Unconventional Preview: Once again, Patriots will have a reason to be grateful for Rex Ryan
The Bills' coach talks a good game, but lately against team he claims not to fear, he hasn't coached one.
COMMENTARY
Welcome to Season 5, Episode 4 of Unconventional Preview, a serious-but-lighthearted, occasionally nostalgia-tinted look at the Patriots’ weekly matchup that runs right here every weekend.
Wow, it’s all gone by pretty fast, hasn’t it? Deflategate lasted more than 500 days, and Tom Brady’s suspension will have lasted, what, 29 days, but at least the latter part of the shameful, phony league-orchestrated debacle has flown by fast. Beyond the frustration of not having the greatest quarterback of his generation, if not all generations, around for four games, he hasn’t really been missed.
I hate saying that because it makes it seem like he’s taken for granted, but it’s true. It’s been fun to discover that Jimmy Garoppolo is the real thing and ponder all of the possibilities that opens up. And it’s been fun to savor the all-for-one, one-for-all masterpiece the Patriots submitted versus the Texans in Jacoby Brissett’s start, one of more rewarding regular-season victories in recent years. Oh, yeah, and they enter Sunday’s game with “Walt Patulski’s”Bills at 3-0.
Talk about making the best of a lousy situation. Deflategate may have actually made the Patriots stronger.
Kick it off, Gostkowski, and let’s get to it …
THREE PLAYERS I’LL BE WATCHING NOT NAMED TOM BRADY, BECAUSE TOM BRADY GOT RAILROADED BY A SNIVELING TOADY OF A COMMISSIONER AND WILL MISS 25 PERCENT OF THE SEASON FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE AND UNJUST REASON. (AS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD.)
LeGarrette Blount: Don’t know if I ever actually wrote this, but I certainly thought it and therefore might as well admit it: I wasn’t sure Blount was going to even make this team in training camp. He hadn’t quite sunk to the level of a Marion Butts one-man tribute band last season, but he seemed slower than usual, running for 703 yards at 4.3 per carry in 12 games before a hip injury ended his season. He was decent, capable, workmanlike, but he never seemed essential. Yet that’s exactly what he has been this year in Brady’s absence. While his yards per carry this season is actually lower than it was a season ago (4.0 now, down from his 4.5 career average with the Patriots), he has been the epitome of a workhorse, running for a league-best 298 yards through three games on 75 carries. Blount was especially impressive Thursday night against the Texans, not just for his 105 yards, two touchdowns, or his amusing photo op with the Minutemen after a game-breaking 41-yard touchdown run, but because he did all of that just three off-days after running for 123 yards on 29 carries against the Dolphins. Patriots fans pride themselves, rightfully, on appreciating the subtleties and value of good players who aren’t always in line for the glory. Blount is one of those players, even if it took him getting some glory to realize it.
Jamie Collins: If he keeps dominating like he did in the victory over the Texans, I’m going to start waiting for Belichick to offer him the highest compliment: Acknowledging that he could have held his own on the coach’s beloved mid-‘80s Giants defenses. I always thought the most freakish athlete we’ve seen on the Patriots’ defense during this era was Willie McGinest (or Adalius Thomas on the occasions he was interested). But neither one of them could do all of the things Collins can. And he might be getting better.
Tyrod Taylor: So it seems the notion that the Patriots might just have the two best quarterbacks in the AFC East on their roster has gone beyond being a recurring theme in this space and become a weekly referendum. After Garoppolo’s polished performance in Week 1 against the Cardinals, I made the suggestion that he is second only to Tom Brady among the division’s passers, and I said it with at least some facetiousness. After his dazzling pre-injury performance in Week 2 against the Dolphins, I said it again, and meant it. And after Jacoby Brissett kept the ship steady in the rout of the hapless Texans Thursday night, well, hey, who’s to say it’s not a trio of superb QBs? (I know, I know, Brissett isn’t ready for prime time. But neither is Ryan Fitzpatrick, and he’s 34 years old.) That’s my usual long-winded way of saying that the Bills’ Taylor, an exciting freelancer, is the only other quarterback in the division who interests me as someone who could rate higher than third on the Patriots’ depth chart. Ryan Tannehill plays just well enough to lose close. Fitzgerald isn’t good. Taylor might be. And you wonder why they hate us here.
GRIEVANCE OF THE WEEK
I have to admit I’m bewildered by Patriots fans that get annoyed at Bills coach Rex Ryan’s look-at-me antics, whether it’s doing the worst Bill Belichick imitation you’ll ever hear at a press conference or asking Julian Edelman a question under the pseudonym Walt Patulski.
(The real Patulski, as shown in the clip above, was a former No. 1 overall pick and one of the great draft busts in league history. Not surprisingly, he was picked by the Bills. By dropping his name, I suspect Ryan was indirectly pandering to Belichick’s love of NFL history, even if he didn’t consciously know he was. That concludes the What I Remember From Psychology 101 portion of our program.)
Ryan is amusing, if not as amusing as he tries to be. What he is not is anything resembling a nemesis or a foil for the Patriots. He’s lost nine of his last 10 showdowns with Belichick, and his reputation is still mostly built on the Jets knocking the Patriots out of the playoffs in 2010.
Six years and a job change later, he’s still clinging to that long-ago victory, mentioning it twice a season as he inevitably tells us once again that he won’t kiss Belichick’s rings before he goes out and loses to him yet again. Ryan is annoying (and I have no idea how Rob Ryan, his low-rent Lebowski of a brother, ever cut it on the Patriots’ coaching staff from 2000-03), but Patriots fans shouldn’t be wishing him away. The Bills might just hire someone less obnoxious but more competent. Hell, maybe the real Walt Patulski would be an upgrade
PREDICTION, OR IT DOESN’T MATTER IF GAROPPOLO, BRISSETT OR MATT CAVANAUGH STARTS AT QB, THE OUTCOME WILL BE THE SAME.
This I thought: The Patriots would go 3-1 in Brady’s absence. This I know: This will not be the 1. Welcome back next week, TB 12. You’ll be happy to know that things are just how you left them. Maybe even better. Patriots 27, Bills 13.
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