Unconventional Preview: Patriots, Steelers, and a new season at last
Welcome to Season 4, Episode 1 of the Unconventional Preview, a serious-but-lighthearted, nostalgia-tinted look at the Patriots’ weekly matchup that runs right here every Friday afternoon – unless the Patriots are opening on a Thursday, that is.
As you may have heard, the Patriots will be unfurling their fourth Super Bowl championship banner in their history as the pregame prologue to the season-opening matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers. While the opponents are two of the NFL’s most decorated franchises, some big names will be missing, including Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell, receiver Martavis Bryant, and Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount. But after a tumultuous offseason in which the silly drama regarding Deflategate never waned, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will be on the field, having had his four-game suspension for his perceived role in the “scheme’’ wiped out in federal court last week.
The Steelers, who have a pretty decent quarterback of their own in Ben Roethlisberger, are a worthy opponent for the defending champs. Should be a good one, and it’s certainly been a long-awaited one. Kick it off, Gostkowski, and let’s get this season started at last …
THREE PLAYERS OTHER THAN TOM BRADY I’LL BE WATCHING
Malcolm Butler: I’ve seen the interception – right, you know, The Interception, arguably the greatest and most clutch play in Super Bowl history, perhaps in team sports history – probably 100 times if I’ve seen it once. And I can tell you this: If I see it 100,000 more times in this lifetime (let’s hope), I will marvel not just at Butler’s preparation, intelligence, and instinct in jumping Ricardo Lockette’s route and intercepting Russell Wilson’s fateful pass, but especially at the fact that he caught the ball. I still don’t know how he did it. How did it he do it?
Actually, there’s a semi-related question we should be asking now: What will he do next? As strange as it seems given that the interception – The Interception! – wasn’t his only excellent play in Super Bowl XLIX, he didn’t even start the game and came in only when Kyle Arrington crumbled before our eyes. Now, Darrelle Revis, Brandon Browner, Arrington, and Alfonzo Dennard are all elsewhere, and Butler is suddenly the No. 1 cornerback on a team looking to win back-to-back Super Bowls.
It’s a huge leap, but by all accounts he’s looked up to it in camp. I wish Revis were still around – he was a mercenary, but a damn effective one – but I can’t wait to see what Butler becomes. He’s played 14 NFL games, playoffs included, and he’s already had a career to envy.
Ryan Wendell: On the Patriots.com depth chart as of 4 p.m., Wendell was listed as the starter at both left guard and center. While that sounds like the makings of a formation that would leave John Harbaugh whining to anyone in his vicinity with a set of functioning ears, the reality is that it’s a harbinger of one of the Patriots’ few areas of concern.
With second-year center Bryan Stork on injured reserve (designated to return) after suffering a concussion and veteran guard Dan Connolly having retired in the offseason, Wendell is the only holdover in the interior line from a season ago. Patriots fans require no reminder that the line had issues until Stork emerged as a starter in Week 4, and now Wendell is likely to be flanked by a pair of rookie guards, Tre’ Jackson and Shaq Mason, unless holdover reserve Josh Kline gets the call.
This is hardly the optimum scenario in attempted to keep Brady upright and safe from a Steelers defense that would love nothing more than to make a habit of spindling him with a rush up the middle.
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The Patriots’ 2015 schedule
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Gronk: Or as you know him, Robert James Gronkowski. Yes, this one probably goes without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway, because talking about Gronk playing football is almost as fun as watching him play. The Patriots did the wise thing in keeping him in protective bubble wrap during the preseason – he doesn’t need the reps, and he’s so valuable that risking him to injury in a meaningless game isn’t worth it. (Sure, the same can be said for Brady, I suppose, but the reps are more valuable, even necessary, to the quarterback, the nerve-center of the offense.)
Still, it’s a drag to see him in uniform and just standing there grinning, blinking, and doing his goofy Gronk things on the sideline; it’s like staring at a Ferrari stuck in park in the garage. It’s also why any concern – real or manufactured for sports radio – about the Patriots’ so-so offense during the preseason is an utter waste of time. Gronk plays tonight, finally, and the Patriots offense will suddenly look like it has slammed the accelerator to the floor.
