the nfl season started last night with the patriots beating the raiders 30-20, making thad happy, i imagine. however, he can't be too happy, and here's why:
the patriots are a team with an absolutely dominating front seven, which won them the game in the end (the wilfork pick-> dillon td run). however, they do need help at cornerback (who doesn't, i suppose) and i think they need a little help with the play-calling. everyone knows that the two coordinators just left new england, the offensive one to coach notre dame and the defensive one to coach the brownies, and in their place came a young, new defensive coordinator and... nobody. that's right, the pats, with belicheck at head coach, have no offensive coordinator. now the thing is, clearly belicheck has shown that he's learned from cleveland - leave the offense to someone else. i mean, obviously he's learned a ton from his disaster stint with the browns. let's not kid ourselves. so, who's calling the plays? according to madden/michaels, it's the qb coach. i'm not gonna bother looking up his name. the point of this long-winded, convoluted paragraph is this: he sucked in the first half.
the patriots offense was smooth at first. lots of passing worked very well, because the raiders had to come out worried about the run - corey dillon ran for 1600+ yards last year and the raiders had an awful run defense. but the thing is, to keep the raiders offense, the pats had to run dillon. and when the pats ran dillon, they showed an incredible fear of ted washington. they refused to run up the middle. this is just what i noticed in the first half. they refused to run between the tackles at a 3-4 defense, which is what you do against a 3-4, i think. they ran around the ends a few times, they failed miserably, and the pats offense was basically grinded to a halt after they went up 17-7. moss scored that td, and then the pats couldn't respond. their defense gets them the ball back, and they can't respond. they even failed going for it on a 4th down conversion at the 30 in the 3rd quarter. then again, that was a run up the middle. good work niv, way to defeat your entire point.
anyways, after wilfork's pick, what happened?
1-8-OAK8 (5:10) C.Dillon left tackle for 8 yards, TOUCHDOWN.that's not aroudn the end, that's up the gut right there. and it worked. and i guess they ran the ball a lot better in the second half, attacking the defense instead of trying to skip around it.
so, my point sucked. they had one bad half of bad offensive playcalling, and knowing that coaching staff and that team, there's very little chance of it happening again.
stupid patriots.
re: Could be worse.....
They could have Dilfer at QB ;)