The Patriots traveled over to ” fish, chips, cup ‘o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins… LONDON” this weekend to spread good will towards the Redcoats and the Royal Family and show fans at Wembley Stadium what real football looks like. While they were there they just so happened to run into an 0-6 Tampa team that didn’t put up any resistance at all as the Pats coasted to a 35-7 win. They said it was going to be a business trip and it certainly was, because watching this game all the way through was frankly a little bit of work. Tampa sucks. Bad.
Name of the game early on was defense, as Brandon “I’m slowly making you forget all about Rodney” Merriweather picked off two Josh Johnson passes, returning one of them for a score which gave the Pats a 7-0 lead early on. New England led 21-7 at half thanks to two passing touchdowns from Tom Terrific to Wes Welker and Sam Aiken, then scored 14 unanswered in the second half to put it away.
Brady was 23/32 for 308 yards and 3 TDs, but was picked off twice, which was the first time he’d been intercepted since Week 2 against Fred Flinstone’s J-E-T-S. Overall the offense had little trouble slicing and dicing through the clearly overmatched Buccaneers, who are clearly in the middle of a rebuilding period and a good example of a team that the NFL certainly shouldn’t have chosen to be included in this “International Series.”
The Patriots spread it around to a few different RBs on the ground, with Maroney getting the bulk of the carries and finishing up with 43 yards and a touchdown on the day. Welker led the receivers with 107 receiving yards and Ben Watson added a TD score in the third quarter.
Defensively, Jerod Mayo continued to prove he’s returning to form, leading the team with eight tackles, five of which were solo. After getting benched by Bill Belichick last weekend, Adalius Thomas didn’t make any significant impact defensively and finished with only one tackle, which probably pissed Bill off something fierce. He tries to light a fire under a guy’s ass and he only finishes with one tackle?
This game was basically over as soon as Merriweather picked off Johnson during the first series of the game. The steadily improving young safety jumped the route perfectly and took the ball untouched forty yards down the field for an easy score and the beginning of the end for Tampa. While the turnovers (as well as 10 penalties) slowed things down a bit for the Pats, overall there really wasn’t a whole lot to complain about.
The Patriots head into their bye week at 5-2, with Miami coming up to Foxboro on the 8th. Miami’s record stands at 2-4, but as they showed against the Jets a few weeks ago and the Saints today, they are for real and better than their record would suggest.
That game is the beginning of a pretty miserable month or so for the Pats schedule-wise. After the game against Miami we head down to Indy to face Peyton and the Colts, take on the Jets at home the next week, travel to the Superdome to play New Orleans the week after that and then play Miami in Miami on December 6th. Woof.
Get your rest this week fellas. You’ll need it.
