Stats on Pats Weekly Article by Joshua Bonneau, southcoast247.com correspondent
Week XI: Pats Quiet Lambeau, Packers 35-0: New England Defectors Back on Board
What a difference a week makes, and that’s precisely the idea. Last Sunday’s loss to the New York Jets sent a good portion of New Englanders into a tailspin, both the fans and the media reactionaries alike. Now, I’m willing to forgive and to forget, so long as the aforementioned realize what they’ve said and done. If there’s anything I can’t stand more than a fair-weather fan, it’s a fair-weather fan who denies ever having doubted. The season is long and winding, and there’s still a lot of football to be played. So for the love of god, someone please tell the Boston media not to sound any alarms or condemn anyone after a loss, and on the other side, not to overreact to a victory like this week’s against the Packers. None of this, at least until week 14. Amen.
“I think the thing is now, you’ve got to carry it over into next week, you know, but there’s really not a lot of carry over week to week, just like last week’s (game) didn’t mean a whole lot going into this week’s,” Tom Brady said in his post game interview. Pay no mind to the obvious contradiction, and read the quote more in terms of what’s implied. In so few words, he’s talking about the Patriot’s week to week preparation and how, in their system, big losses and big wins are both recognized only for what they are, and in no way do they set the table for the following match- up. People talk all the time about how the greatest athletes have the ability to think only in the present-the ‘goldfish memory’ as they say, and with the Pat’s, that singular attitude gets applied to the larger system.
So what’s this all about? Well, as we all know the past few weeks for the New England Patriot’s have been something of a rollercoaster-a big win in Minnesota, followed by two home losses, one to a divisional opponent, and now the easy-handed routing of the Packers in Green Bay. With all that, I can’t help but think that the Patriot’s week-to-week philosophy falls flat in light of this coming Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears in Foxboro. In reality, the Patriot’s have lost both of their premier match-ups this year, or match-ups against the two teams they are most likely to face in the post season, Indianapolis and Denver. The Chicago Bears are among those playoff caliber teams, which is why this coming week stands to be decisive for the Patriots.
Will the domination we’ve been seeing of the lesser teams be translated onto a 9-1 team? Can the Pat’s beat an upper echelon team, or just the crappy ones?
This all remains to be seen, but for now let’s get back to the basics, which is why I get paid.
For the first time in 27 years, the Patriot’s were ushered back into Lambeau Stadium, and something tells me the cheesy-head faithful aren’t going to want to extend the invite for at least 27 more. Not only did the Pat’s defense hang the ol’ goose egg on the jumbo-tron scoreboard, but they also removed future hall-of-famer Bret Favre from the field in the process. Favre left in the second quarter with an undisclosed injury to his throwing arm, after linebacker Teddy Bruschi put a hit on him.
Bruschi had a modest 8 tackles on the day, and was involved in a countless number of plays. Normally, that kind of performance would be deserving of a game ball, but on a day when the offense scored 35, and the defense allowed 0, Bruschi’s efforts might just get lost in the mix. To point out all of the day’s heroics would be a long and dull exercise, so let it just be said that the Pat’s looked good in all phases of the game. All across the board, from the dominant O-line, to the running game, to the receiving core, to the big plays and the efficient play calling, the Pat’s looked like the juggernaut of old.
Now the question is “how convinced are you?” In my eyes, the Packers might have been the worst above-500 team I’ve ever seen on Sunday. But no matter, jumping ahead to next week, I forecast the Pat’s edging out the Bear’s in a low scoring, hard-fought game. Coincidentally, both the Pat’s and the Bear’s shut–out their opponents in week 11, so prepare for a battle of the defenses, waged mostly in the trenches of mid-field.