If you looked at yesterday’s game as another test for a young team riding high and playing a seemingly inferior opponent on the road, then yesterday’s result was, in Twitter terms, an #epicfail.
Eric Mangini and fellow former Patriots assistants Brian Dabol, Rob Ryan and Brad Seely had their Browns fully prepared for the Patriots, and kept New England off balance for the entire game – a 34-14 thumping of the Patriots in Cleveland.
Patriots knocked back a notch – Mike Reiss has Bill Belichick perhaps not as hard on his team as you might expect. Robert Lee has poor preparation dooming the Patriots.
Eric Mangini outdoes Bill Belichick – Ron Borges isn’t horrible today. Borges had a feature yesterday on former back-channel informant Drew Bledsoe and his post-football endeavors.
Improvements better be in works – Greg A Bedard says that the Patriots have their work cut out for them. HE examines how the Browns keyed in on Jerod Mayo yesterday. Looks like Bedard is also fitting in nicely with how the Globe does things on the Patriots beat: [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/Greg_A_Bedard/status/1394573548986368″%5D
I’m told the Globe had seven people at the game yesterday, yet there are only six articles on the game in the paper, including Shaughnessy’s column, which I’m not going anywhere near, Shalise Manza Young’s game story, Bedard’s column above, Monique Walker had a story and the notebook, and then Duane Rankin, Globe Correspondent (who I imagine is a local Cleveland stringer, so I don’t know if he even counts) chimed in with one. Chris Gasper, who will have a Boston.com column was the 7th. In contrast, it seems that outlets like NESN.com and WEEI.com didn’t send anyone.
Rob Gronkowski owns up to awful day – Ian Rapoport has the rookie tight end owning up to his mistakes.
Ten Things We Learned Sunday: Humbled by Hillis – Christopher Price checks in with things to take away from this game.
Struggle for consistency plagues Pats offense – Tom E Curran outlines the struggles on offense for Tom Brady and company. Tim Rogers has the QB saying that the team needs to get better.
Situation elementary for Watson – Monique Walker’s notebook has the Browns having plenty of Patriots insight to draw upon. The Herald notebook from Ian R. Rapoport has Wes Welker stepping in for Stephen Gostkowski.
It wasn’t all bad news on the local sports front, as the Celtics traveled to Oklahoma City to take on a tough Thunder team. The Celtics bench was the difference in a 92-83 Boston win.
Bench has Celtics’ back – Steve Bulpett has the bench holding off a second-half charge by the Thunder. Chris Forsberg has the Celtics “bench mob” causing trouble for the Thunder.
No translation needed: Erden fitting right in – Gary Washburn has the Celtics reserve center fitting in despite a culture and language barrier.
Big Baby might be the NBA’s best sixth man – Paul Flannery thinks that Glen Davis might be up for some hardware at the end of the season.
O’Neal staying on board – Julian Benbow’s notebook has Shaq traveling with the team on this tough road trip. The Herald notebook from Steve Bulpett has more on Erden.
Krejci diagnosed with concussion – Kevin Paul Dupont has the Bruins dealing with another concussion.
For Sox, free agency begins in earnest – Gordon Edes looks at a very important offseason for Theo Epstein.
Boston Sports Media Watch 
Not a very good day for Scott Zolak yesterday on Patriot's Fifth Quarter.
1) Zolak decided to call Eric Mangini a "dink" during the broadcast. Nice, someone needs to tell him he is not on the radio with Gresh.
2) He gave Cleveland no credit at all before and after the game. Yes, Cleveland was two and five but their defense has been very good all season. Their big problem was at quarterback where, for some reason, the Browns though Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace were going to lead them to the promise land. It turns out the third option Colt McCoy was better than the other two by far. Zo also forgot that this same Browns defense completely befuddled Drew Brees two weeks earlier.
3) On the Gronkowski fumble before the half, Zolak defended the play saying he did the same thing during the preseason and scored. Steve Deossie had to be the voice of reason when he said:
A) It was preseason
B) Gronkowski only had one guy on him during the preseason game as opposed to four
in Cleveland.
C) If he goes down there is still 22 seconds with two time outs on the two. Discretion
would have been the better part valor.
I actually think Zolak is a pretty good analyst but this seems like one of those days. Just like it was for the Patriots.
With regards to Gronkowski, I felt that he would become a superstar in the NFL. It looks like I need to rethink that one. Hernandez looks like the better of the two.
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This is still not your personal blog Mandb
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I think Bedard's article tells you all you need to know about Jerod Mayo. He's useless in passing situations and easily blocked when the gameplan is designed to run at him. Not an impact player everyone breathlessly wants him to be. Sad, but true.
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Looked like an impact player to me when they were winning four straight. I'd venture his opponents during that string would call him an impact player too. Of course, that's all meaningless now, and the only game that matters is yesterday's, as far as The Best Fans in the World are concerned.
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So tell me, exactly, what he brings to the table against a passing team like Indy? He's garbage in coverage. Garbage. Of course the other team is going to say "he's one of the best tacklers on the team". He is. But again…look at where those tackles are made. They're not at the line of scrimmage.
Listen, I want him to be good. I really do. But he's not worth a Top 10 pick. He not even better than John Beason, who was taken the previous year 15 picks later.
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This is from that article
"“We knew that Mayo is really a run-flow guy and he’s one of the top tacklers on the team,’’ Mack said. “So one of our goals was to make sure we had someone on him because we knew that he makes a lot of tackles. So we were heads-up about how good he is."
Mayo is an important part of any opposing offense's game plan. Doesn't sound like he's as useless as you say at all. In fact I think he's very very good. How he responds to this likely will determine if he can reach greatness – a very possible goal in my opinion.
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Is Classless really Hector Luongo?
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already not impressed with bedard. there was some lame "they left cleveland, always a positive" as one of his 3 "ups" in the blog. it's amazing how no once can just simply follow the reis approach.
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I'm not going anywhere near Shank's column either. But the other day (BEFORE the Browns game) he wrote a "glowing" column about Belichick. Truth be told, I didn't read that one either but heard about it on the" Dan Shaugnessy Watch" web site……so I'm gonna guess he did the classic "Shank Turnabout" and Belichick is a big sack of you-know-what now?…….what a shocker!
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I made the mistake of reading his take on the KG Tattlegate "issue". that's 5 minutes of my life I'm not getting back.
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I see maturity is alive and well on the internet.
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Paul I'm sorry I had to go down that road with you, but this is about the 7th or 8th time you have whined about the length of one of my comments. I actually do not care that it bothers you. I think it is funny that you get your panties in a bunch over the size of a blog comment. By the way, you must have a Callahanesque miserable life if this is something that gets on your nerves.
Now let's review how things got to this point. (This may take a while. You will want warm up that scroll finger so you don't cramp up.)
1) The first few times you complained, I cordially explained that there were things going on in the media that I had an opinion about and this is the definitive sight for those opinions.
2) The next couple of times I wasn't so cordial. I pretty much said tough. If you do not like it, don't read it.
3) Finally, I told you that Bruce Allen is the owner, operator of this site and he has no problem with my posts. If he does I'll adjust, but I do not think he minds at all.
So I'll give you one more piece of advice, if you notice that I have posted on the left hand side of the home page then don't click on the "jump to" button and that way you prevent all of that consternation that is built up in you.
Oh and one more thing, would you like some cheese with that whine?
Bahahahahahaha!!!!!
An oldie but a goodie.
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*yawn*
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