Pats Schedule for 2008

The NFL released the 2008 schedules, and the Patriots schedule looks manageable.   While the Pats do have their six games against their horrible division, and they get the NFC West as their cross-conference division this season, they certainly weren’t done any favors by the league when it comes to their other six games on their schedule.  If you take out all their games that were etched in stone before they even started drafting the schedules, the Pats have games against Kansas City, Denver, and Pittsburgh at home, with away games at Indianapolis, San Diego, and Oakland.

While there really is no such thing as an easy win in the NFL, you have to at least mark the Patriots down for 12 or 13 wins this season, just looking at their schedule.  However, with away games at Indianapolis and San Diego, you can’t really figure they’ll go undefeated again.  Still, it’s hard to complain about at schedule with 12-14 imminently winnable games on it.  The Patriots should certainly have their chance to go back to the playoffs and reclaim their honor by winning the Super Bowl again next season.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 16, 2008 - Post a comment

Pats on the Clock

ESPN has been working hard on their “On the Clock” segment recently, and with the 49ers first pick in the draft, the Patriots are on the clock as far as ESPN.com is concerned.  The main thing to know about the Pats as they enter this year’s draft is that they have big deficiencies on defense.  Of course, if you read my blog regularly (and come on, who doesn’t?), then you’d already know the Pats need D.  I was suggesting that they make a run at Pacman Jones yesterday.  If that doesn’t scream “desperate for defense” then I don’t know what does.

The Patriots should get a cornerback as soon as possible, and may even opt to get a linebacker on day one of the draft.  I believe that the Patriots need to be aggressive in the draft, picking up as many defensive impact players as quickly as possible.  That first round pick they lost because of SpyGate is really going to hurt more in the next two weeks.  However, with all the brainpower within the Patriots organization, I believe they can figure it out and get the best possible players on the draft board.  Still, don’t be shocked if Belichick manages to parlay that fifth pick into some real magic on draft day.
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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 15, 2008 - Post a comment

Patriots Should Think About Picking Up Jones

Pacman Jones will file for reinstatement with the NFL this week.  You may be wondering how this qualifies as Patriots news.  While technically Pacman does not play for the Patriots, nor did he play for the Patriots before his suspension, I have filed this under Patriots news because there is no other Patriots news to report, really.  And, since I think that the Patriots should do all they can to pick up Pacman Jones before the start of next season, I wanted to include this story in the Patriots blog.  I think that Pacman Jones could be a great addition to the Patriots defense and special teams.

First of all, the Patriots need a premier corner.  Their defense is certainly lacking in that area at the moment, and Jones would fill a need.  He would come to the Patriots with a lot of baggage, but the Pats cured Randy Moss of all his issues last season.  Who is to say they couldn’t perform the same miracle with Pacman Jones?  On top of the defense he would offer, Pacman would also give the Pats a dynamic return game.  Imagine Tom Brady and Co working the short field nearly half the time, and tell me you wouldn’t love to see Pacman Jones in a Pats jersey next season.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 14, 2008 - Post a comment

Draft Rumors for the Patriots

The New England Patriots are not exactly voluntarily forthcoming with information.  They’re not really known for being big talkers.  In fact, the New England Patriots organization, from the very top to the very bottom, are actually known for being the exact opposite.  Stone faces and short answers epitomize the Bill Belichick press conference, and it’s likely that at least half of the venom spewed by the media during the SpyGate issue was due to this type of stonewalling.  However, it would appear that someone in the Pats organization has set their gums to flap.

Pro Football Weekly is reporting that the Patriots are showing big interest in USC DT Sedrick Ellis.  While many of you may question the reasoning behind the Patriots picking up a DT when you already have a quite dominant defensive line, you have to look at the big picture.  Yes, the Patriots definitely need cornerback help, and they may yet pick up a very talented corner in the draft, but they may wait for the later rounds to do so.  Right now, the Patriots might want to use this pick to plan for the future and help keep the team on top for years to come.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 11, 2008 - Post a comment

Predicting the Patriots’ Draft Pick

With the news wire still basically dry as a bone in New England, it’s been tough to find real news stories this week.  We’ve covered quite a few articles that I would fully classify as “non-stories” or “not really news,” but such is the nature of the beast during the offseaon.  However, we do still have the draft to look forward to, and this article offers speculation as to what the Patriots will do with the seventh pick overall in the 2008 NFL draft.  In case you’d forgotten, the Patriots have the 49ers first round draft pick, so while they don’t have the next to last pick in the first round due to Spygate, I think they’ll survive.

While it’s nearly impossible to predict what Bill Belichick will do in the draft because of how tight-lipped they remain throughout the entire process, this article does a decent job of breaking things down.  All we can really do at this point with the Patriots is offer up conjecture as to what we think they might possibly do based on their needs on the field as we see them, but God only knows what the Patriots scouts are telling Belichick.  Beyond that, no one can really know what the man is doing with that information.  Still, it’s fun to guess at it until the draft finally happens.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 10, 2008 - Post a comment

Richard Seymour Excited for New Season

We’re only a couple of weeks from the NFL draft, and journalists are getting desperate for sports stories.  This is basically the deadest period of the year for the National Football League.  Many of the best and most exciting free agent signings have already occurred. I’ll put it this way: If your team is signing free agents at this point in the offseason, then your team probably isn’t in very good shape.  And with so many teams deciding to remain very tight-lipped about the draft, there is simply a dearth of decent stories to report on this week.

