Looks like a somewhat slow news day in Patriots land. I had hoped that we'd see what jersey number Mayo would be wearing after his introduction today but I guess we're going to have to wait til tomorrow. On to an all-Mayo edition of the linkage...

Say hello to the saviour of the Patriots linebacking corps. Chris Gasper's got a good article about Mayo in the Globe today. The more you read about this kid the more he seems like the perfect fit for the Pats. He also spoke with the press today and seems like he's already got a pretty good handle on how to deal with the mediots. Of course this is probably one of the last times we'll hear him speak as the Pats veterans prefer that rookies are "seen and not heard".

Continue reading "Thirsty Thursday Pats Linkage"

President Bush and Giants QB Eli Manning had a private sit down in the Oval Office yesterday. Here is a transcript of their conversation:

 

W – E-dog, I just want to welcome you to the White House and congratulate you on a successful season. Your pass rushing defense strategery clearly paid off.

 

Eli – Gee thanks. Wow, that’s a really cool chair.

 

W – You want to take it for a spin?

 

Eli – You don’t mind?

 

W – Heck no I don’t mind, I did the same thing my first day here. Hop up there partner.

 

Eli begins spinning in the Presidents chair.

 

Continue reading "The Secret Eli Manning/George Bush Tapes Uncovered!"

Happy Friday to all, there's no draft to look forward to this weekend but at least there's some Rookie Mini-Camp action to satiate our hunger for all things Patriots. We'll be checking in throughout the day today as reports and pictures arrive from Gillette. For those unfamiliar with Rookie Mini-Camp it's basically a chance to get the new guys in and get them up to speed with how the Pats operate. That way when they get into the real Mini-Camp at the start of June with the Vets they aren't totally lost. Some Friday linkage to get things started...

The Rookies got their numbers. I like Mayo in 51. Crazy-Legs Crabble is 98 which I also like. Wheatley (22) and Wilhite (24) have taken the numbers of past Pats cornerback legends and hopefully they will live up to the likes of Ty Law and Asante Samuel.

Continue reading "Fryday Pats Linkage"

Patriots Fan Weekly has a live blog of that action. Some good stuff, probably because they are only writing what they are seeing and not required to make any insight, or maybe because Kellie Pickler isn't there.

Overlord Reiss has five thoughts from the first practice. Mayo playing Weakside ILB, Wilhite and Wheatley (W-squared) look quick, Brady giving the Rookies advice (wait, I thought all the complainers were saying Brady was spending too much time away from Gillette? Guess not), Matt Slater showing some versatility.

Pics coming soon, I hope...

Continue reading "Reports from Mini-Camp Start Rolling In..."

Here's Belichick's press conference from moments ago.

Continue reading "Belchick Mini-Camp Day 1 Presser"

Jerod Mayo

Jonathan Wilhite

Crazy-Legs Crable

The Hoodied One

Continue reading "Pretty Pictures of the New Guys"

Today was Patriots fans first day to see how the rookies look it's clear that an infusion of talented players is just what this team, and specifically the defense, needs. The big four I'm keeping an eye on now are Mayo, Crable, Wheatley and Wilhite. By all accounts Wilhite had a good day which shouldn't be that surprising since it's nearly impossible for a linebacker to stand out in non-contact 7 on 7 drills. If the Pats can get contributions from these four players the future of the Pats D will be looking good.

First look impressions: I kinda wish Mayo wasn't rocking the exact same helmet/facemask as Rosenvelt Colvin but I still think he looks pretty bad ass. Wheatley and Wilhite look like your traditional cornerbacks. I'll need to see more of them to get a better sense of how big they look. Almost looks like Crable's wearing a quarterback facemask, I'd assume once the contact begins he'll make a switch to protect himself a little better. I really like him wearing 98 though.

Continue reading "Rookie Mini-Camp Day 1 Wrap"

Well it was fairly anti-climactic, as most mini-camps are, but it was good to see some of the new prospects in uniform so soon after selecting them. After all the build up to the draft at least the NFL lets us down easy with some kind of minor team activity that acknowledges that a new season has begun. Mayo looks and sounds the part of a Rookie of the Year candidate. Training camp will show how true that is. My gut tells me he'll start off on the bench but slowly work his way into the lineup like Meriweather did last year. Wheatley and Wilhite (W-squared) both look like Ellis Hobbs clones. With these two, Fernando Bryant and Meriweather I think we should be okay replacing Samuel (and potentially even better). Crable's somewhat a wild card. I would honestly not be that surprised if he was cut. Doesn't mean I think he will be. My Michigan-loving pal said Pierre Woods was probably the better Wolverine than Crable. He will be an interesting one to watch in Training Camp.

