All things Patriots prior to 2019 Superbowl....

Well, here we are again.  Consider me among those who had left the Pats for dead in September (for me the final blow was losing promising LB Ja'Whaun Bentley for the year).  At that point, I considered them too old, slow, and thin to compete for a championship.  However, something miraculous transpired between then and now ...the Patriots suffered ZERO important injuries (in terms of losing guys to IR for playoffs).  ZERO!   This has to be the healthiest run of a veteran team in recent memory.  It's as if the Gods of the Gridiron have conspired against all odds to get Bill and Brady a 6th ring and cement them as the greatest dynasty in the history of American sports.

Below are some of the correspondences to friends during the 2019 playoffs (for those who can't get enough Pats talk / analysis before this monumental game).  Enjoy!

Quick take on Super Bowl match-up with The Rams on the day after the conference championships:  

Offense:

The Rams "11" offense (one RB, three WR one TE) is basically a hybrid of two primary concepts:

1) Despite using personnel (3WR) that usually "spreads" the formation, the Rams often line up in a tight formation leaving a lot of room between the outside guy and sideline on both sides.  All 11 players will frequently be bunched in only 40%-ish of the field.   This leaves a lot of space on the perimeter for the Rams to isolate their playmakers in space, and this is the main innovation of their offense.

2) The 90s Broncos Zone running game.  They will bunch the formation, then sometimes "stretch" you horizontally once the play starts while the RB will look for the "one cut" into the hole that opens as the stretching occurs ...often to a cut-back lane.  Discipline in sliding over laterally but "staying in lanes / gaps" is crucial to defending this running style.   

NOTE: In the Saints game, the Rams used a lot of "12" personnel (double TE) for the first time that I've seen, especially running with the FAT BACK (CJ Anderson) and mostly in the 2nd half.  

Some things they like to do:

1) Run the aforementioned "stretch" play

2) Run a guy in motion and race him across towards the open space near the opposite sideline and then get him the ball there with lots of room to operate

3) Ditto with motion but jet sweep where the guy who takes it is in a footrace towards the empty space. (very similar to Pats here, but often with more space for runner)

4) Run lots of pick plays in the congestion created by the bunching, especially on the two receiver side (which often also has a TE).  The bunch is more frequently on the right side.

5) Run crossers where the target ends up going through the defense and out the other side (since he is lined up in tight) and will catch the ball headed into space near sideline.

6) Run that "in and out" route that Edelman loves, and towards the space out near the sideline.

7) Give "sell-out" run action one way (complete with pulling linemen) and run Goff on a naked bootleg the other way having receiver(s) run into the empty space in front of him.

8) Run deep square-in ...maybe 15 yards.

A couple of things I would consider doing to defend them:

1) NEVER let Goff break contain to the right and roll into that empty space....their passing game is most dangerous when this happens.  (Also prefer him not to escape to the left, but he seems slightly less effective rolling that way).  This seems like something that Bill would make a high priority.

2) Jam Brandin Cooks when he lines up on the line of scrimmage.  Similarly, I assume that Bill is all over this one as he has tons of experience and game tape from last year where Cooks got manhandled by aggressive press coverage while a Patriot.   Note: I wouldn't be surprised if Rams make a plan to potentially counter this (if pressing is effective) by backing Cooks off the line and putting him in motion more than they usually do to prevent the press

MY KEYS TO THE GAME:

1) The Rams DTs, especially Aaron Donald versus Pats O-Line.  He seems like the Pats worst defensive nightmare.  The one consistent key to beating Brady over the years has been to "knock him off the spot" with a basic 4 man pass rush and prevent him from getting comfortable and properly striding into his throws.  The Giants effectively collapsed the pocket in the middle in both Super Bowl wins as underdogs.  This game could be a repeat of that as Donald is one of the best interior pass rushers in the history of the game.  The interior of the Pats line (Thuney / Andrews / Mason) will be tested, for sure.

