Interesting comments from Chris Carter on Mike and Mike

I was listening to Mike and Mike this morning and they were talking about the Patriots (as usual). Greenie was saying that he will proclaim Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback of all time if he somehow manages to win the Super Bowl with the current group of players around him. Both Golic and Chris Carter told him that he was over-sensationalizing it and that the real credit needed to go to Belichick.

And here's where it gets interesting IMO. Chris Carter pointed out that Brady was interviewed after the game and was asked about Gronk and how that would affect them going forward. Brady said that he fully expected to go into Miami next week with a game plan that will give them every opportunity to win. The discussion then turned to how exceptional Belichick is when it comes to designing a winning game plan. He said today is the day off for the players but that the Patriots coaching staff is in the building coming up with an effective game plan and scheme to counteract what the Dolphins will be doing. Tomorrow morning at about 7:00am, he will present that gameplan to the players and the players will walk away from that meeting feeling like they have a winning gameplan and will fully expect to go into this weekend's game ready to implement the gameplan and defeat the opposition.

That just got me to thinking about what the Steeler coaches are doing today. Are they truly working on a scheme/gameplan to defeat the Bengals Sunday night? Oh, I'm sure they're going over a few basic things, but I just don't have the confidence in Tomlin to even assist in developing a viable gameplan designed to counteract anything the opponent throws at us. A gameplan to exploit the weaknesses and contain the strengths of the opposition. He's a fundamentalist as opposed to scheme don't you know? The fact is, I think the head coach needs to be the biggest schemer on the coaching staff. He needs to look at things big picture and then work closely with his assistant coaches to develop an effective gameplan.

I'll be honest, I don't think we've had an effective gameplan in a long, long time. I think we go into games woefully unprepared and that's shown in the results for the better part of the last 3 seasons. We've had a couple of exceptions, the Pats game from last season comes to mind, but I think that was DL and I'm not sure Tomlin had much input there.

I hope that the next coach we hire is a "schemer as opposed to a fundamentalist"! Let the position coaches work on blocking, tackling, etc. I want a head coach that is capable of designing and implementing a gameplan to defeat a specific opponent on a specific week.

Any thoughts on this? Am I on an island or does it not seem that we are adequately gameplanning for the opponent?

"I'm a fundamentalist as opposed to scheme."
--Mike Tomlin

 

I never want to see an all time great retire, except for Barry Bonds, that guy was a dick! It's easy to give the credit to Belichek, but he's not the one on the field making the throws. The best game plan in the world is useless if your QB can't make the throws. Brady sees what the defence is doing and he's very good at picking them apart. Like Manning, he relies on very precise timing. That's not an easy thing to do

 

Jack, IMO that's yet another reason to target Bill O'Brian if/when the Rooneys decide to part ways with Tomlin. The other reasons are his NFL OC experience and how he was able to rebuild Penn State, considering all of the challenges he has had to deal with there.

Tomlin never had to rebuild a program before coming here and he was only a DC for 1 year as well, so he didn't have much drafting input exerience either.

 

I hate to say it, but Belichick will still be successful when Brady retires. If I were a gambling man, I'd take some of your hard earned dough, BF. You do remember what Belichick did with Matt Cassell, don't you? There's a young man in NE by the name of Ryan Mallett that's been sitting and learning for a few years now. He'll be ready to go from day one. You can be sure of that. Belichick has his succession plan already percolating.

I LOVE Bill O'Brien. First of all, he's a great football coach (and a schemer). Second of all, he got right back in Brady's grill when Marsha did what he's prone to do, started crying about something and blaming someone else. Loved it!

 

Pat's didn't make the playoffs with Cassell but they did win 11 games against a weak NFC West and AFC West that year.

 

Saying someone will "be successful" is not the same as "be as successful"

 

And to be more on topic. I know Pats won more games over the last 10 years with a world class QB than they would have with a replacement level QB. Also, being a world class QB is no guarantee of success if your coach can't put a decent team around you (see Rodgers and Brees).

 

I don't think you're giving Belichick enough credit. I realize that many on think he's a cheater and all that, and while I don't disagree that he's used unethical methods in the past, I also believe he's a heckuva football coach. He was actually on the cusp of turning the Browns around when he was unceremoniously let go. He dealt with a lot of adversity his final year in Cleveland. Everybody knew toward the end of the season that they were moving to Baltimore and players and coaches alike were distracted over that.

That is correct. I didn't say "as successful", I said "successful". But I think Belichick could win and win big with someone like Mallet.

Let me ask the two of you this question. What do you think Belichick could do with Ben? Our coach can't even seem to have a winning season with one of the top quarterbacks in football for the last decade.

 

1. The Patriots are so well-coached in what they do that they can spend their week preparing for the opponent. This is NOT what occurs during the week with other teams. Instead, those teams are trying to work on and refine their own team. Rod Woodson made this point on NFL Network a couple of years ago. That is why the Pats are so successful.