Continue reading "Rookie Mini-Camp Close-Out"

May 5th. We don't get much further away from the NFL season than we are right now. By now the hangover from last season is over, and the anticpation for the next one has begun. The draft is over, most of the pieces are in place. Now we can do nothing except wait. At least we have the Assistant Golf Pro finally coming clean next week! Ugh, that ought to be interesting. Anyway, here's some linkage from the weekend. We're sure to be in full Spygate mode in a few days as the media will most likely be looking to relive the whole saga one more time before AGP speaks and the issue is (hopefully) put to bed.

Pretty pictures of the rookies here and here.

Here's a new posting from someone who calls themself "NEInsider" on the ESPN messageboards. His posts are rare but he talks like he has connections inside Gillette and so far all his stuff seems to make sense. Who knows how real it is, but it's fun stuff to read...

Continue reading "Feeling Surprisingly Good Monday Pats Linkage"

Everyone always says that Monday is the worst day of the work week but I really, really hate Tuesday. At least on Monday everyone is dragging ass and thus there's a universal feeling of not really wanting to do anything. But Tuesday is a lot of people's "get shit done" day so it tends to come from all angles. Plus it's still four more days of crappiness before the weekend. Anyway, non-Patriots related rant over. I just hate Tuesdays.

The one good thing about Tuesdays is Mike Reiss' Mailbag which usually includes some of Mike's analysis that doesn't come thru on his daily blog. Reiss doesn't seem to think the Assistant Golf Pro has anything. I tend to agree with him, though I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm at least a little nervous for next Tuesday.

He also touches on a few of the undrafted rookies, specifically Vince Redd and Gary Guyton. If there's any position the Pats could use some youth it's linebacker. It's not uncommon for young LBs to play Special Teams before breaking through into the starting lineup. Adalius Thomas was a Special Teams stud for Baltimore in 2000 when they won the Super Bowl. Whether Eric Alexander or Pierre Woods can break into a full-time player remains to be seen. Also worth mentioning that Guyton and Jerod Mayo had 2 of the top three 40-yard dash times at the Combine. All signs are pointing to a faster Patriots defense in 2008. Here's Reiss' 5 Questions with Guyton as well.

Continue reading "I Hate Tuesday Pats Linkage"

First off I have to comment on the Costas Now segment where Deadspin.com head honcho Will Leitch and Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger went toe to toe over the value of sports blogging. Buzz gets pretty fired up about the whole thing as you can see here but Leitch did a good job holding his own. Bissinger's biggest complaint is that anyone can post anything and thus the quality of sports reporting is going down the tubes.  Earlier in the piece Michael Schur, a writer for The Office and blogger of Fire Joe Morgan, makes the argument that the presence of blogs account for complete transparency in journalism and therefore they are beacon of democracy. I don't know if I would go that far but I would say that blogs are the future and while the writing style and skills necessary to be successful are different that traditional journalism there are still basic tenets that anyone who consistently writes and has a readership should follow. 

Continue reading "Just Another Wednesday Patriots Linkage"

Now that I’m finally over the 2007 season and how horribly it ended it’s time to look back and remember the good times that were had. When your favorite team wins 18 games in a season it’s hard to call it a disappointment. While the Super Bowl is the ultimate goal and the only thing that matters to the team, what matters to the fans is how much fun was had over the entire season. Sure I’ve been depressed about the single loss last season but when you look back there were five straight months of nothing but wins. As tough as the ending was the great majority of the New England Patriots 2007 season was an absolute joy to watch. So now, here are my top 5 fan experiences from the season. By “fan experience” it’s a totally unique thing to me and only me – where I was, who I watched the game with, how drunk I was and ultimately the fashion in which the Pats won (or lost). 5. NE 27, BAL 24 (12/3/2007)

Continue reading "MiDeuce’s Top 5 Patriots Fan Experience Games of 2007"

Per this article just posted on the New York Times website Matt Walsh has turned over 8 tapes to the NFL, all showing more of the same stuff (defensive coaches signals) that the Patriots were already punished for. Nowhere included in those tapes is any footage of the St. Louis Rams walk thru before Super Bowl 36. Our first reaction is that this isn't that bad for the Pats and doesn't look like something that would result in more penalties from the Commish. We'll have to wait until the AGP and Goodell speak next week to see for sure.

