No question the Pats are a great team with annoying efficiency in execution on both sides of the ball. But does Tom Brady really have that much time to operate without ANY holding calls against his offensive line? Is the defense really that tough or are they getting away with dirty play? How many times (not tonight) did Randy Moss get away with pushing off in the end zone? I saw it happen a lot, and I don’t even watch much NFL football. While impressive, the Pats are getting lots of help from the guys in stripes, and tonight it was no different. In the second quarter we saw Logan Mankins chop a defensive lineman engaged with another offensive lineman and it was called (albeit against the wrong guy). Replays showed an obvious, deliberate effort to inflict serious injury. This is the dirtiest play in football, and the league will fine Mankins $10,000 for his cheapshot, so why not eject him? We’d like to see more guys ejected for these kinds of deliberate cheapshots, but they never do. Later, in the third quarter we saw Brady get bumped after throwing a pass and drew a personal foul flag. Later, Garrard got flattened much worse but no flag, which may been because officlas were trying to decide how many spearing late hits to charge the Pats secondary after the tackle on the same play. This play should have been a double personal foul. Indeed, Rodney Harrison commits a personal foul on just about every play. Tonight we saw him fling a player out of bound by his horse collar and then go over and help him up, hoping to avoid the penalty (he did). It was Harrison who was flagged in the aformentioned late hit/spearing/helmet-to-helmet call after a pass play. Then shortly after, we saw one of Harrison’s teamates Assante Samuel pull a reciever out of bounds, hold him up while Harrison, full head of steam, drilled him in the back with his helmet. Flags flew and we were all treated to Harrison actually complaining about the call. It reminded me of those old tag team wrestling matches where on guy argues to the ref while behind his back his tag teammate clobbers some poor guy over the head with a fold-up chair. This all happened with 5 minutes left and the game well in hand. So in the your comments this week, please submit three guesses for next wee’s AFC Championship Game: How many peronal fouls (offense & defense) will the Pats get called for? How many will Harrison get? And how many did they deserve?
I was watching the Jag-Patriots game in disgust. I can’t believe the how the integrity of the game has gone out the window. I saw at least five times where the Patriots offensive line had a hold of the jersey of one of the Jags and no penalties were called; especially on the play where the Jags got a roughing the passer call. That player was being held by the Jersey on his shoulder pads and then barely touched Brady just from his momentum and he was penalized. You’re going to tell me the Patriots didn’t hold one time throughout the whole game…yeah right! I think the NFL needs an integrity check. I can’t believe this great sport has turned into the WWF. The NFL wants the Patriots to win at any costs, even if it means they have to ruin the game in the process. How great are you really if you don’t get penalized and don’t have to adhere to the same rules as all the other teams.