Monday, November 19, 2007

Idle threat of the week

The panel of judges had all sorts of ideas for this week's idle threat, but then we watched what the New England Patriots did to a perfectly credible Buffalo Bills' team last night in Buffalo.

Or should I say what the Patriots' pass offense did on Sunday night. New England doesn't run the ball much, and it is difficult to tell if the Patriots' defense is any good or if they are the beneficiary of the shell-shock the opposing team's offense suffers after witnessing from the sidelines the brutal efficiency of their counterparts in red, silver and blue.

As for the Patriots' special teams, it's also hard to gauge their effectiveness. This is because on the rare occasion New England is facing a fourth down coach Bill Belichick is just as likely to play it like you or I would play a game of John Madden's football and go for it, than he is to rely on staid old orthodoxies such as "punting" or "kicking a field goal."

But who needs running or defense or special teams when you have Tom Brady throwing to Randy Moss. Moss was uncoverable last night. And by that I don't mean the opposing d-backs couldn't stick with him -- they could sometimes. I mean when they were able to blanket Moss it still had no effect on whether or not he was going to catch the ball. Which renders the whole traditional theory of playing defense curiously obsolete.

In fact, from now on, any discussion of how to stop Randy Moss needs to start and end with the words "planting" and "cannabis."

Now is the time I could go into a bunch of statistics, and break down how easy the rest of Patriots' schedule is, but I'll spare you. Instead I will declare any attempt to beat the New England Patriots before the first Monday of February 2008 to be the idle threat of the week for November 12th-18th.

And a half-hearted idle threat at that. Because, after last night, I don't believe there is a team in the National Football League that really thinks they can.

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