The good news in this is that I consider Shaq Mason to be one of the NFL's most underrated players and one of the top guards in the league (Pro Football Focus agrees with me and named him the All-Pro RG this year).  Intuitively he seems well suited to deal with Donald's extreme power and low center of gravity.  Thuney and Andrews have also had good years.   This may be the place where this game is decided.  I expect Donald to line up primarily in the gaps next to Thuney and avoid Shaq as much as possible.

2)  Brady's ability to get into comfortable rhythm.  See above point.  If Brady can't set his feet and step through throws he is a different QB.  His "pocket presence" and ability to sidestep interior rushers to find a safe zone figures to be a key to the passing game in this one.  If Brady can play with the comfort that we saw against KC (the 2018 NFL sack leaders) the Pats figure to win ring #6.

3) Todd Gurley   Clearly he hasn't been his best self after re-aggravating the knee injury.  The explosiveness just hasn't been there in the play-offs and it seems to have messed with his confidence and concentration  On his "A" game, he would be a big, big problem for the Patriots ...an athletic, dual threat pass catching back.  Kareem Hunt killed the Pats in their two meetings.  NFL afterthoughts Damien Williams and Jaylen Samuels both made significant contributions as 3rd stringers forced to take the lead role versus the Pats.  

FAT BACK CJ Anderson has performed admirably in his stead, consistently picking up tough yards between the hash marks, but he is neither a huge pass catching threat nor does he have the speed to be dangerous on the perimeter or at the 2nd level.  Against New Orleans, Anderson got the majority of touches (Gurley was almost exclusively a decoy in the last 3 quarters).  I think a repeat of this would be very good for the Patriots chances.  Rams fans will be hoping that the extra 2 weeks will help Gurley's knee to heal further and allow a return close to his top form.   (Late addition: Maybe the huge move in the betting line suggest that the "smart money" thinks that Gurley will be a limited factor?)  

4) Wade Phillips  The last time that the Patriots failed to reach the Super Bowl, Phillips was the architect of the attacking defense that consistently got to, and rattled, Brady and held the Pats to only 18 points (and subsequently held Carolina to 10 in the Super Bowl).  He is a worthy adversary for Brady and McDaniels.  The good news for the Pats is that coach Scar has returned to lead the O-line and the personnel this time around is highly superior to that of the 2016 AFC championship.  Cannon is back as is a much improved Shaq Mason.  In addition, 2016 featured Vollmer who was a bit out of place at LT, a back-up LG in Josh Kline, and Bryan Stork who was beaten out at Center by David Andrews the next year.  This group of Brown/Thuney/Andrews/Mason/Cannon seems like a huge improvement over the one from 3 years ago.

The main similarity between the Patriots and Rams:

The Pats and Rams have had the two healthiest O-Lines in the NFL this season (in terms of % plays by original starters) and as a result have arguably the best O-lines at present largely due to continuity

A commentary on Bill as GM: 

Random thought on a factor that i've never heard mentioned ....would be interesting to do a quant study on this:  In what personnel area do the Patriots excel year-after-year?  Not the draft (although all other dynasties in SB era drafted exceptional core teams across the board).  Rather, Bill's strength has been the lack of "dead cap" or contracts that count against the salary cap where the player is not contributing (often has left team entirely).  How many big contracts can you think of that the Patriots have had to eat for poor performance or injury?  Bill has a knack for not signing bad long term deals,    

As of now Patriots 2019 "dead cap" for guys no longer with the team is less than $600k !!  By contrast, the same # for the Bills in 2018 was well over $60 million.  That bodes well for Pats chances at remaining competitive next year despite the aging of the core (although they'd better retain Flowers, he seems essential)

Also, the one year "prove it" deal under market in the NFL has to be the best value in sports in that you have both a healthy body and a cheap salary...and no chance to get stuck with "dead cap" for years to come.  Bill has been the master of this.  Would be interesting to see a list of these guys for Pats over the years, especially on defense.  Revis is obviously the gold standard but there are lots of others like Chris Long who made solid contributions.

