Knee Jerk Reaction from Week 7: Pats vs. Buccaneers

Things to consider while wondering why we never saw our honorary team captain, Elton John:

*There were rumors that Tampa was considering signing Joey Galloway to give them some pregame intel on the Patriots. But the deal fell through when they realized he wasn’t any more familiar with the Pats playbook than they were.

*Unquestionably, this was Brandon Merriweather’s best game as a pro. And it’s becoming a trend. On both picks, he kept focused on the QB like a laser pointer, read his eyes and broke on the ball before it left Jason Johnson’s hands. Merriweather is the Pats secondary’s Man Who Stares at Goats.

*I couldn’t stop wondering what real football must look like through the eyes of the people in the stands. I mean, David Beckham, the bright, glowing center of their sports galaxy, is smaller than our punter. So what’s it like for them to watch Vince Wilfork, who’s bigger than the cars they took to the stadium? And who maneuvers better too?

*In the wake of the Denver debacle, Dean Pees is mixing it up a lot more on defense. They came out in a 3-4 and switched to a 4-3 in the 2nd quarter with Gary Guyton moving to Will linebacker. They blitzed liberally with the corners and ends. They switched sides with the OLBs from one play to the next. Let’s hope they can keep adding these different fronts and making them work because they’re not going to have too many Josh Johnsons left on their schedule.

*I can’t say enough good things about Brandon McGowan. In the 1st half he spent a lot of time on the LOS playing the robber spot. In the 2nd he saw a ton of time in the hybrid LB spot. He can cover, stop the run or blitz from any spot they put him. And he’s the main reason Kellen “Soldier” Winslow had 2 forgettable catches. It might be time to start benching your fantasy tight end when he faces the Pats, and McGowan is the major reason.

*At first I couldn’t figure out why Pat Chung, a rookie who presumably knows .01% of NFL players, would be patting Sammie Stroughter on the head after dropping a 3rd down pass, but I looked it up and Stroughter went to Oregon St. when Chung was at Oregon. Once you’ve fought each other in the Civil War, you never lose that Duck-Beaver mutual respect thing.

*When Ben Watson caught that touchdown pass, you could just hear the inner conflict raging in Jim Nantz’ brain. He’d prepared all week for this moment. But what to do? The seconds seemed like hours until finally, at long last, the hackneyed “Elementary, my dear Watson” won out over the lame Big Ben reference he was also toying with.

*But there was no way Nantz was going to fly back to the States with that Big Ben bullet still in the chamber, so he fired it off during his fawning worshipfest with Roger Goodell. I understand Europeans tend to be a lot more lax than we are, but do they really allow that sort of carrying on in public over there? Hey Nantz! Goodell! Get a room you two!

*You hear so much about goons at these European stadia, I was curious to see how they protect the players at Wembley. In front of the end zone seats there was about a six-foot wide railed off area as sort of a demilitarized zone. And along the sidelines they had tarps which means either they cover the first few rows of seats for football or there are just no low seats. Still based on everything you hear, they’d be better off going with the more traditional European way of protecting themselves from unruly mobs: moats with alligators in them.

*Still that’s a pretty nice stadium. What do they usually use it for when the NFL isn’t in town? Besides Quidditch, I mean.

*It must it be maddening to face Wes Welker. Yesterday was one of those games where the opposing defense was just helpless against him. The Pats threw in his direction 10 times and completed all 10 for 107 yards. He was in full on Texas Tech Air Raid offense mode, pulling every blade out of his Swiss Army Knife of moves. He ran that slant where he used the referee to shed the cornerback covering him. He scored on the WR Screen where he changed direction 27 times. He ran hitches, bubble screens and deep curls. And my favorite Welker move of all, where it looks like he’s going to run a cross but instead he stops, pivots like Kevin Garnett in the low post, and turns it into an out pattern.

*No one’s moved through England like that since 1066.

*And make no mistake, Welker set up the Watson TD. In one of the rare times the Bucs didn’t play a Tampa-2, Brady read a single high safety, who stayed home spying Welker in the middle of the field. So Watson was single covered, ran a simple “9” route and blew right by Geno Hayes who had no help.

