Patriots 2019 Season

[SparzWizard]

Watch Brady come back next year with #endofadynasty tattooed on his forehead and win another ring.

I’m not sure what happened to everyone at the end of the season (Brady’s throws, McDaniels’ playcalling, Edelman no-show, and defense exclusively giving up 7 instead of 3), but camaraderie did not seem at its highest point these past few weeks. Hopefully a couple of months off will give everybody a chance to re-group. There is literally no reason for Brady to play anywhere else next season - that would be a travesty.

Brady can still play, still have a strong arm. McDaniels gotta go. The lack of receivers and tight ends needs to be addressed. Edelman basically playing the 2018 Gronk role being decoy and getting banged up. The defense needs pass rushers.

[gouki88]

Watch Brady come back next year with #endofadynasty tattooed on his forehead and win another ring.

I’m not sure what happened to everyone at the end of the season (Brady’s throws, McDaniels’ playcalling, Edelman no-show, and defense exclusively giving up 7 instead of 3), but camaraderie did not seem at its highest point these past few weeks. Hopefully a couple of months off will give everybody a chance to re-group. There is literally no reason for Brady to play anywhere else next season - that would be a travesty.

Brady can still play, still have a strong arm. McDaniels gotta go. The lack of receivers and tight ends needs to be addressed. Edelman basically playing the 2018 Gronk role being decoy and getting banged up. The defense needs pass rushers.

I kinda agree about McDaniels having to go. His playcalling was often predictable at times, like repeatedly going to screen passes on 3rd downs in the same game after it working once, and I think he didn't use James White enough. Nearly 30 less targets for him, and half as many overall touchdowns. I also don't think his use of Edelman as a decoy was clever enough to open up our young receivers.

Our personnel moves this season were also, quite simply, bad - and even perhaps dumb. Sanu, quite simply, sucked. Weird move waiving Gordon for him. Don't know whether Gordon would have relapsed had he stayed here. Shouldn't have dumped DT, and maybe should have kept AB (or handled it better).

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Pathetic display of offense. ZERO points in the second half. As much as I despise settling for FGs, all they needed in the second half was one of those, and they couldn't even do that.

Mason with a HORRIBLE penalty. Edelman with a HORRIBLE drop.

This team needs A LOT of help on offense, but they're quite limited in what they can do to add impact players for next season. Getting Develin and Andrews back would be a big boost, but TE is a huge negative right now, and the receiving corp isn't much better.

I don't know. Right now I'm so bummed that I just can't see any hope of next season being any better.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Watch Brady come back next year with #endofadynasty tattooed on his forehead and win another ring.

I’m not sure what happened to everyone at the end of the season (Brady’s throws, McDaniels’ playcalling, Edelman no-show, and defense exclusively giving up 7 instead of 3), but camaraderie did not seem at its highest point these past few weeks. Hopefully a couple of months off will give everybody a chance to re-group. There is literally no reason for Brady to play anywhere else next season - that would be a travesty.

Brady can still play, still have a strong arm. McDaniels gotta go. The lack of receivers and tight ends needs to be addressed. Edelman basically playing the 2018 Gronk role being decoy and getting banged up. The defense needs pass rushers.

I kinda agree about McDaniels having to go. His playcalling was often predictable at times, like repeatedly going to screen passes on 3rd downs in the same game after it working once, and I think he didn't use James White enough. Nearly 30 less targets for him, and half as many overall touchdowns. I also don't think his use of Edelman as a decoy was clever enough to open up our young receivers.

Our personnel moves this season were also, quite simply, bad - and even perhaps dumb. Sanu, quite simply, sucked. Weird move waiving Gordon for him. Don't know whether Gordon would have relapsed had he stayed here. Shouldn't have dumped DT, and maybe should have kept AB (or handled it better).

McD's underutilization of White was criminal. Dude's one of the most dangerous players with the ball in space, and they forgot about him half the time. And for all of the good that McD has done, the dude straight-up gets a brain fart just about every time the team is in the red zone, like he's never been in that position before and has no idea what to do.

[SparzWizard]

Watch Brady come back next year with #endofadynasty tattooed on his forehead and win another ring.

I’m not sure what happened to everyone at the end of the season (Brady’s throws, McDaniels’ playcalling, Edelman no-show, and defense exclusively giving up 7 instead of 3), but camaraderie did not seem at its highest point these past few weeks. Hopefully a couple of months off will give everybody a chance to re-group. There is literally no reason for Brady to play anywhere else next season - that would be a travesty.

