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This game is not worthy of a lot of technical analysis. Let me just make a number of observations that support my summary evaluation = WHAT A MESS!

  • The weather conditions were a MESS! It was fitting that the game ended in the most dismal driving rainstorm you could imagine. Impossible conditions.

  • The injury situation was horrific. We started with Jimmy Smith and Calais Campbell and L. J. Fort all out on defense. We added to that list with a bad injury to Terrell Bonds that further depleted our secondary. When Brandon Williams went down with the ankle injury we had no mammoth run stuffers left to insert. We also had to do some more reshuffling on the offensive line when Fluker was benched. But the heartbreaking loss was the gruesome leg injury to my “buddy” (so named because he used to live across the street from us) Nick Boyle. He is a very unique piece of the puzzle. We have no similar replacement so we will have to adjust our offensive approach. In the second half it seemed like someone got nicked up on every other play.

  • I have never seen a professional football team that is unable to accurately snap the ball in the shotgun formation. I feel badly for the cut on Skura’s hand, but we had a week to try to work out a solution. We cannot afford to be chasing errrant snaps all over the field.

  • The ball placement by the refs on a couple of crucial third down calls was very favorable to the Patriots. There should be some way to improve this facet of the game.

  • I am not sure that Hollywood Brown will ever be able to adequately compensate for his lack of physical presence. Defensive backs can push him off his route — especially egregious was the initial drive of the game where we ran a double move and the defender was beat but just pushed him towards the sideline to kill his momentum so that he was able to run with him on the go move. The ref didn’t make any call because the contact did not seem that pronounced — even though it was sufficient to kill the play.

  • Lamar cannot continue to make a key turnover in the final minutes of every first half. I didn’t mind the decision to take a shot at the end zone, but he badly underthrew Hollywood — who again lacks the height to win any jump ball situation.

  • We can’t keep making stupid penalties — like Justice Hill running into the punt receiver after he signaled for a fair catch. The helmet to helmet penalties didn’t look that violent — but I guess that is just how they are going to call the game and we need to adjust.

  • We got beat at our own game of power physical football. They just ran the ball right up the middle on us. The offensive line of the Patriots generated too many productive first down plays.

  • We couldn’t stop the Patriots at the end to give Lamar one more shot with any significant time on the clock. We just failed to generate enough offense all game long.

    WHAT A MESS!

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    On a lighter side . . .

    It’s way too early to declare the New England Patriots the winner of the November 15 Sunday night game against the Ravens.  Despite pressure from many in the NFL to concede defeat, the Ravens are demanding a manual recount of all the points registered in the recent contest.  Certainly we want every legal point counted and every illegal point not counted.  There is concern that the game may have been stolen from the Ravens by the decisions of the refs.  For the sake of the integrity of the NFL and the public’s confidence in the score of future football games, it is imperative that we pause and allow sufficient time for a complete investigation and audit of the game’s result.  In fact, the New England Patriots should join with the Ravens in demanding such an investigation so that there would be no cloud of suspicion over the result and so they could properly enjoy their triumph.  As it stands now almost half of the viewing audience has serious questions regarding the integrity of the final score.  If we don’t address these concerns at this time it is unlikely that the Baltimore Ravens could ever stand a chance of winning any future contests.  This is a matter of establishing the integrity of the NFL shield.

     

    There certainly were a number of process issues that reveal irregularities in the way the game was conducted – even if these issues were not outright evidence of fraud:

    –          The weather conditions were unsuitable for any human to be playing a football game.   It must be questioned why the stadium did not have a roof that could be closed to protect the participants against such extreme elements.

    –          No Baltimore Ravens fans were allowed into the stadium to observe the scoring of the points.

    –          It seemed like the Ravens were competitive in the counting of the points during the first half; but then the officials paused the counting during halftime for some unknown reason.  In the second half the points mounted up quickly for the Patriots and the Ravens could not recover from the deficit.

    –          The official scoreboard used to record the game’s results was not approved by other teams and is known to be susceptible to outside hacking.  Robert Kraft’s family apparently has some stake in the ownership group that manufactured the scoreboard.  It cannot be determined whether additional points were added into the total for the Patriots.

     

    In addition there are a number of statistical anomalies which must be examined in more detail before the outcome can be certified.

    –          It is widely known that the Baltimore Ravens had won the previous 10 road contests in a row so it is suspicious that a team that has been known to cheat as much as the New England Patriots could have won this game fair and square.

    –          In Week 11 of the 2018 NFL season, Lamar Jackson took over as the starting quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. Since then, the team has scored 20 or more points in every regular-season contest, which now sits at 31 after Baltimore took a 21-10 lead over the Colts on Sunday. That isn’t just a great streak, it’s historic. The Ravens now hold the NFL record for most consecutive regular-season games in which they’ve scored a total of 20 or more in a contest.  It just doesn’t add up that they would only have scored 17 points in this game to lose by such a slim margin.

    –          Baltimore had more Total Yards (357 to 308) and Passing Yards (249 by Lamar Jackson to 118 by Cam Newton) and Time of Possession (32:34 to 27:26) and yet lost the game??  It just doesn’t meet the smell test.

    –          The Baltimore Ravens have the best running game in the NFL by any statistical analysis, and yet in this game the Patriots amassed more running yards than the Ravens (173 to 115).  How does that make any sense?  Damien Harris alone ran for a career-high 121 yards – this falls outside of the parameters of any statistical algorithm. 

     

    There also are some unsubstantiated reports from sideline observers that could potentially lead to legal challenges regarding the outcome of the game. These claims were all documented by signed affidavits under penalty of perjury.

    –          Someone claimed that the refs were drying off the balls used by the Patriots on offense while they were leaving exposed to the elements the balls used by the Ravens.  This caused many errant snaps by the Ravens center Matt Skura.

    –          Someone else claimed that they could hear the Patriots players barking out the Ravens plays before the ball was snapped – as if they had inside knowledge of what play was about to be executed.

    –          Someone else claimed that the sticks used to measure first downs were a yard shorter than the legal limit of 10 yards when the Patriots had the ball.  This would explain how several of the crucial ball spots gave the Patriots first downs when it looked to the naked eye that they had come up short.

    –          There were a couple of plays involving outright trickery that definitely impacted the outcome of the game.  On one occasion the Patriots took advantage of their understanding of the pick rule (their coach seems to be an expert at exploiting loopholes in the rules) to rub out a Baltimore defender just behind the line of scrimmage on a quick pass play to the sideline.  The Patriots also scored a disputed TD when a person other than the QB completed a throw into the end zone.  If this ends up being disallowed by the courts, the Ravens will have the required margin of victory.