Pats Season Nevermore

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 7:57AM
By Matt Waldman, TheSportsHatch.com writer



This is the way it should have gone...

The Patriots came out on a cold day in Foxborough yesterday and piece by piece took apart the overmatched Baltimore Ravens . The Pats stable of running backs ran wild on the porous Ravens front seven.

Ray Lewis looked as old as he is and rookie Michael Oher did nothing to help the Ravens fortunes.

Tom Brady was in his normal playoff form. He was cool in the pocket, and spread the ball around to all of his receivers.

So much for all the talk of Randy Moss giving a lackluster effort. If Sunday's performance (12 catches 155 yards) wasn't his best, then the rest of the league should be VERY afraid . The Pats' defense was stout and Baltimore's running game never quite got it going.

Now the Pats move on for a date with the San Diego Chargers and Baltimore will go home and lick their wounds and try to figure out what direction they will move in with their franchise.

But now back to reality. Bill Belichick summed it best with his post game press conference.

“They were the better team today-out coached us, out played us. They just did everything better than we did. That's why they're moving on."

The Patriots played a horrible game yesterday. It seemed they did nothing right. New England couldn't run, block, pass, punt, kick, tackle, or get anything out of their special teams. The fact that Baltimore threw for less that 50 yards tells the story. The Ravens ran all over the Patriots, starting with Ray Rice's 83 yard TD run to open the game, and never had to rely on any air attack.

I think we can all agree that the Patriots probably weren't going to win it all this year, especially after the loss of Wes Welker. But most Patriots fans would have appreciated some more effort. Even a typically solid Tom Brady played poorly, turning the ball over 4 times (1 fumble, 3 int). So when the New England fans weren't booing, they were heading to the parking lot.

All because their team played with their collective tails between their legs, now left to lick their wounds and wonder where it all went wrong.