Some quick thoughts after watching Pats-Chiefs game film:

- Forgotten in the post game euphoria ... Brady missed a bunch of easy throws, and could have easily had 3 interceptions.

- The play call and execution on that first quarter interception by Reggie Ragland in the end zone was almost as bad as the Marshawn Lynch debacle.  The Pats marched down the field twice by running the ball straight down KC's throat, and then on 3rd and goal inside the 1 yard line they run a pass into the teeth of the defense, and Brady throws into heavy coverage?  If you are going to pass in that situation instead of run it again (or 2 more times including 4th down) then it has to be a total run sell with somebody like an unused tight end sneaking off uncovered.  That INT completely changed the complexion of that game.

- I've come to the late season conclusion that the unsung hero on this team (and the AFC play-off MVP on defense) is Kyle Van Noy.  He is what Hightower used to be. Made a ton of plays on Sunday.  Flowers also shined (as usual)

- The O-line was insanely good.  Brady did whatever he wanted to in addition to the first half run dominance.  Shaq Mason is the best Patriots guard since John Hannah. If he blocks you then you stay blocked.  He is also one of the very best at pulling and leading the play in space.

On the Eve of "The Last Stand" .... commentary prior to Divisional Round versus the Chargers:

Seems to me that, despite all the shortcomings of this team, there is a potential road to the Super Bowl now ....

Thinking back to the draft, it seemed fairly certain that Bill had decided "Brady is old and Gronk is old (the idea of Bill shopping him in off-season certainly makes more sense in retrospect ) and it's difficult to see this team winning by going up-and-down the field by passing almost exclusively,"

....so they draft a mauler OT (or probably OG) and an RB in the first round, they keep (don't cut...although that may be for dead cap reasons) their arguably overpaid run blocking TE Allen, and they give an extension to FB Develin.  Potential Conclusion: When the chips are down this (last?) time around, maybe Bill (and Josh) are planning to use the run as their primary strategy ...and try to throw off play action and out of favorable down / distance scenarios? 

It's interesting to look back at the run / pass breakdown of the offense from last 5 years: 

SEASON                        PASS PLAY % & NFL RANK  LAST 3 GAME PASS%  

2014 Won SB Seattle     (16th 59.59%)                         (61.76%)

2015 Lost Conf Denver   (3rd 65.00%)                          (68.98%)

2016 Won SB Atlanta     (27th 56.41%)                         (65.80%)

2017 Lost SB Philly        (10th 59.78%)                         (68.08%)

2018 This Year               (26th 55.45%                          (50.26% ...but these are regular season)

They went through the year in 2016-17 running a disproportionate amount of the time, but abandoned that in the playoffs and SB.  In fact, in all of the last 3 years, they relied almost exclusively on the pass in the playoffs.

OK back to the point ...so while there is no predicting the outcome of an NFL season, especially given injuries, let's say that Bill felt pre-season that the the most likely outcome was exactly the one that has presented itself ...the Pats are going to need to run it to advance.  Could the situation have possibly shaped up any better?

- Could one have expected the "d" to have played much better with basically the same personnel?

- Could one have hoped that the Pats would have incurred NO significant injuries to non rookies?

- Could one have hoped for better than a sub-freezing game against a So-Cal team that is racking up frequent flyer miles at an unprecedented rate for January?

- Could one have imagined in their wildest dream that the dominant AFC team would have one of the historically worst run "d's?" 

So I guess on this basis ..the Pats are right where they wanted to be?  Could it have worked out much better?

Anyway those are my (potentially delusional) pre-game thoughts / hopes.  For THIS team to go to the SB ....that would be something indeed.

Seis Loco Chicas

On Saturday evening I was settled into a good rhythm in my writing.  While my neighbor and friend Kathia, a masseuse at the nearby yoga and wellness resort, had previously discussed  going downtown to the disco, I was content to stay home and make the most of the productive state that I found myself in.