2. It's also why they tend to struggle in the post-season: their opponents have a 16-week book on them and will draw up a whole new game plan to defeat them (see the Jets in 2010). If the Pats have an Achilles heel, it's stubbornly relying on what they know about their opponent. When the Steelers beat them in 2011, it was mostly because LeBeau completely changed his scheme and showed Brady something he had never seen from them. After the game, Brady said, "I've never seen them play that much man coverage." The Pats didn't know what to do. A team can beat the Pats if they have the time to implement a whole new game plan.

3. I agree with some of the other posts: Belichick will have success. Indeed, Cassel is proof of this.

4. Just stop stop stop stop stop the Brady is the best of all time talk. Just stop. Brady benefits from the system and the exceptional execution of the other ten guys on the field. The Pats' offense is as well-oiled a machine as there is, and this is mostly because all 11 guys do their job. The Pats' plays almost always work as drawn up. The line does its job, the Rbs do theirs, the WRs do theirs. Brady is just one cog in that system--and he's a great QB. But don't think for a moment that other QBs can't do what he does with that team. Meanwhile, I doubt Brady has nearly as much success playing elsewhere.

 

I think Brady winds up as the backup quarterback of the Jacksonville Jaguars had he not had the tutelage of Belichick.

 

Simply put, Jack in Tomlin's own words they do not concern themselves with what other teams do. They plan to do what they do. This is why we never gameplan to attack the other team and instead try to force them to react to what the steelers are doing.

 

I think the message board may explode...NOW!

 

But a game plan based on what? The Pats tend to know their opponents better than they know themselves.

 

Seems like this thread focuses on three things why the Pats are so good, Belichek, and Brady. So I'll take my shot at each.

1. I know we love to think the Steelers are the best run organization in football and they certainly have been one of the best and for the SB era they are the best, but the last 15 years bar none the Pats are the best run organization...sorry Mr. Rooney. People can chastise Mr. Kraft as someone ruining the league, but the guy runs a well oiled machine in Boston. One of the things about the Patriots that gets overlooked is how well they run things against the cap. The Patriots are shrewd investors when it comes to evaluating value of players against the cap and how guys fit the mold of things they want to do. Thus a guy like Danny Woodhead emerges as a threat - he gets too expensive, no problem we got Ben Vereen to take his place. And it isn't that they are always looking for the superstar - because they understand that if you have relatively competent players who play well together you can win a lot of games. Therefore they built around Brady and never really lose sleep about losing great players like Welker, Moss, Samuel, Seymour because they are constantly through a combination of draft + shrewd FA pickups finding good players.

2. Belichick is the probably the best coach in the league. I doubt he wants to find out how well he would do w/out Brady and vice versa. But enough cannot be said for how well Belichick preaches personnel to know their job and to play in the system. It is also largely him who makes a lot of these personnel decisions that keeps the team competitive.

3. Brady is a deserving 1st ballot HOF and will always be mentioned with the greats. Personally I am more in line w/12to88 though, I really think Brady has benefited from a system that often runs as it is planned to do, the thing I guess we will never really know is exactly how much a role Brady plays in making sure that the perfect play gets called because of what he is doing at the line of scrimmage before the play. Part of my knock on Brady though is how ordinary he often becomes when a play doesn't occur as it supposed to - I think of some of those losses in the playoffs against the Ravens last year, the SB losses to the Giants, and the loss to the Jets the year the Steelers lost to the Packers show just how ordinary Brady can look when a defense can get him even MILDLY off his game.

But personally I think all QBs of this generation get glorified a bit too much w/the obscene numbers they put up which if the defenses were allowed to play the way they did 20-30 years ago I doubt would be so great.

 

I am always amused when folks talk like Billy invented stealing the other teams hand signals. It was common practice for decades before the Pats got busted. That is why teams always changed them up between games and/or used multiple signal callers.

 

Belichick didn't invent "spying." But he has perfected it.

I don't like Belichick. I think he's an arrogant turd. But he's an unbelievable coach.

Belichick's favorite book is Sun Tzu's The Art of War. If you have read this book, or know about it, then it actually gives you significant insight into Belichick and who he is. His entire approach to football is based on this book--to him, it is not about playing a game and winning. It is about demoralizing an opponent. It's about destruction. There is an entire chapter on spies and spying, and so it also figures that he has made this part of his approach.

Belichick's 'right hand man" is Ernie Adams. Adams has a military background and is listed as the team's director of research. Hmmm. Adams is a code breaker and lip reader. He watches the games from the box and, based on what I have read, has a direct line to Belichick on the sideline.

The Pats' taping of signals was just the tip of the iceberg. I believe the team has an pretty intricate, detailed system of counter-intelligence. My guess: Adams does so much research on the rest of the NFL that he has detailed info on every tendency, broken down by coach, player, and team...possibly going back decades. Ted Johnson once said that before games, they'd be handed a "cheat sheet" with the opponents' audibles listed. The players didn't ask where they came from.

Imagine if you had a sheet that tells you every move a poker player has made, under every circumstance. You don't think that would help you win a few big hands?