*I promise you we’ll find out eventually that Randy Moss was all sorts of banged up, probably from the hit he took from Michael Griffin in the Tennessee game. Every chance Moss had for self-preservation, he took. Whenever he was surrounded he either went down or stepped out of bounds, which is fine by me. I’m guessing he played through a serious rib injury or something. But by being out there, he drew Aqib Talib on every play, which made Welker’s day possible.

*And I’m sure someone will pin the INT in the end zone on Moss. Someone always does. But that was all Brady. It looked like he was trying to throw the alley oop but moving to his left he threw it all shouldery, with nothing on it and Moss had no shot.

*The Commissioner better go easy on that “ambassadors” talk.  You never know when Moss will go all “Lethal Weapon 2″ on us, start assaulting British meter maids then claim Diplomatic Immunity.

*When they said Kevin Faulk had his 400th catch, I looked it up and found out 15 of those are TDs. So that means the other 385 have been first downs.

*”Jimmy Football here. Say you hate your life but you don’t know how to get drunk and take out your frustrations? Introducing the beer funnel with a detachable hose! Now you can get hammered fast and beat your family with the hose! It’s a funnel and a hose! It’s the Fose!!!”

*I don’t know what to make of Laurence Maroney. He’s like your kid who you think is capable of doing better but after so many semesters of lousy grades you’ve got to come to grips. Maybe it’s time you realize he’s just not the towering genius you thought he was went he was watching Baby Einstein.

*Still this game is a bad example, because no one ran well. This wasn’t one of those games where LoMo is doing the Electric Slide behind the line all game, then BJGE comes in and starts ripping off huge chunks of yards. On the inside zone runs, Tampa did a nice job of filling the gaps and taking away the cutbacks. An inside zone calls for the RB to aim for the outside hip of the playside guard, and make his cut based on where the 3-technique defensive tackle is. But Tampa’s ends and Mike linebackers did a consistently nice job of crashing in and taking away the vertical creases. I can’t blame LoMo for not finding what wasn’t there.

*Not to pick nits, but the game was kind of a mess by the O-line, 4 offensive TD’s notwithstanding. Early on, Sebastian Vollmer was playing great, getting his hands up, pushing Stylez White and Gaines Adams sometimes as much as 4-5 yards back behind Brady. The Brits hadn’t seen that kind of German aggression since the bombing of Coventry. But as they kept pointing out, once he started limping, SeaBass lost a step, his technique went out the window and the flags started flying.

*My official game roster lists him as Stylez G. White. Right, you need the G in there, so you don’t get confused with all the other Stylez Whites in the league.

* And unless I miss my guess, this was the 3rd consecutive week where Dan Koppen had a false start. I can forgive Logan Mankins his, but it’s hard to jump the gun when it’s your finger on the trigger.

*I’m pretty sure that after Mankins’ second or third motion penalty, the ref deducted ten points from Gryffindor.

*Toni Braxton still looks pretty good, but when the British pulled out that hot mezzo soprano chick who did “God Save the Queen” they proved they were playing for keeps.

*We don’t know for certain who the guy was that Bob Kraft was talking to in the owner’s booth. But since he was wearing the only Jake Ingram jersey every ordered, manufactured or purchased, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was Jake Ingram’s dad. “Eliminate the impossible, Watson, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the correct answer.” I see your Sherlock Holmes and I raise you, Nantz.

*Nice of the officials to do their part and introduce the foreign audience to the Interminable Referee Huddle. That’ll grow the game.

*Chris Hanson had his usual home chemistry kit stinkbomb of a game. But I give him credit for flopping on the ground in the end zone trying to draw a call. It was a nice gesture for the locals, paying tribute to European soccer like that. For a second I thought the ref was going to pull out a yellow card.

*What’s bigger, the Crown Jewels or Kraft’s cuff links? Good God, they were incredible. The size of cinder blocks. How does he even lift his arms with those things?

*So when Goodell was addressing those European sports leagues to explain the NFL’s success, do you think he mentioned that the key to the whole thing is Marxist Socialism?