New England Patriots Thread Mod Warning Post #253

Smith Schuster being released. Not a surprise as he was poor last season and has continued that form into camp. Paying him instead of Jakobi Meyers was a heck of a failure.

Delighted JuJu won't be taking valuable snaps from any of our youngsters.

Agreed on Zappe. Seems like a matter of time before he's cut and I don't know what they're waiting for. Nobody will trade for him, he cleared waivers last year for a reason.

Judon is off to Atlanta for a 3rd round pick.

A third round pick for a 32 year old pass rusher who wants a big pay day coming off a season ending injury is good business.

It would be if you have a good team but we need everything we've got.

I'm actually in favor of the trade. We werent going to pay him, and arent going to make an SB run in the next 2-3 years (and his last 2-3 years). Surprised we got anything as teams knew he had no value to us other than perhaps getting us a slightly worse draft pick with a good sack or two!

I'm ok with a couple of years of rebuilding. Not everyone is the packers or steelers and even the latter has a rebuild ongoing too at the moment (not as drastic as ours). We had 2 decades of success and a couple of years of loaning/sharing our support to TB12 in TB.

I really liked the look of the later round drafted mobile black qb. I know it's easy to look good in the preseason but his skillset excites me. He even runs like my favorite madden QB, michael vick (for ye young kids out there, play Madden 04 and you'll see how unbeatable vick was as a user, his only weakness was fumbling), badly with ball in one hand.

Not to mention that getting fron 4/5 wins instead of 2/3 wins could be the difference between pick 2 and pick 6 in next years draft. That could be another first in value

I think the WR corps will be alright. We're missing a true WR1 who'll dictate coverage, but we have some solid talent there, including Polk who looks set to contribute right away.

The problem will be getting the ball out. OL looks a mess, at Tackle in particular.

Tanking is never a good idea. Maybe if you do it once but after being the third worst team in football last season we don't need to tank again. What if you get all the draft picks horribly wrong, and after this years draft I wouldn't trust Wolf or Mayo. None of our top three draft picks will help. Polk's only hope is with a no.1 at least and maybe a second guy ahead of him. He has no pace, he isn't dynamic in any way except for the height he can jump.

What do you think is going to happen towards then end of the season with us having one or two wins? I'll tell you that at least one if not more of these chants will be going on and I think it'll be at least two. 'Mayo out', 'we want Bill' and 'Kraft out". I can't imagine there'll be a Wolf one even though most will want him gone too. What do you do then when you know theh fans want your head and the players are hearing this stuff and likely lots of booing as well. You'll have players who want out for sure.

And it's very clear that we have decided to tank already.

I'm not saying to purposefully tank, far from it. But I'm being realistic. We're not even close to contenders. So there's no good going 7-10 and missing the playoffs and picking in the teens next year.

I'm not sold on the Mayo hire either. He seems too DEI focused, too focused on mollycoddling players and staff as opposed to doing the necessary. Bill is a great coach, and Mayo will get nowhere pretending he didnt exist. We had a 20 year dynasty, it's not all vanished overnight. All dynasties end. Look at the niners, they had the montana/young years, then some time in the wilderness, and now they are perennial contenders. Then the cowboys, who are not upper echelon but are playoff bound most years. Then within that you've got the likes of the steelers and packers that had some wilderness years but come back from them. The packers even wasted some of Favres years! At least we didnt waste Brady. The issue was I suspect once the decision was made that Bill was gone (and they all go, Lombardi, Landry, Cowher etc, even Payton from NO in your example!), there wasn't anyone better than the unproven Mayo willing to take on a large rebuild. And let's be honest, the team was woeful outside of Brady and a couple of others for some time. We rode those coattails for some time.

Bill coming back won't fix anything. He was part of the rot that had set in. Mayo ultimately isnt the answer. Ironically he's the same as his current QB1, Brissett, a band aid until the real guy comes along.

Mac was the best rookie in the 2021 draft class. He was then thrown to the wolves with a horrendous offensive line and his best receiver let go.

