Loss of Jeremy Lane = 14 points for the Patriots

I don't have the replay handy (why would I want to?), but per Bill Barnwell's Grantland column, the loss of Jeremy Lane / introduction of Tharold Simon was good for 14 Patriots points:

The Patriots picked on them both, with Simon getting the bulk of the attention. He was in coverage on two of Brady’s four touchdown passes, with Brandon LaFell beating him in the first quarter on a slant before Julian Edelman got him on a whirl route for the game-winning score in the fourth quarter. Edelman beat Simon even worse on a whirl route on the previous drive for what should have been a touchdown, but Brady overthrew the pass. Danny Amendola would find the soft spot in Seattle’s zones on the next play for a four-yard touchdown.

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I'm not sure what happened on the Pats' end-of-first-half score, but seeing linebacker KJ Wright in single-coverage on Rob Gronkowski seemed like such a strange goofup for a normally disciplined and assignment-appropriate defense.

IMO if Jeremy Lane doesn't get injured we win by 2+ scores.

Or if KJ Wright isn't singling up Gronkowski we win by 1.

Incredible how close you can come, but 10 years from now no one will know or care how close we were because we didn't walk away with the ring.

When did Lane turn into Sherman? He's good, but for most of the season, Lane and Simon were essentially a wash. No reason to believe that Lane was going to confuse one of the greatest QBs of all time on his own.

OP is assuming Lane would have made all the plays that Simon didn't. Not sure that's accurate.

Rat":19wbzor8 said:

When did Lane turn into Sherman? He's good, but for most of the season, Lane and Simon were essentially a wash. No reason to believe that Lane was going to confuse one of the greatest QBs of all time on his own.

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This is true, but Lane against Edelman and Amendola is far better than Simon. Simon isn't built to cover small, agile WR's any more than Browner is.

Lane doesn't have to be Sherman to not get beat THREE TIMES in the end zone for 14 POINTS. You just need to be a serviceable corner.

Lane is not an All-Pro, but he had a good 1st quarter and all he needs to do is make ONE play that Simon didn't and we win.

Is anyone surprised? Simon's had some flashes of talent this year, but more often than not he gets ABUSED when he's backing someone up. Not sure why it's not evident from what we've seen (esp. in important spots) that Lane > Simon.

Too many of you missing the nuance here. Lane was/is a decent matchup for us against Edelman/Amendola, where Max and Simon are not. Put Lane on one or the other, and now the Pats have 1 single matchup they can use instead of 2.

Brady was burning Hawks D with Gronk as well as Vereen. Vereen might have been stopped, but no on Gronk.

Edelman was the problem, he was too quick for Simon, but Lane had the quickness and the speed to keep up with him.

It's too bad Burley wasn't active, he was good defending the slot. I thought I heard he had some minor injury?

But who could have predicted a broken arm?

I knew that when Lane went out we were in trouble. He is our best slot guy and the Patriots excel with slot receivers.

He was a huge loss in that game yesterday.

Austin Hawk":1rmyp668 said:

OP is assuming Lane would have made all the plays that Simon didn't. Not sure that's accurate.

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For sure, but Lane is a smaller quicker CB, and has the experience to play the slot......Simon is being groomed for outside DB, and showed why he's a terrible slot guy.

I would have liked to see Quinn and Pete move Simon to the outside sooner than they did and move Maxwell inside.

Tough to say, but give McDaniels credit, he continually called plays to put Simon on Edelman, even when we moved Simon outside, he called formations to put Edelman outside.

I'm not sure what could have been done with our depleted D, there is no right answer. Pete was just hoping the guys having to play due to injury would step up........but it just didn't happen.

McGruff":2tkurlx5 said:

Rat":2tkurlx5 said:

When did Lane turn into Sherman? He's good, but for most of the season, Lane and Simon were essentially a wash. No reason to believe that Lane was going to confuse one of the greatest QBs of all time on his own.

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This is true, but Lane against Edelman and Amendola is far better than Simon. Simon isn't built to cover small, agile WR's any more than Browner is.

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This. Lane got beat by Edelman once on the previous drive, but for the most part, Lane is quick enough to stay with Edelman. Edelman isn't fast, but he's really quick. He runs a 4.55 forty, and Simon has timed in the 4.4's, but he's not quick enough. He's more fluid than Browner, but he was still getting abused by those guys. Lane was shadowing Edelman a hell of a lot better than Simon; there was rarely a time that Julian got more than a few steps on him.

As for the Wright matchup, that wasn't a mistake. They really wanted Wright on Gronk. God knows why, anyone in the stadium should've known that Gronk has Wright beat flat out in speed, and they did exactly what they had to do there. I honestly don't know why you don't slide Thomas over for Safety help over the top with that match up, but it was a match up that the Seahawks wanted and thought they could win.

gulliver":165xx3n4 said:

I don't have the replay handy (why would I want to?), but per Bill Barnwell's Grantland column, the loss of Jeremy Lane / introduction of Tharold Simon was good for 14 Patriots points:

The Patriots picked on them both, with Simon getting the bulk of the attention. He was in coverage on two of Brady’s four touchdown passes, with Brandon LaFell beating him in the first quarter on a slant before Julian Edelman got him on a whirl route for the game-winning score in the fourth quarter. Edelman beat Simon even worse on a whirl route on the previous drive for what should have been a touchdown, but Brady overthrew the pass. Danny Amendola would find the soft spot in Seattle’s zones on the next play for a four-yard touchdown.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what happened on the Pats' end-of-first-half score, but seeing linebacker KJ Wright in single-coverage on Rob Gronkowski seemed like such a strange goofup for a normally disciplined and assignment-appropriate defense.