Brady can still play, still have a strong arm. McDaniels gotta go. The lack of receivers and tight ends needs to be addressed. Edelman basically playing the 2018 Gronk role being decoy and getting banged up. The defense needs pass rushers.

I kinda agree about McDaniels having to go. His playcalling was often predictable at times, like repeatedly going to screen passes on 3rd downs in the same game after it working once, and I think he didn't use James White enough. Nearly 30 less targets for him, and half as many overall touchdowns. I also don't think his use of Edelman as a decoy was clever enough to open up our young receivers.

Our personnel moves this season were also, quite simply, bad - and even perhaps dumb. Sanu, quite simply, sucked. Weird move waiving Gordon for him. Don't know whether Gordon would have relapsed had he stayed here. Shouldn't have dumped DT, and maybe should have kept AB (or handled it better).

If the Pats had Edelman, Gordon, and Brown throughout the season, they would have produced nightmare matchups for opposing defenses. But no, Robert Kraft has to cut Brown. And Gordon being released is the equivalent to the Malcolm Butler benching in Superbowl LII. Why is that Bill Belichick?

DT would've sufficed...he probably may have done a better job than Sanu.

[gouki88]

TP to both RRFYS and Sparz! I agree wholeheartedly.

White was one of the heroes of Superbowl LI for a reason - the dude has game. He's arguably a top 3 receiving back in the league. I really have no idea why he was so underutilised, especially considering we had receivers who didn't know our system as well as him like Sanu, Harry and Myers.

Definitely also agree about our receiver group. I know it would have made us pretty villainous, but dumping Brown was plain foolish for my mind. The pressure a duo of Brown and Edelman would have put on opposing secondaries would be unparalleled, not to mention if you have Gordon/Sanu/DT as your third option. Then having Dorsett, Harry or Myers as a 4th string WR becomes a huge luxury. Ugh... wasted season.

[ozgod]

TP to both RRFYS and Sparz! I agree wholeheartedly.

White was one of the heroes of Superbowl LI for a reason - the dude has game. He's arguably a top 3 receiving back in the league. I really have no idea why he was so underutilised, especially considering we had receivers who didn't know our system as well as him like Sanu, Harry and Myers.

Definitely also agree about our receiver group. I know it would have made us pretty villainous, but dumping Brown was plain foolish for my mind. The pressure a duo of Brown and Edelman would have put on opposing secondaries would be unparalleled, not to mention if you have Gordon/Sanu/DT as your third option. Then having Dorsett, Harry or Myers as a 4th string WR becomes a huge luxury. Ugh... wasted season.

I guess if you take yourself back to when AB was with us, the media pressure and spotlight on him here in Boston was intense...they were getting hammered on talk radio and print media every single day here just for signing him, then the lawsuit popped out right after he was signed, then the 2nd complaint came out, then he had his meltdown doing his thug impersonation threatening the woman and her kids AFTER the Pats had warned him to keep off his phone, and I think the consensus among everyone here was that there was no way they could possibly keep him on after what he had done. Also keep in mind that at that time we were beating up on baddies so the logic was that he was just too toxic to hang on to and too big a distraction given what was going on at the time. You can look back to opinion on this site about AB here:

https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=101255.120

Personally I would have been ok with them hanging on and riding out the negative publicity but that said I think very few of us would have had issues with Kraft cutting him at the time, given what we knew then and given that he had that suspension cloud hanging over him from the NFL investigation. You could argue that if we had decided never to sign AB in the first place we would still have DT and that probably would have been the best outcome given everything that happened after

As for Gordon, well the dude ended up getting suspended indefinitely again...there's no guarantee things would have been different had he stuck around with us. Again hindsight is 20/20 but they probably saw some signs that he was using again and decided to cut him loose and make him someone else's problem. It's just unfortunate how everything worked out - Edelman was beat up all season, N'Keal never took his step up and was injured half the season, and the others were just band aids and Sanu didn't work out, and the tight ends sucked.

The guy we really missed in our running game, other than Gronk, was Develin...Michel really lost a lot of effectiveness without a fullback blocking for him.

[Csfan1984]

Hope Brady goes to a dome team and plays warm weather clubs more, like NFC south or AFC south. Feel he can get to age 45 that way. Playing here he is only going to get worse at a faster pace.

[Vermont Green]

I am not as down on next season as some seem to be.  I feel the biggest need is a really good tight end and a half decent back up tight end.  That alone would shore things up in a number of ways.  First, a better TE helps the offensive line, both running and pass protection.  Second, a decent TE would open things up for James White.  Right now, they can cover the TE with the slowest LB and put the better defenders on White.