Maye could be starting in a couple of weeks if Jacoby goes down which could very well happen with the state of our OL. He won't last, doesn't check down and tries to run if his first read isn't open, just like Jayden Daniels. They will both pay for that with brutal hits which will mount up.

While I'm not one who believes in historic stuff, QBs taken at no.3 have an awful history, last three being Bortles, Darnold and Lance.

Mac was the best rookie QB in 2021. You don't know how good or bad he would have been with an at least average offensive and having Jakobi Meyers. I don't know either. I'm not saying he would have been good or great but I'm also not saying he would have been average or worse. The simple reason why is because there was no way to know.

A lot of his ints were because nobody could get open and he wanted to win games. Would he have thrown as many or close to as many ints with a decent OL and Meyers. We'll never know the answer to that.

He basically got thrown under a bus in his second and third seasons.

Mac could check down, could stay in the pocket with good footwork, could throw short, middle and long all over the field. We seen that in his first season. He could work under pressure too.

Maye can't work under pressure, has bad footwork in the pocket, cannot handle pressure without running out of the pocket. Under pressure he either runs or throws long which will result in ints. Running out of the pocket if your first read is not available will get you killed. I've watched all his college games, prior to the draft, and he doesn't impress me. He looks good when there's no pressure and he's got a wide open receiver. He has too many weaknesses to make it in my opinion.

I watched every game from a lot of QBs. Williams will be incredible if he gets good protection which it looks like he will. Penix was the guy I was confident would succeed. I didn't like any of the other top prospects.

I actually liked Milton and felt he'd be a good late round pick, you aren't losing anything and his potential upside is quite interesting.

Mac was a waste of a top pick. Not because of the player himself, but because of the poor coaching setup and crap team he was thrown to.

Put him in the 07 pats and he does better than Cassel did IMO. He's a fine game manager, but by the end of his stay in NE he was throwing the ball to the opposition and not reading the game. Put Mac behind a good line, with a good running game, a competent receiver corps and a competent defense and he will win games.

Maye is better than Mac, but if we do the same thing we'll get the same output. It's not all raw talent, part of it is situational. Drafting a QB to the chiefs or the niners is a much better chance of having them succeed compared to being drafted to the browns for instance. Mayfield at a good team would likely have been a top QB. The important part now for Maye is to not ruin him with a carousel of coaches and playbooks, let him learn. Play next year with a better team.

Mac doesn't have an arm to be an NFL QB at anything other than backup level. That's been apparent since day 1. Brady went 12-4 with largely the same team Mac had his rookie year. He only got worse from there. Maye is an immediate upgrade, now it's up to the management to help him develop and build a team around him that can compete.

We were offered 10, 23 and next years first round pick for 3 and a third rounder initially this year but shortly before our pick it changed to next year by the Vikings. The Giants made an offer as well but nobody is certain what that was.

So we could have got our left tackle, Fashanu, and our choice of Thomas jr, Worthy, McConkey etc.

Or just take the left tackle this year, trade 23 to somebody else for a first next year and be in position to move up if we needed, which we wouldn't, to get a QB next year.

If you are calling it a rebuild, which is ridiculous in my opinion, then you should be patient and not splurging on a QB at the first opportunity. We are short the two most important players to make us competitive. That's not saying we would be playoff contenders this year if we made the moves I wanted. It just means we would be a little better.

That pick to me makes it pretty obvious that Kraft is the real general manager.

And just on Kraft, he's went from a hero to a pariah in my mind and I'd be pretty confident in the minds of over 50% of Patriots fans. He sacked the GOAT coach and then went and organised a hit piece on him. He didn't expect the ex-players to come out and tell everybody that they said a lot of great things about Belichick which were all left out.

We wouldn't win the SB with Mac, his weaknesses are too easily exposed. Take away the short routes and he can't throw deep with power. We had to dump him and passing up on drafting a top prospect would be lunacy in the circumstances. A good Q,b can mask a lot of deficiencies, which has benefits when you're building a roster.

I'm sorry but Mac Jones had a great deep ball which he never got to show in New England because you need receivers who can separate and an offensive line who can protect and let the play develop. This is one of many from Alabama, this is a 50 yard throw.