IMO if Jeremy Lane doesn't get injured we win by 2+ scores.

Or if KJ Wright isn't singling up Gronkowski we win by 1.

Incredible how close you can come, but 10 years from now no one will know or care how close we were because we didn't walk away with the ring.

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Yes... I agree that Wright on Gronk was a total mismatch. We had Bruce Irvin covering DeSean Jackson and shutting him down. Why wouldn't you put Irvin on Gronk. I think that was the most favorable matchup we had and I never saw Irvin on Gronk once.

firebee":3q49kxgw said:

Yes... I agree that Wright on Gronk was a total mismatch. We had Bruce Irvin covering DeSean Jackson and shutting him down. Why wouldn't you put Irvin on Gronk. I think that was the most favorable matchup we had and I never saw Irvin on Gronk once.

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Both Kam and Wright have had success covering TE's, in fact they cover (or at least help bracket TE's) all the time.

I was confused as to why they weren't press covering him at the line. Gronk feasts on LB's and DB's giving him space to make cuts, which he's very good at. He's basically a 6'7" WR.

IMO both Kam and Wright should have been putting hands on him at the line, instead they gave him a cushion to run his routes and get behind them.

Simon on the outside was almost as bad a call as the last play of the game. Simon had no chance, none to defend those passes.
Inexcusable...

That Lane injury was brutal. The slow-mo..... Paul George FIBA esque injury. Ugh.

I think the Avril injury was probably worse. We were pretty consistantly knocking Brady around pretty good and it clearly had him rattled. When Scoffield replaced him the pass rush kind of disappeared.

gulliver":1w2nzxvy said:

I don't have the replay handy (why would I want to?), but per Bill Barnwell's Grantland column, the loss of Jeremy Lane / introduction of Tharold Simon was good for 14 Patriots points:

The Patriots picked on them both, with Simon getting the bulk of the attention. He was in coverage on two of Brady’s four touchdown passes, with Brandon LaFell beating him in the first quarter on a slant before Julian Edelman got him on a whirl route for the game-winning score in the fourth quarter. Edelman beat Simon even worse on a whirl route on the previous drive for what should have been a touchdown, but Brady overthrew the pass. Danny Amendola would find the soft spot in Seattle’s zones on the next play for a four-yard touchdown.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what happened on the Pats' end-of-first-half score, but seeing linebacker KJ Wright in single-coverage on Rob Gronkowski seemed like such a strange goofup for a normally disciplined and assignment-appropriate defense.

IMO if Jeremy Lane doesn't get injured we win by 2+ scores.

Or if KJ Wright isn't singling up Gronkowski we win by 1.

Incredible how close you can come, but 10 years from now no one will know or care how close we were because we didn't walk away with the ring.

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Not to mention all those slants eldelman ran across the middle that Simon couldn't keep up with for easy medium yard gains

razor150":1l854ru2 said:

I think the Avril injury was probably worse. We were pretty consistantly knocking Brady around pretty good and it clearly had him rattled. When Scoffield replaced him the pass rush kind of disappeared.

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Lane's injury certainly was less visibly stimulating. If you want to see the slow mo, it's up on youtube, but lets just say an arm shouldn't bend the way his arm bent when it hit the ground.

dontbelikethat":o8b2vj1q said:

razor150":o8b2vj1q said:

I think the Avril injury was probably worse. We were pretty consistantly knocking Brady around pretty good and it clearly had him rattled. When Scoffield replaced him the pass rush kind of disappeared.

Click to expand...

Lane's injury certainly was less visibly stimulating. If you want to see the slow mo, it's up on youtube, but lets just say an arm shouldn't bend the way his arm bent when it hit the ground.

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Yeah, don't really want to see that. lol

HawkFan72":3q9ovqpe said:

I knew that when Lane went out we were in trouble. He is our best slot guy and the Patriots excel with slot receivers.

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I said the exact same thing when it happened--"oh no, Lane's out, and Simon's his backup." 14 points and 1 Super Bowl loss later, it appears to have been the difference.

It does drive me batty that I'm hearing a lot of crowing about how they "exposed" our #1 defense.

People... not that anyone will remember anything about this season other than the Pats winning it all, but we had:

*NO #1 nose tackle Brandon Mebane
*NO #2 nose tackle Jordan Hill
*NO Marcus Burley
*ETIII playing with a dislocated shoulder
*Sherm playing with a sprained elbow requiring Tommy John surgery
*Kam playing with a freshly banged up knee
*Lane breaks his arm in the 1st quarter and is thus a non-factor most of the game
*Cliff Avril leaves the game at a key time with a concussion

We're talking about half of your starting defense either out of the game or dealing with significant injuries, much of which occurred very recently.

And on offense we're working with an absolute skeleton crew: Zach Miller, Derrick Coleman, Paul Richardson, etc. all watching from the sidelines. We were starting 3rd-stringers for crissakes.

But again, it's unfortunate that none of that will be remembered in 10 years when people look up who won the Super Bowl in 2014-15.