Checking In with Tedy Bruschi

Generally, today is the day I start to really have to stretch myself out to find football news.  This period only lasts about two weeks before the serious training camp preview pieces begin in earnest, historically.  However, it is this dead period between mini-camps and training camps that comprises the last vacation time NFL players will get for months, and they tend to go completely underground during this time.  Luckily for me, Tedy Bruschi took the time to answer some questions the other day, and so we have that to report on today.

I assume the Patriots fantasy football training camp preview will be up sometime later this week, so we also have that to look forward to. However, until then, we have this article on Tedy Bruschi.  Bruschi has come to almost embody the Patriots spirit.  He is one of the highest-profile members of this incarnation of the Patriots.  The fans love him, the coaches love him and his teammates love him.  He plays the game the right way and only wants to help his team continue to win at the highest level.  It’s always great to see an article about a player worth looking up to.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Patriots Getting Ready for Camp

It’s Friday, which means we’re very close to another weekend. This means another week has passed, which means we’re another week closer to training camp, which means we’re all that much closer to football season.  However, I still have to fill the next few weeks with news stories, even though the Patriots are on vacation and won’t be back until training camp starts.  So, with that in mind, allow me to personally thank ESPN.com for running this New England Patriots post-mini-camp breakdown, giving me plenty to write about to finish my week strong.

The article basically just tells us what we can glean from the Patriots mini-camps.  What we do know is that the Patriots find themselves now fighting against the Super Bowl curse, if you believe in such a thing.  It is true that six of the last seven Super Bowl losers failed to qualify for the playoffs in the next season, but I really don’t see anyone else in the Pats’ division challenging them for a Super Bowl spot.  Nor do I think the Patriots’ schedule lends itself to a disappointing year.  However, the playoffs are really the important thing to this team, and they lay the groundwork for future success right now, in the preseason.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Patriots Q&A

There are slow news days and there are slow news days.  Today is one of the latter.  I could not find one single decent news story out there as it pertains to the New England Patriots.  The reason for this is quite simple.  The Patriots are all enjoying their vacation.  The New England Patriots do not employ a great many players who make noise during the offseason, and with the recent spat of bad press the Pats ran into with the whole Spygate issue, it stands to reason that everyone on the team is looking to keep a low profile these days.

However, we still have the New England Patriots home page to help us out through these quiet news times.  This Patriots Q&A session should keep fans tided over until at least tomorrow.  The session answers questions of the futures of certain players.  Junior Seau’s situation is addressed, though no one  yet knows exactly what is going to happen there.  Also of note, Sammy Morris is mentioned.  Morris was playing well last year before a clavicle injury ended his season.  However, it appears he is fully recovered and should make an impact this year on the field.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhbub.com.

Last Pats Mailbag Until Training Camp

In the NFL, the term “offseason” is something of a misnomer.  Sure, there are no games being played, but that doesn’t stop any of us from following every little thing our teams do between the Super Bowl and training camp.  However, if football does actually have a real offseason - and by that I mean a period of time during which it’s pointless to pay attention to the game because very little to absolutely nothing of note is happening - then these next few weeks are definitely it.  It is with that in mind that I give you the last Patriots mailbag for awhile.

While this stinks for me, because this is by far the hardest time of year to find legitimate news to report on each respective team, this is a well-deserved break for the journalists.  Luckily for all of us, we have some questions still to be answered today.  Among them are questions of whether or not Super Bowl XLII exposed a glaring weakness in the Pats offensive line, questions of loss of personnel by the team, and draft day inquiries as well.  The entire mailbag is six pages long, giving us all plenty to digest before the reporters take a much-deserved vacation.

You can get your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Patriots Rookies Visit Hall of Fame

The New England Patriots rookies visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame recently.  This trip was a part of the NFL’s “send all the rookies to the Hall of Fame” program that they started this year - at the advice of Michael Irvin.  Irvin, a recent inductee to the Hall, himself, got the idea while walking the halls in Canton before his induction ceremony.  Irvin then got the epiphany that if the rookies toured the facility before entering their first season, perhaps it would give them more respect for the game.  In this way, Irvin thought it might keep these players out of trouble.

This is an amazing idea, and everyone involved knows it.  Word is Michael Irvin has the memo circulated throughout the league crediting him with this idea framed and hanging on one of the walls in his home.  There is talk of moving the entire NFL rookie symposium to Canton as early as next season.  ESPN did a Sportscenter feature on this story that ran on Sports Center for days.  I hope this has a lasting effect on the rookies who took part, because if visiting the Pro Football Hall of Fame doesn’t give you a good respect for the game, then absolutely nothing will.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Specter Refuses to Go Away

Remember last week when I reported that Senator Arlen Specter had said that he would not be pursuing a Congressional investigation against into the New England Patriots Spygate scandal?  That was a lovely time, wasn’t it?  We could all focus on football and the important parts of the NFL offseason without having to be reminded over and over that Arlen Specter has completely lost his mind?  Well, that was a lovely time, but it has apparently ended.  It appears that Arlen Specter just cannot let Spygate go, no matter how completely over it the rest of the world already is.

