While he didn’t connect for a touchdown he helped stretch the defense by going long on several occasions, and also connecting on a 21 yard strike. He also took his share of lumps by catching several short crossing routes that ended in completions, and also big hits at his expense.
2) Something we haven’t seen in some time, an actual running attack. All told the Patriots ran for 168 yards on 58 attempts and 1 rushing touchdown. Fred Taylor accounted for 105 of those yards (as well as the rushing TD). An effective running game helped keep the pressure off Brady and kept the chains moving, even when the rest of the offense was sputtering. This also helped support the incredible advantage that the Patriots held in time of possession, nearly 2:1 over the Falcons.
The Pats weren’t all that special today, but had enough to win.
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