I woke up to the news that old friend and former Patriot Stephen Gostkowski missed FOUR kicks last night, including an extra point, and I just cringed. Granted one of them was tipped at the line, but holy hell what a disaster for the former Patriots place kicker.
Gostkowski missed 3 Field Goals and 1 Extra Point to leave 10 (!!) points off the board for the Titans (-3)
Now to be fair Stephen Gostkowski was statistically one of the best kickers in the league when he was with the Patriots. And it says a lot that the Pats started just their third kicker in a season opener in the last 20 years on Sunday. However, I never felt 100% comfortable with him kicking in late game situations. I wondered if maybe that was just be me remembering some isolated incidents, but then I went and actually looked it up. Nope, completely justified.
Missed extra point in SB LI
Missed FG AND missed extra point in SB LII
Missed 46 yarder in SB LIII
Missed extra point in the 2015 AFC Championship
Missed game winning FG to lose to Arizona in 2012
Belichick not trusting him and going for it on 4th and 13 at the 32 in SB XLII
Granted he didn’t finish the season due to injury, but he also missed four extra points in 2019.
So best of luck to Gostkowski in Tennessee, love ya, mean it, but Titans fans you are in for a wild ride. Now excuse me while I return to my team as they flip flop between a career journeyman in Nick Folk and a kicker the Pats drafted in the 5th round before cutting!
So news broke earlier today that the Patriots were working out free agent kickers, which as Mike Reiss pointed out, the Pats do this ever year at a number of positions just to cover their asses.
The Patriots are working out some free-agent kickers today, which is consistent with their due-diligence approach at all positions to keep emergency lists updated. Veteran Stephen Gostkowski has missed four P.A.T.s this year, which adds a layer of context to the kicker workouts.
Well it turns out it wasn’t just a ploy to bring in some competition for Gostkowski, it was a legitimate injury concern as the Pats just placed their kicker on IR. As bad as Gostkowski has been this year with 4 missed PATs, I’m not any more excited for a street free agent to now be handling kicking duties.
This also raises the question is this it for Gostkowski in a Patriots uniform? The team put him on IR, which means technically they could bring him back later this year, but you only get two of those a season and the Pats already have some key guys on IR:
Isaiah Wynn
James Devlin
N’Keal Harry
So are you really going to bring back a kicker over your (alleged) franchise LT or your first round Wide Receiver? Nope. Gostkowski has one year left on his deal, but at 35 years old with a cap hit of 5.4M next year, this could be it for him if it is any type of significant injury.
A mere couple hours after rumors began swirling that the 49ers were allegedly interested in signing the 35-year-old – who has been on the market a tad longer this offseason than initially expected – the Patriots beat them to the punch and re-signed their longtime kicker to a two-year deal this afternoon:
Patriots are re-signing kicker Stephen Gostkowski to a two-year deal, source tells ESPN.
I really am surprised that it took this long, and at some point last week I honestly started to believe that maybe Gostkowski would be playing elsewhere in 2019 after 13 seasons and three Super Bowl victories with the Patriots.
Look, I know I’ve been a bit critical of Gostkowski in the past, especially coming off of what was one of his more down seasons in recent memory. He’s also missed some pretty big kicks in his career – including the 2015 AFC Championship and in three straight Super Bowls – and he doesn’t always seem to have the ice needed in his veins in the biggest moments.
But, to be fair, the dude is still one of the league’s best, and I am really happy with the move. Even saying he’s coming off a “down” year is a bit unfair, as he still hit over 84 percent of his attempts last season and has hit at least 91 percent of them in four of his last six seasons. Especially given how horrendous the state of kicking is nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to find more guys than you can count on one hand who can still match up with Gostkowski. He also did hit two pretty big kicks in this past Super Bowl, which ended up being won by a mere 10 points.
Terms of the deal itself have still yet to be disclosed, but it’s obviously not going to be a huge hit in the pocket for the team. Regardless, in an offseason which saw a lot of familiar faces depart – players and coaches alike – this is a very welcomed signing.
