Nothing champagne-worthy happened on Monday night, but enough interesting events occurred to pique the interest of those who enjoy having their interests piqued by teamwork. Like Week 6 against the Cowboys and Week 10 against the Jets, this wasn’t just a W, it was a W*. A W* is when your team wins and grows at the same time -- and by growth, I mean when Julien Edelman single-handedly makes our special teams relevant again, and Andre Carter continues his growth into becoming the monster we need him to be, and Danny Woodhead snatches his photo off the milk carton, and Gronk firmly establishes himself a player who demands (and can outwit) the respect of multiple coverage. But most importantly, a guy named Shane Vereen proved that an NFL analyst doesn’t know a thing if he doesn’t know about Shane Vereen.
Patriots Nation has mixed feelings about the game last night, and most of the negative feelings are worth considering. For one, the Chiefs aren’t a terribly difficult team to beat without Matt Cassel. Second, some fear the Patriots’ poor first quarter performance was the most significant and telling part of the game. And third, the remaining schedule for the Pats is relatively easy, which may lead to a false sense of confidence leading right into a post-season brick wall when they go up against a QB of substantial worth. There’s merit to these feelings and concerns, and I share elements of them all. But nothing can keep me from being excited about what I saw last night.
The most significant ongoing problem with the Patriots has been their inability to intimidate other ballclubs with their defense. Teams do not quiver when they line-up against the Pats. There’s an absence of muscular strength there, and that hole is constantly exploited by physical teams like the Giants and the Ravens and the Steelers -- and even by the Jets last season in the playoffs. The Patriots have the intellect and skill to win a Super Bowl, but raw power will do to intellect and skill what a bazooka will do to a second-degree black belt in Judo. Super Bowl XLII left a lingering scent on the Patriots that other teams continue getting a whiff of -- that they’re beatable with a mixture of force, energy, and power. Every team that’s beaten them since has done so with the recipe of unholy anger and unrelenting brutality as originally concocted by the New York Football Giants. It’s exactly how the Steelers beat them in Week 8 and how the Giants defeated them in Week 9.
Last night went a long way towards establishing a sense of ruthlessness in the New England Patriots. Their commitment to scoring points -- even after the game was well in-hand -- was extremely telling. Yes, that’s part of Bill’s modus operandi, but it felt particularly vicious last night. Equally as interesting was the fact that Tom Brady cherry-picked his scorers last night, as opposed to the normal drag of just hitting the open man. Brady made a point of getting Gronk a second touchdown as a symbolic knockout punch to the Chiefs. And very late in the 4th, Brady made a conscious decision to reward Vereen with a hand-off to cap a drive that had Shane’s fingerprints all over it. A part of me thinks Bill kept Tom in the game just to get Shane that TD (or perhaps it was Brady’s idea). Either way, it was all fantastic to watch.
So many special little things happened last night. Like Brad Marchand and Tyler Seguin, Mark Anderson and Andre Carter are helping each other reach new levels of cruelty and efficiency. Danny Woodhead is flat-out emerging in this league; he’s becoming a source of concern for every other team in the National Football League. The last thing teams want is for the Patriots to have multiple Wes Welkers, but that’s exactly what they’ve got; the Patriots are using Welker’s DNA like some mad Jurassic Park experiment and they’re creating catchers and runners that can’t be brought down without significant gains. If you consider the massacre that was the Chiefs versus the Patriots, and you take into account that Hernandez and Welker did not score or have big games, and Tom Brady played nowhere near his highest level, it’s pretty impressive. Also of note is the fact that the Patriots solved in the second half every effective problem Romeo Crennel was throwing at them in the first. The Pats made the adjustments that offset Kansas City’s plan of attack. That matters. These were big improvements for a team that needed to make big improvements.
