Aaron Schatz: "Kansas City picks tails. The result is tails. New England, what's your choice?"
How hard is it to run the freakin' coin toss correctly?
Patriots march down the field easily on their first drive for a touchdown catch by
Rob Gronkowski. Gronk and
Julian Edelman both look healthy so far. Interestingly, Chiefs coverage is shifting around a lot. On three straight catches, Gronk was covered by
Ron Parker,
Eric Berry, and
Sean Smith in turn, all man coverage. What surprised me most about the drive was
Justin Houston was not on the field for the Chiefs. They really need him out there to help bring the pressure on Brady. What surprised me least was that the Patriots didn't even attempt to run the ball once.
Cian Fahey: No running plays on the opening drive but a few third-and-long situations that needed to be converted. Silver lining for Chiefs defense.
Scott Kacsmar: I know the NFL rulebook is thick, but is it illegal to double-team Rob Gronkowski in the red zone on third down? Because that should be an automatic call for every defense, but we don't see it. Make the other guys beat you there.
Ben Muth: The catch where Berry was covering him was at least a short gain. I think he has the best chance at slowing Gronk down. I don't know how you leave him one-on-one with a corner (even a corner as big as
Sean Smith) inside the red zone.
Aaron Schatz: Ironically,
on the pregame show, if I'm not mistaken, they had Tony Gonzalez showing footage of how the Patriots put two and three guys on him in the red zone when he was with Atlanta.
Scott Kacsmar: Right, that was
the 2013 game.
You know if Belichick had to coach against Gronk he would probably have something like that for him. It's just common sense.
Vince Verhei: Announcers were falling all over themselves to give health updates on Gronkowski, Edelman, and
Jeremy Maclin. No mention of Houston.
Aaron Schatz: The Chiefs just converted third-and-4 with an honest-to-goodness triple option. I feel like in the Andy Reid Drinking Game, that's "buy yourself an entire liquor store."
Scott Kacsmar: Two long drives, a bunch of short passes and third-down conversions, and a 7-3 New England lead. That is just how
Super Bowl XLII started, but with New England getting the ball first today.
Vince Verhei: First quarter ends with New England up 7-3. Biggest storylines so far: Pats have 16 passes, one run; and the Chiefs burned two timeouts to avoid delay of game penalties on their first drive. They converted both third downs, so bully for them, but they're probably going to miss those timeouts later.
Scott Kacsmar: Are you at the game, Aaron? These CBS camera angles are not good today. Looks too zoomed in.
Aaron Schatz: I'm at the game. But yeah, I've seen many complaints on the Twitter about the camera angles.
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Vince Verhei: I'm going back over this game and I keep finding amazing ways
Kansas City screwed up. They burned 2:20 on a fourth-quarter three-and-out.
Scott Kacsmar: Andy Reid seriously dropped a "time was of the essence" line during his post-game presser when talking about that super long touchdown drive. There was zero confidence coming out of those words. It felt like a Saturday Night Live skit and I was waiting for audience laughter at his deadpan delivery.
Vince Verhei: I saw clips of that presser. Reid claimed they were in the hurry-up, but also didn't understand why reporters asked about them huddling with the clock running. It was like,
even in hindsight, he didn't understand how badly he and his team have screwed themselves. Like he didn't even realize the game was over. I mean, I don't expect him to be fired tomorrow, but if it happens, I won't ask why.
Andrew Healy: I think the Patriots actually can and do feel pretty good coming out of this, as long as
Jamie Collins,
Chandler Jones, and
Dont'a Hightower are OK (Collins being the biggest concern with the plays he missed). Brady looked great most of the day and Edelman looked unfettered (ten catches on 16 targets). Maybe the best sign of the day was the offensive line looked pretty good against the Justin-Houston-less-but-still-scary Chiefs pass rush. Zero sacks and just one hit. Maybe that overstates the line's play a little, but it mostly held together really well.
For the future, let's never have any announcer say again that the Pats need to establish the run. And one game against the Eagles does not mean the Patriots have terrible special teams. And if it's so important to have Kelce in the game on the first down (it is), just keep him on the field for the third down rather than wasting first down with a spike.
The Patriots took advantage of the secondary's aggressiveness with double-moves that got both
Sean Smith and Berry on the touchdown to Gronk. They also adjusted to spy
Alex Smith after he scrambled to convert a third-and-long on the first drive, which helped neutralize that threat.
Thought Amendola should have been tossed for the spearing on the punt. As Ben said, no place for this stuff.
For the record, the Donovan McNabb regurgitation drive took about four minutes. So this drive was even worse.
