Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 18: Patriots vs. Dolphins

Things to consider while appreciating the 2025 Patriots for ending the season better than Stranger Things S5 did:

--You could be one of those people who are dismissing an improbable, nearly impossible 14-3 season as merely the product of a weak schedule. And if that's you, I pity you and your dull, gray, joyless existence. I'm sure to you that a rainbow is merely  refracted light. A cloud in the shape of an animal nothing but a ball of condensed water vapor and pareidolia playing a trick on your mind. Human love no more than a chemical reaction to promote reproduction. Well, those of us with souls know what we have witnessed is a miracle. This rebuild was supposed to take time. There were going to be high and lows. Victories and set backs. Ups, followed inevitably by downs. Instead, it's taken off like a rocket, achieved orbit, and the Patriots find themselves among a select few looking down at the rest of creation. 

--It's a great time to be one of those who chose to believe from the beginning. I can still remember standing there on the first day of camp, July 23rd. Looking this team in the eye, and swear I felt something special happening. Positive emotions I hadn't felt in a long time. A packed house of Massholes standing in the hot sun, sweating through their Pats gear. And filled with excitement and hope we hadn't experienced in forever. You could feel it. Like we were all on the first step of a wonderful journey. I made my way to the car through the plaza outside the Pro Shop where the Tom Brady statue was about to be put up, and I felt it again. I'll use the word now that I used that day, because I'm getting too old to not say how I'm feeling. I love this team. And I don't care who knows it. It has nothing to do with strength of schedule, and everything to do with strength of a football Dynasty that is back already.

--But holy cats, not even the most insanely optimistic among us was expecting 14 wins. Or that in his first year with Josh McDaniels, Drake Maye would not just be good, not just a league MVP, but historically good:

I won't get into the MVP debate here. That's a topic for another blog. But if you're going to argue Matthew Stafford deserves it for leading his team to third place in the NFC West, than you and I have very different interpretations of the word "Valuable." 

--Maye took to McDaniels' system faster than anyone could've possiby hoped. And from that first day of 7/23, it never looked like the McOffense was being dumbed down or simplified for him in any way. When I was teaching my kids to drive, I took them to the old South Weymouth Naval Air Station where it's all wide open pavement and no other drivers. McDaniels had Maye merge onto the expressway and had him get off on Storrow during rush hour. While driving a stick. He's been doing it all from Day One. ID-ing the Mike. Setting his protections. Checking out of plays. Making coverage reads. All with the same learning curve as Neo mastering Kung Fu in the Matrix. Like it was implanted directly into his brain. 

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--Consider his one touchdown pass. Facing a 3rd & 2 and Miami climbing back into the game, he went to spread against man coverage. He had a Corner-Out combination on the back side of the play. With Efton Chism running a flat, Hunter Henry occupying the MLB, and Rhamondre Stevenson running a slant-and-go (Sluggo). Maye never hesistated. Watch this replay and you'll see he never checked the backside or looked anyone off. He knew from the snap where he was going with the throw. Trusted the post safety would roll over to Kayshon Boutte's corner route, which he did. The ball was out of his hands by the time Stevenson reached the line to gain. And before he'd gotten Tyrel Dodson to flip his hips. Maye saw it all happening before it did:

--But even he can't figure out how the Duffer Brothers could just leave the Demogorgons out of the final episode altogether. And what did ever happen to the army unit that Linda Hamilton was leading? Are we just supposed to forget about them? Sorry. This is no time for my nerdrage. Focus, Old Balls. 

--And yet maybe my favorite throw of the afternoon was the one that got Stefon Diggs over 1,000 yards and hit his bonus (more on those later). Facing "Crush Rush" interior pressure, Maye stepped up into the pocket, stared down Austin Hooper to get the underneath hole defender to drop down on him, which opened the Dig window for his intended target:

All while escaping pressure, throwing on the run, and manipulating the coverage to go exactly where he wanted them. We've come a long way from the days when we'd have QBs going to the ground at the first sign of a pass rush and three receivers in the same area being successfully defended by two guys. Let's never go back to that.

--By the way, if you have a really good comics shop near you, they might be able to get you a limited edition of "Underneath Hole Defender," one of the least popular heroes Marvel ever introduced. That was during Stan Lee's real experimental phase.

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--While Maye made some other spectacular plays, such as this one:

… most of the credit for this domination goes to Stevenson, TreVeyon Henderson and the offensive line, who arguably put together their best peformances of the season. 

--Between touchdown catch, 7 carries for 138 yards, 18.7 YPA and two more scores, and his blitz pickup, Stevenson did everything but capture an illegitimate foreign dictator. I mean, not even Delta Force could've ripped off these runs:

Both were run out of Tank personnel, with three tight ends (Thayer Munford as the eligible third tackle) and a fullback. In the first, Austin Hooper pulled to take out the backside edge defender, while Jack Westover hit the take Jack Jones out of play, and Garrett Bradbury went to the second level to seal off Ifeatu Melifonwu. The run lane was right between them. On the second, it was the same package, but with Michael Onwenu delivering a kill shot on Jordyn Brooks and Will Campbell at the point of attack on Dodson.

