They call it the fog of war: the swirl of chaos that makes it hard to tell fact from fantasy in the aftermath of battle.
Not that football is like a real battle — that’s disrespectful to those who have served and who serve now. But the football-war metaphor works as a literary device. It also works to explain the fog of information and misinformation that’s polluted cyberspace in the wake of the Colts' epic yet controversial 35-34 win over the Patriots on Sunday night.
But there’s always one forward observer that keeps their cool amid the chaos: the Cold, Hard Football Facts. We try to separate fact from fiction in the wake of the game, with a quick look ahead at the Jets on Sunday.
MYTH OR FACT: The Patriots suffered a crushing defeat Sunday night
Myth! There’s no doubt that the manner in which New England lost Sunday night was crushing for Patriots fans.
Cough up a 17-point lead by surrendering three fourth-quarter touchdowns against your arch-nemesis, waste a classic performance by your Hall of Fame quarterback and stir in a coach who makes the most controversial decision since Roe v. Wade, and it all adds up to a swift kick in the midsection.
But the loss in and of itself was no shock. The Cold, Hard Football Facts, not to mention most outside observers, expected a Patriots loss, and they lost. We still expect the Patriots to go 6-1 over the final seven, we still expect the Patriots to finish 12-4 and we still expect a shot at the No. 2 seed.
It’s not what it could have been with a win over Indy, but the 2009 season is still on schedule. The Patriots will be favored in every game except their Nov. 30 visit to New Orleans, and should win every game but their Nov. 30 visit to New Orleans.
MYTH OR FACT: Tom Brady is back and playing as well as ever
Fact! Brady has been absolutely en feugo the last four games, completing 73 percent of his passes with 13 TD, 4 INT, a sky-high average of 9.6 YPA and a spectacular 121.5 passer rating.
Those numbers compare pretty favorably to any four-game stretch in his 2007 season, and one of the unfortunate facts about fourth-and-2-gate and the loss to Indy was that it overshadowed a fairly spectacular Brady performance against arguably the league’s best pass defense.
The problem, of course, is that Brady came up six inches short on the biggest play of the night, essentially wasting the best performance any quarterback has produced against the Colts in more than a year.
MYTH OR FACT: New England’s defensive failures are wasting the prime years of its Hall of Fame QB
Fact! While the rest of the football world obsessed about the minutiae of fourth-and-2-gate, the Cold, Hard Football Facts have been obsessing for two years now about New England’s troubles on pass defense, the years of failure drafting big-time defensive players, and the consistent defensive failure in big games.
It all unfolded before our very eyes again Sunday night.
In fact, we’ve talked about this problem here on WEEI.com a number of times over the past two years. And it was another big-game, fourth-quarter defensive capitulation, not a single fourth-and 2 play, that was most responsible for New England’s loss Sunday night.
The inability of the Patriots to make a critical fourth-quarter stop already cost the team Super Bowl championships in 2006 and 2007.
Yes, we know that the offense put up just 14 points against the Giants in the Super Bowl. But Brady did produce what would have been a truly amazing, fourth-quarter, Super Bowl-winning drive.
The bigger problem was the Patriots defense twice allowed Eli Manning — Eli Manning! — to rip off long, fourth-quarter TD drives of his own. The Patriots are also
RSS Center