Did you not watch the video, a 50 yard throw and you are saying he couldn't throw a deep ball. Do you want me to put up more of those videos? There's lots of deep balls thrown by him in college. He had an arm.

I didn't just defend him, I defended Bailey Zappe as well. There is no way to say what, if any, deficiencies either of them had and anybody who says he can is clueless. It's impossible to gauge anything in a horrific offense with no protection and nobody able to get open down the field. I've always said that either or both of them could be bad or good, we'll never know unless they get to start somewhere else.

I'm pretty sure Kraft was as much as if not more of a problem than Bill. Maybe he wanted control of the draft like what he did to the Tuna many years ago.

I think the Parcels said something like if you are going to cook the meal you should be allowed buy the groceries. Apparently Kraft wanted to go all defense in that draft but Kraft decided they were taking Terry Glenn in the first round. The Tuna did alright even after that taking Lawyer Milloy in the second and Tedy Bruschi in the third.

Did you hear the much spread rumour that he rang Blank and told him not to hire Belichick?

Anyway what I'm saying is that you don't turn from the GOAT to a bad coach overnight. You could see it in his defense that he was still a great coach. There was something going on in Foxboro and I really think Kraft had a lot to do with it.

At TB12's roast Edelman and Bledsoe said that it was clear Belichick and Kraft didn't get on with each other.

Well the receiver he threw it to in the video I put up is struggling to stay on a roster in the NFL. There were a couple of good offensive linemen for sure. Fact of the matter is he had time and threw a ball that landed in the hands of the receiver after it travelled 50 yards. He had a good arm and that proves it.

You are living in cloud cuckoo land.

You don't throw a ball fifty yards without a good arm. How many times have you seen a hail mary hit the end zone from 50 yards?

You seen a sh1t show in New England and think it was all Macs fault when the truth is he was a victim of it, as was Bailey Zappe.

As I said, if you want more videos I'll put them up. I'm just not going to let somebody away with spouting clueless crap.

And I'll tell you right here and now as I've said pretty often already that Maye won't make, he's not good enough. What's your opinion on that statement?

I think Mac had enough to be a competent qb , we seen it in glimpses at times(and we saw why it wont work the next drive at times ) and a great example is the cowboys game in his first year if i remember correctly , gets picked off then the next drive or shortly after throws a bullet over Diggs head and blows him open.

The second year was a disaster on so many fronts , I was working in Toronto and went down to buffalo game before the season end and even with the two kick returns there was great flashes of play from mac but then a wet fart of a throw at the wrong time was picked and that was that.

Then last year the less said the better he was deer in the headlights and throwing with one foot in the air in a panic and then crowd turned on him and that was it his card was marked. I think we could well see him be like a tyrod taylor type that pops up and hands the baton off to someone else transition guy in a year or two.

Im ambivalent about this year looking forward to the london game but apart from that i fully expect it to be a grind and jacoby getting battered for 8/9 weeks if he holds up.

Lets take a random moment here @ 2:25:

His ball lacks pace, and is behind the receiver, causing him to check his run. If throws a better ball leading the WR, he's in open country.

Same game, 2:45. He throws a slow, arcing deep ball to Agholor, who has to stop and come back to the ball after beating his coverage by about 2 yds. If he throws that with pace and hits Agholor in stride, that's a TD. Even the TD after the pick, was a poor throw that would have been picked if Diggs didn't make the wrong read.

At 3:43, he actually does make a good throw to lead his receiver. Credit there.

4:35, another lofted deep ball, that forces Bolden to check and back to the ball after beating his coverage.

4:54, a lovely touch pass to Meyers.

Just watch how many of these highlight throws involve either a receiver running wide open through the middle, or a receiver having to check his run to come back to the ball after beating the defender deep.

That draft class stunk, and remains to be seen if Lawrence will live up to any of his hype.

No comment on the points made

Statement win. That was very unexpected. The defence was sensational, and the offence got it done almost procedurally. Smart, mistake-free football.

Oh FFS

I just said don't get too excited, I didn't say it was a bad thing that we won. It's just that I think it's good to temper expectations.