So through a friend of The 300s I somehow stumbled into field passes for the Patriots game yesterday and finally got to touch the sacred turf at Gillette. The same turf that Tom Brady has given me countless memories on over the years so it was a borderline religious experience.
You see all those 300s hats? That’s called branding guys. Marketing 101.
It was a beautiful monsoon-like day for a football game so naturally I had to stop at Marshalls on the way to Foxboro to pick up some waterproof pants like I was going gator hunting.
In a weird stat, Kirk Cousins threw for more yards warming up than he did in the actual game.
I thought jersey duos like this only existed on the internet, but alas I saw this couple up in the nosebleeds and it was glorious.
Check out the full breakdown below as we pretended to be part of the elite down at field level before going up into the 300s with the rest of our degenerate brethren.
Sunday was an ugly day for the New England Patriots. I was feeling pretty confident heading in and since I was in the great state of New Jersey I even placed a legal wager on my boys to pull it out. Welp, midway through the first quarter I knew I wasn’t getting that money back ever again. What seemed like a steamrolling by the Jaguars was a game that actually pivoted on just a handful of plays and missed opportunities, which I have painstakingly compiled below. Andddd go!
-Gostkowski missed another bunny in a key moment. Yuck, this guy is basically Tuukka Rask to me these days. He’s not as bad as sports talk radio says, but he’s definitely not as great as the team would have you believe. I know it’s only a handful of kicks he’s missed over the years, but they all seem to stick out in my memory because they all came in key situations. Regardless of his FG percentage, I do not want this guy anywhere near a game tying or game winning kick anymore.
-Refs missed a holding call against Gronk (and a potential roughing the passer) and the Pats were forced to kick on 4th down on their first drive, which as we mentioned above Gostkowski shanked with an absolute duck of a kick.
Gostkowski sends it OB right as Patriots end first drive pointless. Either the Telvin Smith jersey tug or Ngakoue “weight drop” should have been drive-extenders.
-A Jacksonville receiver fumbled a ball that jumped like a magic fucking bean right into another Jacksonville receiver’s hands for the luckiest of recoveries.
-This defense looked like swiss cheese all day, which is alarming, but it would be out of character for any Patriots fan to completely overreact. We’ve seen these early season losses when the team is still trying to figure it out. Whether it was the offensive line or the right linebacker rotation, we’ve seen it before and this year is probably no different especially when it comes to the wide receivers. Hell the Pats are like the high school jock who got a little too high on himself and dumped a perfectly nice girl (Kenny Britt), only to try and get her back after he’s put on the freshman 15 at college.
-Eric Rowe got roasted all day long. One of the plays against him was impossible to stop:
But he then immediately got beat for a TD he should have been able to defend.
-The defense got burned on 3rd down all game long as Bortles scrambled and found an open man or ran for first downs himself. Hell he’s got the third highest Avg Yards per Rush for a QB in the history of the league, just a tick behind Michael Vick.
-The defense was bad yes, but lets remember that it took a career day from Blake Bortles (29 of 45 for 377 yards, 4 touchdowns, 1 interception). Literally the best game of his career to topple the Patriots, which kind of stung after I clowned Bortles all week long and lost a little coin in the process, but hey thems the breaks.
Thats the most concerning visual from the entire game. It kind of felt like Brady and McDaniels were starting to worry that this team might not be able to get them where they want to go. Hopefully it’s just the two of them blowing off some steam on the new guys making mental errors.
-Breathe and say it with me….Julian Edelman will be back in 3 weeks.
-I’m pretty sure Mattes and I have stumbled onto some black magic as the two guys we picked for team MVPs on The 300s Podcast, Rex Burkhead and Trey Flowers, have each gotten concussions in the first two weeks. Another guy Mattes picked as a DPOY was Deatrich Wise, who left the game late with what the announcers speculated as some jumbled finger digits. I’m not comfortable with this type of power.
-At one point midway through the second half the broadcast team pointed out that it had been a full 45 minutes since Tom Brady had thrown the ball. That cannot help gameflow and momentum.