At 7:30PM, I got a call from Kathia, actually a call to my landlord who then ran the phone over to my space.  Was I ready? Her girlfriends and I were driving to a small town in the countryside for some Latin style dancing (as opposed to the reggaeton downtown).  Despite my protests of working, and not wanting to make a long night of it, the decision was made.  The girls were going dancing and I was coming.  Period.  I was reluctantly granted a half hour to tie up the loose ends in my output from that day, and then off we went.

I jumped on the back of Kathia's motorcyle and we drove over the rolling hills that connect Montezuma and Cobano.  The road was mostly loose dirt that would turn into a cloud of dust with every passing car, and Kathia was concerned that her make-up job was turning into a dust mask. 

When we arrived in Cobano, we picked up Kathia's car and her two friends and headed off to Coyote.  Google maps has the directions as 39 kilometers and an hour and twenty minutes over "unnamed roads" which are uncharted by google.  We drove in total darkness over badly washboarded roads.  Kathia's small two wheel drive utility vehicle has seen a lot of wear and complained loudly and hesitated when we would climb hills.  It sounded like a ball joint or something similar was ready to give out at any moment, but on we went until we reached a river that was running across the road and was obviously uncrossable, and we were forced to backtrack for the 30 minutes or so to Cobano to pick another road and start again.

In town, we met another carload of girls and together we embarked on a second attempt to cross the uncharted expanse.  Again very bad, remote dirt roads.  Not a car or a light of any form for very long stretches.  We came to another river, sized up the prospects, and then drove over the optimal crossing path.  Another river, another crossing.   Several times I had serious doubts about whether we could actually get across, especially the 2nd vehicle which was a small sedan and lower to the ground than ours.   However, any questions to me of whether it was wise to attempt a crossing, in the middle of nowhere with no telephone service or prospects for roadside assistance, were purely rhetorical ...the girls were going dancing, period, and nothing that I could say could overcome their unwavering determination.

Finally, two hours later we miraculously reached our destination.  A mini fairgrounds in the middle of nowhere with a soccer field as a parking lot and a giant open air structure which was simply a corrugated roof supported by large cement pillars.  Carnival style food vendors lined the entrance side and inside a live Latin band played loud music over a modern sound system.  Four dancing male singers across the front of the stage with drums, bass, percussion, trombone, and a keyboard player with out-of-date synth sounds.  The giant, concrete slab dance floor (with a capacity of a couple thousand if packed in tight) was sparsely populated with couples.  Later the girls would bemoan the declining popularity of traditional Spanish music, and scenes like this that were a throwback to another time.

My group of six pretty, sharply dressed young ladies of ages roughly 24 to 32, settled in the back, and an interesting assortment of guys, old and young, politely approached and led them onto the dance floor one by one and for one song at a time.  While I usually am very comfortable in the dancehall, here I was a bit out of my element.  I know little about the various styles of latin dance, and that way of moving to music doesn't come naturally to me, so I was content to linger at the back with the girls who weren't dancing and observe the scene.

Since we arrived late, we only caught the last 5 or 6 songs of the band, and the dancing part of the night had barely gotten started before coming to an abrupt end.   While several of the male dancing partners made pitches about where we might go to continue the festivities (all of them far away), after having a quick bite to eat the determination among my posse to have fun suddenly turned into a resignation to get back to homebase and call it a night.

I guess it's worth mentioning that among the hundreds present at the fairgrounds, I was the only "gringo."  As we walked to the car, a guy with a giant straw hat looked at me, and the girls, and yelled "Hey Gringo" with a big smile.  I smiled back.