OK, LET’S TALK ABOUT TOM BRADY TOO
We know it now, and we probably knew it even as we were wishing it might become true. The notion that Robert Kraft would go all rebel-with-a-cause on the NFL and turn his franchise into the official league outlaw (merch available at the NFL Shop, of course) was nothing more than a collective us-against-them daydream by a frustrated fan base. Kraft has said that the dynasty Niners of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s were the organization to emulate, and not the black-and-silver bad boys from across the bay. He never had any intention of turning the Patriots into the modern-day Raiders, and he’s too wise as a businessmen to become the Al Davis of his time, a habitual adversary of the NFL offices. (It would, however, been wonderful if he’d at least made Jonathan Kraft get Mark Davis’s haircut.) Public vengeance was never going to be his thing. Kraft is a uniter more than a rogue.
But it’s going to be Tom Brady’s. After watching him going on 15 years now, we need no refresher course on his world-class competitiveness, though Mark Daniels of the ProJo did come up with a couple of fresh anecdotes here in this tremendous piece on the subject. We also remember what happened the last time the Patriots received a spanking from the league – they systematically ripped through the rest of the league, winning their first 18 games (16 after Spygate became a story during Week 2) before running out of luck and steam in the Super Bowl. Brady of course spearheaded that charge, and the expectation is that the Patriots will again channel their collective us-against-them rage into week after week punishment for the rest of the league.
There’s no doubt Brady and the Patriots will come out fired up tonight, even vengeful. It’s not that easy though. There’s There’s more to consider, as Matt Chatham wrote today:
“[My] many years of football schooling at Belichick University tells me volcanic rage for a corrupt and incompetent league won’t make a single block or tackle on that football field, won’t catch or throw a single pass. In fact, emotion can sometimes work against you because of how important focus and playing smart is in the game of football. You have to be able to run through walls, and the league’s fake-ass integrity juice can help with that motivation. But you also have to stay calm to do the job at hand.
This isn’t going to be 2007 all over again. Brady is 38, not prime-of-career 30. He has a great team around him, but the weaponry doesn’t quite match the Randy Moss/Wes Welker dynamics of ’07. It will be a more subtle dominance, if that makes sense. And that’s fine. Brady’s competitiveness shatters any device attempting to measure it. But even as his emotions percolate, he’s remains outwardly, astoundingly poised. He stays calm, as Chatham put it, to do the job at hand. The job begins tonight. Good luck to those attempting to prevent him from completing it. You’ll need it.
Grievance of the week
Grievance of the week? The week? Hell, the entire offseason was one long grievance thanks to you-know-what-gate. When Judge Richard Berman issued his ruling last week vacating Brady’s suspension, I physically felt a palpable sense of relief, like a Solder-sized weight had been lifted. Not because the judge did the right thing, though that was rather cool. It was because that lingering sense of dread, that relentless, offseason-long waiting for the next ruling to come and the next shoe to drop and the next 1,200-word, Goodell-loathing column to come out of my fingertips, was over. Finally, a resolution to the nonsense. Yeah, the NFL will try to keep it alive, having filed an appeal of its own. But for now, it’s over. Football is back. Brady is playing. Goodell remains a human punch-line in an expensive suit. It’s all good now.
Wait – I do have a more current grievance for you – or at least a predicted grievance. Last year, in advance of NBC’s Super Bowl broadcast, analyst Cris Collinsworth told me that he didn’t expect to talk much about Deflategate during the game. So what happened? He talked about Deflategate during the game – a lot. Given that sideline reporter Michele Tafoya reached out to UNH law professor Michael McCann earlier this week to ask him about the class he’s teaching on Deflategate, I think it’s fair to presume there will be plenty of talk on the broadcast about slightly deflated footballs Thursday night. Collinsworth won’t be able to help himself.
Prediction, or, yes, as a matter of fact, we are ready for some football
I know, that’s the Monday Night slogan, not Thursday night. No matter. This is what we’ve been waiting for, why we put up with all of it, why we can’t resist even though we know we probably should. In many ways, I hate the NFL, hate how it conducts its business, hate the collective arrogance and obfuscation. But count me among the hypocrites, because the product, the sport, is irresistible. We can’t help ourselves. And tonight that long-awaited reminder comes of why we suffer the nonsense arrives. I’m not sure this will be a great game – the Steelers are missing star-power, the Patriots’ offensive line may prove to be a work-in-progress. But it’s great that the game is back. It sure as hell beats reading the Wells Report.
Patriots 27, Steelers 24.
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