The New England Patriots have been nearly unbeatable coming off of a bye week under head coach Bill Belichick. Their impressive 9-1 record under those circumstances combined with Tom Brady’s career dominance over the Pittsburgh Steelers all but assured a Patriots victory on Sunday. However the Patriots defense had other plans.
A team that once established their identity playing hard-nosed, scrappy, stingy football on the defensive side has completely lost touch with that personality and has slowly deteriorated to become an embarrassing and pathetic semblance of that previously proud tradition.
The New England Patriots have the worst defense in the entire NFL. Let that statement sink in for a minute. Their incredibly rapid decline rivals that of the September effort displayed by their baseball counterparts, the Boston Red Sox. While no reports have been published linking key defensive players to consuming large amounts of beer and fried chicken in the locker room while the offense is out on the field; that type of activity would at least provide some logical explanation for their absolutely abysmal performance.
In a week that saw the Patriots inexplicably waive Leigh Bodden and place rookie safety, Ras-I Dowling, on season-ending injury reserve, further depleting an already paper-thin secondary, the Steelers came into this game with one goal in mind: Throw the ball until Ben Roethlisberger’s arm falls off. It didn’t. But that wasn’t from lack of trying.
Big Ben moved the ball up and down the field with ease, dodging the occasional Patriot pass rusher who actually penetrated Pittsburgh’s offensive line and eluding cornerbacks and safeties as if they were potential sexual assault charges (allegedly). They didn’t just expose the Patriots anemic pass defense, they willingly exploited it. Roethlisberger attempted 30 passes before halftime… By far the most in his entire career. And it worked. There were more holes in the Patriots’ defensive coverage than there were in Casey Anthony’s defense trial.
Another troubling trend is the Patriots offensive ineffectiveness. Until the fourth quarter when Brady was forced to operate in the two-minute offense, they were unable to gain any sort of consistent flow and, by that time, it was too late. Combine this performance with the week leading into the bye, in which the Patriots narrowly edged Dallas at home thanks to late-game touchdown drive by Brady, and the luster of this once explosive, dynamic offense is fading fast.
The Patriots were held under 30 points for consecutive weeks after 13 straight weeks of previously reaching that plateau. Tom Brady threw for less than 200 yards for first time this season and for a second straight week the emphasis of the opposing team’s defense seemed to be placed on shutting down Wes Welker. This is an alarming notion considering that through the first five games of the season, this seemed nearly impossible.
If you’re looking for a silver lining in all of this, despite the glaring deficiencies found on this football team, they still have 5-2 record and are tied for the best record in the AFC. However their schedule over the next four games will not allow them to achieve similar results unless they experience a dramatic turnaround in play on both sides of the ball. The combined record of their next three opponents is 13-8 and the fourth game of that stretch is a trip down to Philadelphia to play an Eagles team that just dismantled the same Dallas team that New England had their hands full with.
We knew before the start of the season that the defense was a huge question mark, but the offense was so good early on that they could just outscore teams. Well doesn’t seem to be the case any longer, so where do the Patriots go from here? It’s a question that I certainly don’t have the answer for and with the game plan and execution showcased this past week, it doesn’t look like Belichick and his coaching staff are very solution-oriented themselves.
A great regular season record is nice but, as we learned last year, that gets you absolutely nowhere and that is the exact destination this team is currently headed.
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