-The non-call of the Jags jumping offsides on 4th down late in the game as the Pats tried to draw the penalty before punting. As the broadcast team, and TV shots of a fuming Belichick pointed out, the offensive lineman needs to touch the the defender if he jumps onside otherwise he can reset and the refs won’t call it. Romo even pointed out in the replay you can see the official reach for his flag before deciding against it. That one hurt.
-Before the season I predicted the Pats would split with the Jags and the Texans and be 3-1 after the first month. After Week 2, we’re exactly where I expected so unless they drop a game to the Lions and old friend Matt Patricia
or the Dolphins, who tried their very best to give away a W to the Jets on Sunday, then we’re fine.
-Don’t get it twisted, this defense is somewhere between hot garbage and a cold lunch, BUT its probably a little bit better than the defense that was one stop away from winning back to back Super Bowls last year. So it may not always be pretty, it will probably be infuriatingly bad at times, but at the end of the day it should be good enough to keep the team alive as long as TB12 is under center…..and not a second longer.
-After predicting the Pats would do their best to eviscerate Jalen Ramsey for trash talking Gronk (I may have said something about making his children orphans, but I forget) and they did nothing of the sort. The offense could not get into a rhythm and anytime they did, their momentum was killed by turnovers and missed kicks.
-Cordarrelle Patterson killed a drive when he tripped over the Ghost of Christmas Past on a key third down. After the Pats defense came up huge and forced a quick 3 and out, the offense came out onto the field and these next two tweets came over the span of 6 minutes.
A short series and a terrible punt. The #Patriots have to smell blood here. #Jags
Patterson caught a screen out of the backfield and looked like he had room to run, but his feet would not cooperate as he tripped over nothing and fell down to end the drive in its tracks.
Anddd 5 minutes after that Bortles threw a pick to try and let the Patriots back into the game. Anddd then 3 minutes after that Brady was strip sacked and that was the game.
So I just have to tip my cap to the Jaguars. It’s only Week 2 so I hope they aren’t riding too high….
“It kind of felt like we won a Super Bowl, man,” safety Tashaun Gipson said. “I won’t even kid you. It was that type of atmosphere and environment.
….because we’ve seen this story before (see: Chiefs 2014), but alas I tip my cap.
-Josh Gordon?? I say yes because of the pure ability coupled with the age; 27 whereas Dez Bryant will be 30 soon.
But obviously the guy has been dealing with issues for years. The last, and only, good season Gordon had came back in 2013. Back when Shane Victorino played for the Red Sox. Tom E. Curran makes a pretty compelling argument against the receiver as well:
He’s played in 11 of a possible 65 games since his absurd 2013 season (86 catches, 1,646 yards). He needs full-time supervision, it seems. Permissiveness, understanding and contorting for Gordon’s needs all offseason got the Browns . . . a game. One catch. A touchdown. And then they threw up their hands.
How’s that return on emotional investment and time spent? Not real good. It’s not inhumane to tell a troubled person he is unemployable, which Gordon has been and seemingly still is.
Besides, the Patriots were already down the road with one wide receiver project, Cordarelle Patterson. Then they added Corey Coleman this week.
If feels like they are at capacity when it comes to getting talented but hard-to-reach downfield receivers assimilated. This isn’t July when there’s nothing to do but conditioning, working on timing and getting on the same page. There are games every seven days now, game plans to install, fine-tune and execute.
The reality is, nobody’s got time for Josh Gordon right now.
Despite all that, the Patriots are at least doing their due diligence on Gordon according to Bert Breer.
So that may have been more than just a few pivot points, but I think its just an early season misstep for the Pats (one that I expected) as they build for the longterm and assess what their strengths and weaknesses are. Plus I feel much more confident going against the Jags in the playoffs going for the split, rather than trying to beat Sacksonville twice in one season.
Up next is old friend Matt Patricia and my worst fantasy draft pick in a decade; Matt Stafford.
The 300s 