Month: September 2017

Five observations on the second weekend of the 2017 NFL season:

1. The New England Patriots are still the New England Patriots. As expected, the loss in the opener to the Kansas City Chiefs was just a blip on their radar screen. They bounced back by thrashing the New Orleans Saints, 36-20.

The opening-game loss prompted the Boston Herald to question whether the end is near for the Patriots. Granted, Tom Brady can’t play forever, but the end doesn’t appear to be near.

The Patriots appear a lock to win the AFC East (again) and make the playoffs (again). And the Patriots showed they’re still the Patriots when they benched Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler.

Butler still played 75 percent of the snaps, but they seemed to be sending him a message that what he did in the past doesn’t count for anything in 2017. “It’s all about this year,’’ said defensive coordinator Matt Patricia.

Continue reading “Taking a look back at the NFL’s Week 2”

When an NFL team loses its first two games of the season, it always downplays the slow start and notes, among other things, that it’s a long season.

So it was not surprising that when New Orleans was one of nine teams to start off 0-2 this season, the Saints played the “long season” card.

“It’s a long season, but 0-2 doesn’t make you who you are,’’ said wide receiver Ted Ginn.

Well, in many ways it does — and the Saints know it.

They’re 1-11 in September the last four years, and this is the fourth year in a row they have started out 0-2. New Orleans finished 7-9 and missed the playoffs the previous three years.

Continue reading “NFL teams off to 0-2 starts shouldn’t kid themselves”

Five things I’ll be looking at in the second week of the 2017 NFL season:

1. How will the Patriots respond?

You don’t want to overreact when the New England Patriots and Tom Brady have a bad game. In 2014, they lost at Kansas City 41-14 and coach Bill Belichick said it was on to Cincinnati. They routed the Bengals 43-17 and went on to win the Super Bowl. And the last three times they lost their opener, they won the Super Bowl.

Now they’ll try to bounce back against the Saints and Drew Brees.

The Patriots figure to win their division even if they lose this game, but it will raise some eyebrows if Brady plays the way he did against Kansas City and loses a shootout to Brees. The Patriots are favored by a touchdown.

Continue reading “Five Things to Watch: NFL Week 2”

Five observations on the first weekend of the 2017 NFL season:

1. It isn’t a newsflash that the NFL is now a quarterback league. That’s why it is not surprising that of the 14 quarterbacks that had the best days, 12 of them won.

The only two losers in the top 14 were Drew Brees and Philip Rivers, who ranked seventh and eighth. Still, it was not a good day for scoring Sunday.

The NFL likes to average 41 points a game and they were at 46 last year. They were at 37 Sunday. But the low scoring Sunday probably isn’t a trend as the Thursday night game and the two Monday night games were high-scoring games. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the New England Patriots 42-27, the Denver Broncos beat the Los Angeles Chargers 24-21 and the Minnesota Vikings beat the New Orleans Saints 29-19.

So the Sunday results were probably an aberration as offenses are still tuning up.

Continue reading “Taking a look back at the NFL’s Week 1”