Finally got em. This past Sunday was a massive team win for the Patriots for many different reasons. It was the most decimated the offensive line has been this season, the first game without Dion Lewis and they lost Julian Edelman early in the game with a broken foot. And they were facing a team that has historically beaten the Patriots, and was the only team in the NFL since 2008 that they had not been beaten. Now obviously they don’t play every year, but it’s not often that Tom Brady loses to anyone more than once. It was huge as well because it was the latest in a game that the Patriots trailed. They battled hard, played as a team and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. It was an extremely tough game from the get go and we realized real quickly that Odell Beckham Jr. is the real deal. On the Giants second drive he hauled in a “go” route downfield with his fingertips and took it to the house following a poor read from safety Devin McCourty. 87 yards just like that. And not a great start to the matchup that would decide the game. OBJ was the responsibility of Malcolm Butler all day and if the first play had everyone nervous for what appeared was going to be a very long day. But Butler stepped up huge in this game and bounced back tremendously. Following the touchdown, OBJ was thrown to 11 times and only had 3 catches for 17 yards. Incredible performance against arguably the most dominant receiver in the game right now. Butler’s biggest play came in the 4th quarter just before the 2 minute warning where OBJ got open near the pylon. He had a touchdown in his hands which would have more than likely sealed the deal for the Giants. But Butler stuck his hand in and knocked the ball out of his hands as he was completing the catch, similar to Sterling Moore’s play against Baltimore at the end of the 2011 AFC Championship game. The pass fell incomplete and the G men were forced to kick a field goal to put them up by 2 with 1:47 remaining in the game. This was big as well because the Patriots only had 1 timeout remaining and the play happened with 2:01 left in the game. This meant that the Giants had to run another play before the 2 minute warning which was a huge part why the Patriots had a chance at the end. WAY too much time for Tom Brady. Brady took the Pats down the field 44 yards and set up a 54 yard Stephen Gostkowski field goal with 0:01 remaining on the clock. Danny Amendola had a HUGE catch on 4th and 10 to start off the drive, and had a great catch with 6 seconds to go that put the Patriots into field goal range. 54 yards seemed like a chip shot for Gostkowski who is 80% from 50 or more yards away in his career, which is nothing short of elite. It’s pretty tough to say that a New England kicker will ever be better than Adam Vinatieri, but Gostkowski is getting pretty close to that. This win was huge not only for the season, but it also shuts up all the national media that has given Brady and Belichick a hard time for losing. It seems like every time anyone makes a catch on Sunday Night Football, Cris Collinsworth finds a way to compare it to either the Tyree or Manningham catches and that will most likely never end. People like that will always want to bring that up because they are envious of the success that the Patriots have had. The Giants will always have those two Super Bowl wins, and they earned them fair and square (with a little help from the referees not blowing the Tyree play dead before he even threw it). Despite standing at 5-5, the Giants are leading their division and have lost 4 games in the final minute. They are a damn good football team and I would not be surprised if they made a late season run to put themselves in a position to punch a ticket to San Francisco in February.
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Pat O'Hearne
Just a kid from Boston trying his luck in Cleveland Archives
March 2017
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