The second thing we need is to shore up the offensive line to improve rush and pass blocking.  Andrews coming back could be a huge step forward on that.  There will probably be another piece added as well through draft or FA.  O-Line was a weakness all season.

I am least concerned about receivers but I have concern of Edelman's durability moving forward but I think they can patch the receivers together.  I think we are fine with backs as well, assuming our full back is healthy and we don't need to play a LB there.  The defense is still pretty good and deep.  We probably need to think about who replaces Patrick Chung due to ongoing durability and we may lose a few other pieces to FA but I think the D can be put back together.

[Moranis]

Brady is done as a top tier QB.  I said it all week before the game, which only solidified that.  He just doesn't have that extra gear anymore.  He is 42 and finally looks like it.  He isn't going to get better as he ages, only worse.  He could game manage his way to a title, on a team with an elite defense and elite running game (much like Peyton did his last year), but that is the only way they Patriots are winning another Superbowl with Brady.  He just isn't good enough anymore to win at least 3 tough games in a row.

[GreenFaith1819]

Woke up this morning and I already feel like the NFL right now is like the Justice League without Batman.



We ALL need our villains / vigilantes and NO ONE.....NO ONE....played those roles better than Belichik and Brady.....

EVERYTHING - from the TALENT of these two to the alleged scandals...deflategate....whatevergate, LOL...........

I miss it already.

I'm not quite ready to see those two go.

[Roy H.]

Brady is done as a top tier QB.  I said it all week before the game, which only solidified that.  He just doesn't have that extra gear anymore.  He is 42 and finally looks like it.  He isn't going to get better as he ages, only worse.  He could game manage his way to a title, on a team with an elite defense and elite running game (much like Peyton did his last year), but that is the only way they Patriots are winning another Superbowl with Brady.  He just isn't good enough anymore to win at least 3 tough games in a row.

I agree with the above. He’s a mid-tier QB at this point.  He could win in the right situation, but he’s not going to be carrying the team with 350 yards and 3 TDs in the playoffs.

I am going to be very curious to see how the Pats handle this off-season. Do they manipulate their salary cap to go all in for one final shot at a title or do they start to look to the future?

[Phantom255x]

Still sad about the loss, but I've also accepted it. Truth is, even if we won last night, I think we all expected to lose the following week @Kansas City anyways. We just had a lot of flaws (especially with our receivers). Interesting to see how we approach this offseason. I still expect Brady stays here. But how we fill out the rest of the roster will be interesting. Andrews (maybe - blood clots are no joke) and Develin come back. I think we'll keep Thuney but let at least 1, if not both of KVN/Collins go. Watson has already basically announced he's retiring. Still have our RB trio + D. Harris.

Basically just add a WR (Odell would be the dream lol), a TE, and someone else in the O-Line for depth that's better than Newhouse. Harry/Sanu/Meyers have another year of experience and hopefully Edelman can become healthier again. Feel bad for Edelman having to battle through it all given the circumstances. He probably played a lot more hurt than we realize.

[Billz401]

This game and the whole season really was just puzzling. Why did burkhead get no burn but we kept feeding michel who's pretty much been a no show all year? Why is mcdaniels playcalling absolute trash all year? Why did it take us until 4th quarter to realize hey they're running the ball right down our throat, let's put 5 or more guys on the line? Why did we trade a 2nd round pick for old man sanu when there were far better options to be had(Emmanuel Sanders anyone)? Why did edelman lead the league in drops?

Way too many questions from a team who usually irons out their wrinkles by this time of year. They need to upgrade the whole offense if they want Brady to come back and I have faith they will do just that

[PhoSita]

Watch Brady come back next year with #endofadynasty tattooed on his forehead and win another ring.

I’m not sure what happened to everyone at the end of the season (Brady’s throws, McDaniels’ playcalling, Edelman no-show, and defense exclusively giving up 7 instead of 3), but camaraderie did not seem at its highest point these past few weeks. Hopefully a couple of months off will give everybody a chance to re-group. There is literally no reason for Brady to play anywhere else next season - that would be a travesty.

Brady can still play, still have a strong arm. McDaniels gotta go. The lack of receivers and tight ends needs to be addressed. Edelman basically playing the 2018 Gronk role being decoy and getting banged up. The defense needs pass rushers.

At this stage, Brady is fine.  He's a solid, middle of the road, game manager QB.  He does not make big plays.  He doesn't create something out of nothing.  He doesn't turn failed plays into big gains.


So unless the talent around him is great, he's just not going to lift your team up.


We've seen recently, he's not even going to entirely avoid big mistakes, especially if he's frustrated and rushed and tries to force it to guys who aren't open.