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--Still, Stevenson's finest moment might have been the way he picked up this safety blitz from Dante Trader. He sent trader flying like he was swinging a scepter with the One Ring on his finger (see the first play in this sequence):

--Again, this was the best game the O-line has had all year. Making it two in a row, after they way the flat out dominated the Jets last week. Even with Ben Brown filling in for Jared Wilson and wearing what looks like a bionic arm. We've seen a steady decline in the number of negative runs. They've been getting a push to consistently move the line of scrimmage. I believe they had one penalty yesterday (a hold on Morgan Moses) after having just one last week. And in a stat that's almost hard to believe, Bradbury led the entire team in snaps with 1,025, and committed ZERO penalties. Proving that WB Yeats was right when he wrote, "the centre cannot hold." Also, I suppose, when he said, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer":

Again though, I digress. I might need to pop a Ritalin for the Wild Card game's KJR. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see just how far McDaniels and Vrabel are willing to go with these Jumbo formations going forward, beginning with the Chargers, who had the 7th best rush defense in the league, almost statistically equal to the Patriots. Whether LA has the personnel to match up if the Pats decide to commit to running behind the fellas who shop at Thornton Melon's Tall and Fat.

--You know it's a special year that is not to be forgotten when you have a rookie running back - an all-purpose talent with the hands of Kevin Faulk, the route-running of James White, and the speed of a German Shorthaired Pointer - who scores two touchdowns, and it's not the story of the game. But that's just what we've come to expect from Henderson:

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Just don't take it for granted. Between him, Campbell, Wilson, Craig Woodson, Kyle Williams and Andy Borregales, this is the best rookie class this franchise has seen since the mid-70s. And could be their best ever.

--Another great part of this game, in addition to, y'know, winning by 28 points while outscoring a division rival 21-0 in the 2nd half, was McDaniels putting stuff on tape that the rest of the playoff field now has to worry about. A reverse to Williams. Splitting Maye out wide to run the Wildcat (behind a great pull by Bradbury) 16 years after Tony Sporano tortured them with it:

--But for sure the highlight for Jim Harbaugh's film study will be the fleaflicker. Run out of 12 personnel with Munford as tackle eligible and Efton Chism tight to the formation, which helped to sell the run:

--They didn't all work. That sort of Wishbone look on the goal line with Munford in the backfield and Pop Douglas at halfback went nowhere. Still, the last game of the regular season when you're more or less locked into your playoff seeding is the perfect time to dig through the back of your 3-ring binders to find the really archane stuff, if for no other reason than to waste every other coaching staff's time. Good luck with that, everybody.

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--Before I get, at long last, to the other side of the ball, we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that we have an officiating crisis in this country. These guys are just making up rules as they go:

I don't pretend to know much about geopolitics. But maybe we ought to stop trying to be police force to the entire world until we can solve the problem of rogue officials making phantom OPI calls all over the place in this country. Forget Monroe. Let's start enforcing the Thornton Doctrine.  

--I'll admit, defensively things were feeling a little sketchy there for a while. Even with a two touchdown lead. We almost got another encore of the Opponent's Opening Drive Touchdown Blues. In fact, the Dolphins didn't have a single negative play until they were in the Patriots red zone and Milton Williams made his return felt by slanting in on a pitch to Jaylen Wright and blow it up for a 6-yard loss. And even still it took a drop in the end zone on 4th down to keep them off the scoreboard. What followed was a 10-play, 65 yard scoring drive that ended with both Woodson and Christian Gonzalez biting on play action, leaving Malik Washington unaccounted for. Fortunately, that was the only glitch for this mission.

--Due mainly to the run defense, which had sorely been missing Williams. On the day, they only allowed 2.5 yards per carry. After the first couple of drives they started stacking negative plays, which put Miami in more 3rd & longs they couldn't covert (5 of 13 for the game). And the Patriots are once again that team that puts so much stress on an opponent with early leads that it's only a matter of time before the turnovers happen. I mean, there had to be a limit to how many completions Quinn Ewers could make rolling out to his left and throwing back to his right. And Jaylinn Hawkins found it:

What was fun about the last third or so of this one was the same thing that made garbage time so fun against the Jets. It was watching the bench empty. Roster bubble guys and special teamers let out of their crates to go and hunt. Ponder. Schooler. Mapu. Pettus. Reynolds. Minor. Taylor. Swinson. Two weeks in a row to end a regular season, you got the luxury of seeing your depth guys go wild. It was no walk in the park for Zach Wilson, who played three snaps, threw two interceptions, and got his about six times. But it fun from where I was sitting.

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--What was most fun for the players though, was getting paid. Making those sweet, sweet Kraft Bucks. I suspected something was up when Henry caught a short out from Joshua Dobbs and got congratulated like he was Dwight Clark after making "The Catch." Followed soon after by K'Lavon Chaisson doing the most enthusiastic sack dance of his career:

It was an expensive afternoon for the Kraft family.

Giphy Images.

But it beats the existential dread of firing your head coach an hour after the season ends.

--I'm especially happy for Chaisson, who showed promise in camp, and had lived up to it in a crowded defensive end depth chart behind Harold Landry and Anfernee Jennings. And earlier in the game it looked like his season could be over when he was dragging himself along the ground like you dog scratching his ass on the rug. But a half a million will make anyone play through a cramp or whatever that was.

--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote: "We should be fuckin' dead, my friend! What happened here was a miracle, and I want you to fucking acknowledge it!" - Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction.

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--Look, now is a time to celebrate. To look forward to the immediate and distant future with hope and optimism. So it would be self-serving and downright rude to me to look back and remind people about how wrong they were about this team. Yes, I know the feeling of having someone I care about tell me I'm dead wrong to have bet the over at 9.5 wins. To insist Maye doesn't have, as the kids say, the Main Character Energy of a true leader. That he lacks the killer instinct essential of a real QB1. To all those who felt that way back in August, sure, I dunk on you. But none of that is important now. I just want to let all the doubters and haters know that they're forgiven. All I ask is that they come crawling on their hands and knees, admitting I was right and they were wrong and begging for forgiveness. It's not to big an ask.

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--We're onto the Chargers. It's not often you get to beat both Harbaugh brothers in the span of just four weeks.