New England Patriots May Have Dominated but Certainly Have Their Flaws

Tom Brady's phenomenal performance against the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football may have been the headline from New England's season opener, but one of the most critical things to take from the game is that New England definitely has some flaws. 

By just taking a look at the scoreboard, Brady's numbers and watching ESPN SportsCenter highlights, you'd think that the New England Patriots are pretty much a slam-dunk to make it to the playoffs and even make a possible Super Bowl run—well, you're wrong. 

New England has a lot of work to do. 

Brady's incredible 517 yard performance has certainly overshadowed Chad Henne's 416 passing yards—that's right, Chad Henne threw for 400-plus yards against the New England Patriots.

All of Patriot Nation should be a bit concerned.

Henne's career quarterback rating is a mediocre 76.2, but on Monday night, the Patriots secondary made him look like the next Dan Marino—well that's somewhat of a stretch.

Henne was able to complete 61.2 percent of his passes and finished with a 93.6 quarterback rating. 

By taking a look at New England's schedule, the Patriots are going to be facing a lot of dominant passing attacks this season such as the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and the San Diego Chargers, which happen to be coming to Gillette Stadium this Sunday. 

The Patriots started Monday's game with Patrick Chung and Josh Barrett at safety, and with Devin McCourty and rookie Ras-I Dowling at the two cornerback positions. Barrett replaced the former starting safety, Brandon Meriweather, and Dowling got the nod over the veteran Leigh Bodden.

So it's pretty safe to say that New England's starting secondary played their first game together as a group, which may be a reason to their struggle and difficulties against Miami. 

Entering Week 2, the biggest concern regarding the Patriots is definitely their pass defense. Their offense appears to be just fine, their pass rush was decent and their run decent was fine, but their pass defense was pretty putrid. 

This could be the year for the New England Patriots as Tom Brady doesn't have too many years left in the league, and the team needs to win now before it's too late. 

If the team is going to win moving forward, they're going to have to stop the pass. The NFL is a passing league and teams are throwing the ball more and more—their secondary cannot be their weakest link. 

For more articles like this, check out PatriotsPlus.net. Be sure to follow Tony  Santorsa on Twitter.