With that in mind, please understand how much digging I had to do to find this three-day-old story from the Worcester Telegram and Gazette about the fact that Richard Seymour feels he will be at 100% for the 2008 season.  This is news?  Richard Seymour is excited for the 2008 season.  Who isn’t?  To their credit, this is technically somewhat worthy of the moniker “news” because Seymour hasn’t felt he was in peak physical condition in awhile.  He is excited for next year because he feels he can truly show the world what he can do. Here’s hoping he’s right.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 9, 2008 - Post a comment

Pats Woo Player from Jets

It’s no secret that there is bad blood between the Patriots and Jets.  This rivalry is as old as the hatred of Bostonians by New Yorkers and vice versa.  In the NFL, it has grown as of late with Bill Belichick famously resigning as Jets coach before the ink was dry on his contract to become the coach of the Patriots (and we all know how that turned out).  Of course, the rivalry was renewed when Eric Mangini left the Pats to become the head coach of the Jets.  And then the whole thing was taken to another level with the SpyGate ousting of last year.

So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the Patriots have wooed away one of the Jets players to the greener pastures of Foxborough.  The New England Patriots signed Victor Hobson, free agent linebacker who has played all five seasons in the NFL with the Jets up to this point.  He started most of the games he’s played in, and will be a great addition to the linebacking corps of the Patriots, especially at age 28.  The Patriots continue to quietly put together a very solid offseason.  I can’t wait to see who they pick up in the draft.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 8, 2008 - Post a comment

Welker Hopes Next Year As Productive

With the Patriots continuing to just flatly refuse to make any news whatsoever, we have been forced to look far and wide for news stories.  It has become almost laughable, how hard we’ve had to stretch ourselves just to find something that resembles news.  Today is no different.  Today the Patriots didn’t decide to suddenly start talking nonstop about the draft.  No player has done anything to make headlines for any reason whatsoever.  It has just been another slow news day in the wonderful world of the New England Patriots.

So, with no real news to report, we come to this article about the next season for Wes Welker.  It’s really just a puff piece, but it’s a nice one.  It details Welker’s transition from NFL overachiever to prototypical slot receiver in the National Football League.  Because of the Patriots, everyone in the NFL is now looking for their version of Wes Welker.  After a career year, many are wondering how Welker can follow up last season.  Of course, that’s the real question for the entire team.  How the Patriots follow up last year will say a lot about this dynasty.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 7, 2008 - Post a comment

Faulk Clears Air about Pot Bust

In case you forgot, last season, Kevin Faulk was cited for misdemeanor marijuana possession.  Now, Faulk is clearing the air about the circumstances surrounding his drug bust.  Basically, his story is that the pot was not his.  The joints were found in his jacket pocket a few days after the versatile running back had attended a Lil Wayne concert.  This would all be suspicious, except for the fact that Faulk passed a drug test only days after the citation.  Actions speak louder than words, as the New England Captain says himself, and passing a drug test is a pretty solid way to prove you don’t do drugs.

This story wasn’t a really big deal, and I wouldn’t even be writing on right now if it weren’t such a slow time for news in the NFL.  Faulk is a good guy who has the trust and respect of his teammates.  Anyone can issue a statement denying their involvement in a situation, but to go out and take a drug test and pass - that says something.  To me that says that Kevin Faulk knew that he was in absolutely no danger of failing that test, and so he had no problem taking it.  Hopefully this matter can be put totally to rest now.  To be honest, I’d already forgotten about it.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 4, 2008 - Post a comment

Goodell Tired of Walsh Waiting Game

According to ESPN.com, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is growing impatient with former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh.  Walsh - now a golf pro in Hawaii - has issued claims that he taped the St. Louis Rams’ walkthrough practice prior to their Super Bowl meeting with the Pats.  New England famously won that Super Bowl even though they were 14-point underdogs, thus beginning the Patriots dynasty.  While Bill Belichick admits to taping opponents signals all they way back to when he took the job with the Pats.  He has vehemently denied ever taping a team’s practice.

It still remains unclear as to whether nor not Walsh will ever testify.  The man has been fairly quiet recently, and while it appears that talks are moving slowly in that direction, the Commissioner has already voiced his impatience.  The longer Walsh holds out on this, the less likely it becomes that he will ever actually be heard.  The reigning mentality at the moment is that Walsh legitimately has nothing of note to add to the conversation, and was bumping his gums a bit too hard at the beginning of this whole issue.  While this story apparently will not go away just yet, it does seem as though the NFL and all its players, owners and front office men are trying to put it to rest.

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Permalink - Posted in Uncategorized on April 3, 2008 - Post a comment


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