Bonding opportunity lost for Brady and rookies

"You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football, and i will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts and then you will run a mile."

Denzel Washington as Herman Boone in Remember the Titans

Good thing Herman Boone isn't coaching the New England Patriots, because there would have been a constant stream of players in white jerseys taking laps around Ford Field in Detroit on Thursday night - all Bill Belichick did is bench the transgressors, then reinsert them with the scrubs to finish up the 40-9 drubbing that their crimes against football helped produce.

Thompkins continued to impress in the second half

All except for Brandon Bolden, whom Belichick must have been so disenchanted with that the next time that anyone saw him after his fumble, he was in street clothes and looking very unhappy...

Dropped passes?  Thompkins and Dobson would have been taking laps.  Missed blocking assignments?  The entire offensive line rumbling down the sidelines.  Fumbles?  John Brown only had two feet, so two of the trio of Zach Sudfeld, Bolden and Shane Vereen would be forced into a two-fer type situation...

Similar in many ways to the epic matchup with the San Francisco 49ers last season, the Patriots stumbled into the locker room at halftime on Thursday evening after being dominated by the stout Detroit Lions, fortunate to be down by only a 16-3 score that could have been much, much worse....

...but it wasn't, as the Patriots defense turned in a dominating performance of their own, making several stops with their backs to the wall to keep their struggling offense within striking distance.

The difference, besides the obvious of this being a preseason game, is that in the 49ers game, the offense came back out for the second half, screwed up a few more times, then gave San Francisco a taste of the whip that they'll not soon forget - and that opportunity was wasted on Thursday night.

Not that the Patriots would have come out and set the place on fire, but to allow the rookie receivers the opportunity to settle down, get coached up and to be able to go back out onto the field with Tom Brady to try and implement those changes could have had long-reaching benefit, because you just can't simulate those circumstances in practice.

This isn't a movie.  You can't just cut from the scene and have another opportunity in the next take.

Those who follow my work also know that this blog is usually the first to defend Bill Belichick because it is understood where his base of football knowledge comes from, but a golden opportunity for Brady to form a tighter bond with his rookie playmakers under adverse conditions was lost...

...which has a far more long-reaching effect than simply getting blown out of a preseason football game.