Patriot Fans: Stop Worrying About Brady and Start Worrying About Defense

Tune in to ESPN and you hear the analysts talking about it. Open up the Boston Papers or listen to talk radio and you hear the hosts and callers talking about it. 

"It" is Tom Brady and the concerns are as follows. 

"He's throwing too many picks"

"He's not making the right decisions and the offense looks out of sync."

Both of those might be true and there's no question that Tom Brady 2011 is not Tom Brady 2010. 

That's not why the Patriots are 5-3 though. Nope, Tom Brady hasn't been as good as he was last season but the reason the Patriots are not playing good football is because the Patriots can't play defense. 

The Patriots suffer from something called, "a lack of talent". The Patriot defense is constructed to stop the run—this would be great if teams ran the football with regularity. They don't, they pass and the Patriots are woefully undermanned to stop that type of attack. 

It's not just the subpar corners and the woefully subpar safeties. It's that the linebackers can't even cover tight ends. 4-3, 3-4, makes no difference because the defensive ends aren't good at rushing the quarterback and neither are the linebackers. 

Watching the Patriots play defense, one word continually comes to mind. " S-L-O-W." The Patriots are slow, very slow, woefully slow. On the rare occasions that they get past the offensive line, the quarterback often escapes the rush. When receivers are supposed to draw a double team or a safety (they're actually called "safeties" for a reason) is supposed to back up a corner if they get beat, then they arrive on the scene late. They're late because they're slow. 

It's not at all unlikely that the fastest member of the Pats defense on a pound-for-pound basis is Vince Wilfork. Wilfork is of course nose-tackle or defensive tackle. His job is to stop the run and he's among the best in the league at doing that. Teams have a simple answer to this though- they just pass the ball more often. It works too.

It works really well when the Patriots are not perfect on offense. That's what it's come down to. The Patriots have to be not just good but great on offense. They need points, 30 or more in general to safely secure a win. If Tom Brady has to pass the ball 40-50 times (he passed 49 times yesterday) then the odds are that there will be an interception or two. There's also an increased chance that there will be quarterback pressure and sacks.

Is the offense as good as it was last season or even earlier in this season? No—not even close. Even with that being the case, if NFL teams were asked which circumstance they'd prefer to face: Stopping Tom Brady and the Patriots offense to insure a win or having to march down the field and score on the Patriots' defense to nail down a victory, there are probably about 31 NFL teams that would prefer to challenge the Patriots' defense. I wouldn't disagree with any of them.