Since we were uncertain about the best way to return to Cobano (retracing our steps was not a great option due to the road quality and the rivers), we joined a small caravan headed south on a 3rd route through "unnamed roads".  The first river crossing, which required an abrupt swing to the right before an arcing return to the left to catch the other bank, was fairly uneventful.  However, on the second crossing, the sedan bottomed out and lodged itself in the rocky riverbed.
.......
Interesting reflection: My second priority on this trip (aside from my writing) has been to ramp up my Satipatthana meditation, both in terms of practice and learning.  This was essential in getting me in the right state to write (since my main character is a dedicated practitioner) and was aided by my isolation here in Costa Rica.  Anyway, something Yuttadhammo Bhikku said in one of his instructional videos resonated with me ...that is (paraphrased) to embrace "sati" means to change one's way of thinking and abandon the habit of forming opinions.  Makes sense.  However, I find myself firmly entrenched in the world of opinions.  My (former) career was defined by forming opinions.  In the last couple of weeks, I have done a fair amount of reflection about whether I need to think about aggressively weening myself off of this tendency (after the Super Bowl, of course ;) 

So it was interesting to observe the reaction of the caravan members (including several more vehicles of guys and girls) once it was determined that the car was stuck.   Everybody had an opinion, and eight or so people were talking at once trying to demonstrate the superiority of their opinion.  The only problem was, nobody had spent any time to properly diagnose the problem ...that is except Sophia who handled the sight of her rental car stuck in the river with surprising grace.  We dug out all the rocks under the bumper and still found the car firmly stuck.  Then we went around and used the flashlight of her phone to look into the wheel well, and found that the actual frame of the car was dug into the riverbed.  Clearly, we were going to have to lift the frame off of the ground to have any chance at getting out.  The girls (in their Saturday night clothes and bare feet) and I tried to lift the front of the car off the ground, but they weren't quite strong enough to budge it, and it remained stuck. 

Throughout the process, a series of (drunk?) guys manifested the "get out of the way. this is some guy shit" vibe and then got in the car and revved the engine and spun the front wheels (FWD) digging the car in slightly deeper with every subsequent effort, while also turning the steering wheel so the wheels were at least at a 45 degree angle from straight.  (In their defense, I guess none of the guys had ever gotten their car stuck in the snow before).

Kathia returned from her mission with a thick rope to tie to a big pickup truck.  This is clearly what we needed ...but some of the guys remained entrenched in the idea of driving the car out of the hole (still nobody else had looked extensively at the actual problem).  Against our advice to straighten the wheel and leave it in neutral while the truck pulled the rear and we tried to lift the front end, the newest "driver" of the stuck car hit the gas with maximum ferocity, and thrashed the wheel around throwing rocks in all directions (while I yelled "NO! NO! NO!") and sending me backwards into the river, now completely soaked as opposed to only partially soaked.

For the nth time I told Sophia, "We need three big guys to lift the front." and she answered "I keep telling them, but they don't want to.," and I replied, "Well we are just going to sit here stuck until they decide that they want to."

About 10 minutes later, after another round of 4 or 5 people talking at once I shouted "STOP STOP everybody STOP TALKING", and calmly told them that the frame was stuck in the bottom and that no amount of force could help us if the two biggest guys didn't help me lift the frame off of the ground from the front (this was translated by Sophia).   Finally, they decided to try this, and with great effort we lifted the car off the frame and rolled it out of the hole ... with Sophia in the driver's seat this time.

(The reason that I described that part of the story in detail is that it made a profound impression on me about the nature of opinions...given my reflections of late).

So with the car out of the river and back to the original shore, there was a unanimous consensus that it was probably unwise to try this a 2nd time, and so we chose the safer option of taking the best possible roads home ... unfortunately the backtracking and circuitous route meant a total of over 3 hours to travel less than 20 miles as the crow flies (and yes, I now have a heightened appreciation for decent roads and bridges)

On the car ride home, the girls apologized and laughed about what happens when you get caught up with "Seis loco chicas" although they added...at least you have an interesting story for your friends back home, and I told them that some day I would write down this story and call it "Seis Loco Chicas" and this was the running joke for the car ride home (which ended well after sunrise) ...the story of seis loco chicas.