Patriots Cornerback Hysteria Reaches New Levels of Hyperbole
For a team coming off a Super Bowl win, Patriots fans sure are good at finding things to complain about. Our corners suck, our quarterback is probably going to be suspended and we’ll have to play a DII quarterback who didn’t even have a playbook in college, we still don’t have Calvin Johnson/AJ Green/Julio Jones/Larry Fitzgerald/2007 Randy Moss, we don’t have a 2016 first-round draft pick, and the Red Sox currently have a worse record than most of us at the bar on a Saturday night.
(crushes beer can)
Sports Illustrated’s predictably lampoonable MMQB column took the doom and gloom of the Patriots secondary to a new level this morning. In their honestly enjoyable “MMQB 100” countdown of the most influential people in the NFL for the 2015 season, Andy Benoit declared the New England defensive backs D.O.A., in a segment on Rob Gronkowski, nonetheless:
“With jolting downgrades at cornerback likely to bring New England’s defense down a notch, this team will need at least 28 points a game if it’s to have any chance of defending its Super Bowl title.”
(hurls PS4 controller at the wall)
Read this again: the Patriots didn’t keep Brandon “That was pass interference?” Browner, and didn’t give Darrelle Revis the keys to Robert Kraft’s Scrooge McDuck indoor pool of gold coins, so yeah, they’re F’ed.
Remember when a dominant offense was enough to win a Super Bowl behind a lousy-to-middle-of-the-road defense?
I’m looking at you, 2013 Denver Broncos, 2011 Patriots, 2009 Arizona Cardinals, literally every Colts team from 2000-2010, 2001 Greatest Show on Turf Rams…did I miss anyone?
What the hell kind of good is a 28-points-per-game offense if the other team can drive down the field and score at will?!?
But to hopefully help put a True Blood-esque stake in the heart of the “DUURRR THE PATRIOTS DBs ARE GONNA BE REAL BAD” vampire, or whatever they call them on that show, let’s throw the following hypothetical out there:
What would your reaction be if the head coach of your team, whatever team that is, Patriots or otherwise, walked up to you on the street and said “Hey, don’t tell anyone just yet, but we went out and signed Earl Thomas (that guy who holds down the back end of Seattle’s Legion of Boom) to a long-term contract!” ?
Pretty sweet, right?
Hey, guess what? The Patriots signed a guy this spring that, according to the certified smart people at Pro Football Focus, is literally putting distance (not Dustin Johnson U.S. Open putting distance, more like old school Tiger Woods fist-pumping putting distance) from Earl Thomas.
You might know him as Devin McCourty, the Rutgers cornerback-turned-free-safety who not only grades a +20.0 on PFF’s metrics (Earl Thomas is a +20.4), but is also locked in on a long-term deal in New England that has the nice little perk of having the most guaranteed money of any safety in the NFL.
Finally, to at least kind of circle back to the idea that the Patriots DBs not named Devin McCourty are all going to result in a fiery conflagration at the hands of quarterbacks like The StormBorn EJ Manuel, Geno Smith the Strong, or Ryan Tannehill the Destroyer of Souls…
(sorry, I’m giggling)
Let’s take a peek at where the already-roasted-and-toasted-per-most-of-the-media free agent corners that the Patriots signed this year instead of telling Darrelle Revis “Shut up and take my money!” came from:
Bradley Fletcher – Philadelphia Eagles
Robert McClain – Atlanta Falcons
Chimdi Chekwa* – Oakland Raiders
*Chekwa has since been released by the Patriots. Ouch.
So, Philly and Atlanta, then. Those are the squads that Fletcher and McClain are coming from, which would make the respective head coaches they played under last season Chip Kelly and Mike Smith (at the time).
Are any of these people Bill Belichick?
No. No, they are not.
So, yeah, let’s bemoan the fact that the coach that just re-signed one of the game’s best safeties and has made starters out of long snappers (Rob Ninkovich), punt returners (Wes Welker), college quarterbacks (Julian Edelman), gotten Pro Bowl seasons out of washed-up losers (Corey Dillon, Rodney Harrison, Randy Moss, Aqib Talib, etc), made wide receiver Troy Brown a defensive back that intercepted 3 passes in 2004, and made Pick #199 into a Hall of Fame, possibly greatest of all time quarterback has to find a way to make things work.
Again.
Like he has for the past, oh, gee whiz, 15 years?
OTAs are just getting finished. Training camp isn’t for another 28 days. Arnold Schwarzenegger might have said it best in Terminator 2:
(you’ll have to watch the clip to see the rest of the phrase)