Continue reading "Breaking News: Matt Walsh Turns Over Tapes..."

Well there's certainly never a dull moment in Patriots nation, hence why bloggers like me consistently have stuff to write about. So by now I'm sure everyone out there has heard that the AGP's tapes have been turned in and the dreaded Rams walk-thru tape is not there (Praise Belichick!). This is the moment hard core Patriots fans have been waiting for. It's time for the mediots to 'pay the fiddler' as Chet from Weird Science would say.

I've tried to be as unbiased as a Patriots fan could be through this whole saga. Look, the Patriots broke the rules, no question about it and they were punished. Significantly. But I think the cries of "cheaters" is a little much.  Anyone who knows anything about the Hoodied One knows how meticulous he is in his preparation. It would be practically impossible to "crack the code" of defensive signals at half time and be able to use that knowledge in the same game. I don't constitute using the tapes after the game to study what the defense was doing as cheating and I truly don't believe that was there ever the intention to steal signals in a later game. No one respects the game of football more than Bill Belichick, for those who don't know he has the largest collection of football books in the world which are stored at the Naval Academy. He will do anything he can to gain an edge, but there's a line between preparation and cheating and I don't believe it was crossed.

Continue reading "A Very Spygate Thursday"

It was a late night for me last night and thus I am really hurting this morning. The two cups of coffee I've drained are just starting to kick in and get me almost to a 'normal' level of brain activity. Just have one article to link to at the moment but it's a a good one. Dan Pompeii from the Chicago Tribune puts things is perspective unlike many of the mediots from ESPN and elsewhere that are still trying to throw gasoline on the dying embers of Cameragate. Back later in the day assuming the coffee continues to kick in...

Continue reading "Drag Ass Friday"

Way back is September, when Spygate first broke, I was the ringleader of sorts to a crack commando unit of Patriots conspiracy theorists who believed we had proof that the Jets were doing the same “spying” on the Patriots in the same game.

 

We probably went a little overboard with the whole thing but we were convinced that there was a cameraman in a Jets shirt on the grassy knoll of the Meadowlands shooting the Pats coaches. We had co-conspirators doing screen grabs of Hi-Def footage, creating websites and emailing every major news sources.

 

Maybe we were on to something, or maybe we were just in denial that our team had been caught red-handed, but the frenzy went on for about a week until the Pats throttled the Chargers in Week 2 and we all turned our attention to the first-ever undefeated regular season in NFL history.

Continue reading "Tomase and Me: Herald Reporter All Over Spygate from the Star"

This morning former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell finally had their long-awaited sit down and it looks like, as far as the Commish is concerned, Spygate is over. Whether or not the media allows that to happen remains to be seen as the articles start to pour into the "professional" sports websites.

Ultimately the media are the ones who come out of this drawn-out witch-hunt looking worse than the Patriots. They were the ones trying to make Spygate into another 1919 Black Sox cheating scandal.

Unfortunately for them, every necessary detail was known back in September when the punishment was first levied on the Pats. Every "new development" since was neither "new" nor a "development".

Continue reading "Spygate: Denouement"

When I was growing up I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I wanted to be the underdog, the good guy who took on the evil Empire and triumphed, and as a Patriots fan since the early 80’s I’ve lived the fan-equivalent to being young Skywalker.

 

First in 2001, the Pats were the young upstarts, who somehow managed to fire their photon torpedoes into the Death Star that was the St. Louis Rams and become unlikely champions of the world.

 

For the first half of this decade the Pats were praised as the ultimate team. They didn’t always have the stars but they always seemed to come out on top. Peyton Manning could have his commercials and glossy receivers, the Patriots did just fine with a collection of cast-offs and overachieving rookies.

 

As recently as 2006 the Pats waltzed into NFL superstar-haven San Diego and defeated the likes of Ladainian Tomlinson and Shawne Merriman with the likes of Reche Caldwell and Artrell Hawkins.

Continue reading "Patriots Fans: Embrace the Hate in ‘08"

For those lucky enough to witness Arlen Specter’s half-hour rambling and contradiction-filled press conference this morning you might think that Spygate has been resuscitated just before its demise. Though Specter said it would be up the fans and mediots whether or not an independent investigation into the matter happens, if it does it won’t just be the Patriots in hot water any more.

 

The great majority of Specter’s anger came not from what Walsh had to say, but how the situation was handled way back when in September. This time around the NFL made sure that everyone saw every second of the videotapes that were turned over and shockingly no one was actually murdered on the footage. Specter would have you believe something far more sinister has taken place. What exactly that is, I’m still guessing.