Do you think Senator Specter just really likes having people on TV talk about him?  Do you think he likes it when people with cameras and microphones follow him around and actually care what he has to say?  Or could Arlen Specter have some kind of bone to pick with the Patriots.  Perhaps there is bad blood there that we just do not know about.  Beyond that, perhaps Arlen Specter truly believes that the Patriots cheated.  Whatever his problem is, the man needs to realize that every time he brings this up, he makes himself into even more of a laughing stock.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Training Camp Schedules Released

It’s been a long, tough road the Patriots this offseason.  I won’t even talk about the way last season ended (forget I ever mentioned it), but I can say that this offseason has likely not gone exactly the way the Pats would have drawn it up had they the option of doing so.  The Patriots have endured some big name defections of players to other teams, not to mention a nearly unprecedented level of media scrutiny (at least for the Patriots) over the entire Spygate scandal.  However, with all of that behind them, the New England Patriots are ready to move into the preseason.

That preseason is just around the corner, and we have the preseason training camp schedules to prove it.  Nothing terribly interesting or exciting here.  It is, after all, just a schedule.  But it’s really more what the schedule represents.  These schedules mean that we are at this moment little more than a month away from actual NFL football practices beginning again in earnest.  There will be full-pad, full-contact drills.  There will be two-a-days.  There will be intrigue and player squabbles and contract disputes.  There will be football.  And it will be good.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

New England Places High in Offensive Line Rankings

ESPN.com has released a list of the best offensive lines in the NFL as we begin to look ahead to training camp.  Sure enough, the Patriots are there right near the top.  They actually ranked number four, behind the likes of the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings and the Cleveland Browns.  While two of those teams are certainly easy enough to pick out, the Minnesota ranking really surprised me.  They did well keeping their run game going, but they were much for pass protection.  I’m not entirely sure if they belong above the Pats.

This ranking may seem a little low for many Patriots fans.  I, frankly, think it’s at least one spot too low, and one could make the case that there is very little difference between the top three O-lines in the league.  As for the Pats dropping a few spots and not being right there at the top - I would say this is more a testament to the duration of time the Patriots have spent as the number one offensive line in the country.  Sometimes, even sportswriters get bored and want to change it up a bit.  So they put a couple people above the Pats just for fun.  No big.  The Patriots will get it done when it matters.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Story So Nice, We’re Running it Twice

I said it yesterday, but I really think it bears repeating.  Phil Specter has declared publicly that there will be no investigation into the Spygate scandal by Congress.  My favorite part about the whole thing is Specter’s reasoning, which is basically that Congress now has bigger fish to fry.  Actually, that’s my second favorite part of the story.  My favorite favorite part of the story is the fact that this should put an end to any and all Spygate conversation, at least for a little while.  Specter was pretty much the only person who still cared about the issue, and now even he seems over it.

My question for Specter is simple: At what point did the Senate have enough time to discuss this issue?  As far as I can tell, not much has changed since Specter started tooting his horn about what a big deal Spygate was, and how it merited a Senate investigation a la MLB and steroids.  He was as wrong then as he is now, and I for one am glad Specter has seen the error of his ways.  To compare the Spygate scandal to the steroid era in baseball is gross and dangerous hyperbole.  It’s very good, for everyone involved, that Specter backed off this witch hunt.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Specter Too Busy for Spygate Probe

No matter what you’ve called it, the fact remains that the recent Patriots scandal has cast a long and dark shadow over the organization for nearly an entire calendar year.  As we approach training camp, it seems the Patriots are finally coming out from the haze that we have called “Spygate.”  I have been reporting that it seems the dust was settling, and things were going back to normal for awhile now.  However, I’ve been wrong before, so I didn’t want to declare a total moratorium on Spygate reports, lest I jump the gun and have to eat crow yet again.

However, with Arlen Specter’s admission that he is too busy to pursue a full Spygate probe, I believe we can officially start breathing our collective sigh of relief.  It would appear at the moment that we have finally seen the last of this horrible story.  It may have taken awhile, and the Pats may have had to endure some hardship along the way, but in the end I believe that history will be kind to the Patriots.  It does not appear that this was the awful injustice it was made out to be at first.  I hope the Pats and the rest of the NFL can put this behind them in the new season.

You can get all your New England Patriots tickets at www.stubhub.com.

Pages (3): [1] 2 3 »