Continue reading "Specter’s Independent Investigation Coming Soon to a Stadium Near You!"

This past week has been a rehashing of everything that made me sick to my stomach about Spygate and to be honest I can barely motivate to post linkage on here. I am ready for Spygate to be over and I think that the media is with me. Not the fans of course but that's to be expected.

Here's just one article I found that I thought was really interesting in terms of analyzing how much help the tapes could've been to the Pats. We'll be back in full force next week.

Oh and here's an article by yours truly that was posted below and on Bleacher Report and was picked up by FoxSports.com. Needless to say we were pretty excited having something picked up by a national news source, now if we can just figure out how to get paid for it...

Continue reading "Spygate Overload"

It finally looks like Spygate is in its "death rattle" stage today and I think Patriots fans can finally start to look ahead to the coming 2008 season. Is there anyone out there who is still thirsty for more Spygate? In the last ten days or so we've had the revelation of the Spygate tapes, the Matt Walsh/Commish sitdown, the Commish's 'no further sactions press conference, the Matt Walsh/Senator Comcast sit down, followed by the Senator Comcast's 'outraged' press conference, the Matt Walsh/New York Times interview, the John Tomase/Boston Herald Apology, the Matt Walsh/HBO Real Sports interview and finally the Bill Belichick CBS rebuttal interview. That's a lot of Patriots news for the middle of May.

So now it really looks as if Spygate could be over (until Specter starts crying about it sometime in November/December) and we can finally put the whole debacle behind us and start focusing on the 2008 season. Just the sight of Tom Brady, Randy Moss and Kevin Faulk at yesterdays Celtics game started to get my blood pumping. This week is passing camp, presumably why all three were in town this weekend, and mini-camp is in two weeks.

Continue reading "Let's Focus on 2008 Now..."

Per reports in both the Boston Globe and Providence Journal Chad Jackson was looking "focused" today in the only day of media access at passing camp. In this interview with Chris Price he seems well aware that his time is now. It's already being overstated how big of a year this is for the third-year receiver out of Florida. The Patriots traded up to get him in the 2006 draft and despite a few flashes in his rookie season, 2007 was mostly a wash due to injuries and the immense depth at wide receiver.

Now Donte Stallworth is gone and the 4th receiver position is wide open for the taking. Not to mention if the unthinkable happened and one of the starting three receivers suffered an injury. Jackson looks the part of an elite NFL wide receiver. He has the size and the speed that could make him a potent option in the Pats passing attack. The biggest thing for Jackson is to stay healthy. He's dangerously close to being labelled "injury-prone" and he needs a year without any knee or hamstring issues to break the cycle. He's going to get his chance this season to contribute. He's had a couple years to learn the ropes, now it's time to "put up or shut up". He will be one of the main players to watch at Training Camp this July.

Continue reading "Chad Jackson Impressive in Passing Camp"

This is the absolute worst time of year for obsessed football fans like me. Instead of just ripping off what uber-beat-blogger Mike Reiss writes and putting it into my blog with attempted witty commentary (like most football bloggers are doing these days), I prefer to remain silent and assume that true Patriots fans are stopping at Reiss’ site long before mine.

 

So with that in mind here’s some actual analysis that wasn’t stolen from one of the pros. There are still some additions to be made but the major pieces of the 2008 New England Patriots are in place. Here are the top 5 storylines that we’ll be watching for, in order of how interesting they are to me.

 

5. Who Cares About a Punter?

The Pats didn’t really need much out of their punter last year and they didn’t really get much out of Chris Hanson. They’ve brought in rookie Mike Dragosavich and throwback hero Scott Player who, if the Pats have to play with another retread, I would love to see get the job with his single-bar-facemask and fumanchoo. Personally I’m rooting for the rook Drago to crack the team – at least that would be an interesting storyline and would bring a new energy to the Special Teams.  Based on his YouTube clips he looks to be quite the character. We all thought a punter youth movement was upon us last year when there were two youngsters– Tom Malone and Danny Baugher - in camp. Baugher looked like he had the job sewn up until he was suddenly cut and ended up beating the crap out of his dad the following day. That opened up the door for Hanson and that was that for 2007. Anyway, Punter battles are never that cool or exciting so as long as it’s not Chris Hansen for another year, whatever. And even if it is Hansen, whatever.

Continue reading "A Probably-Too-Early Look at the 5 Most Intriguing Questions of New England Patriots Training Camp"