We got dominated in the trenches, which nobody seems to be talking about. No run game and an underwhelming pass rush were pretty big. Quite honestly I thought we made Gronk and Edelman look pretty human out there.
It's actually been an issue in multiple games but no one wants to talk about it. People complain when a RB other than Ivory can't do well, but they ignore it when they get hit by 2-3 guys in the backfield or there's no holes at all.
We hardy ran it. We tried to out New England the Patroits throwing too much. It was never gonna work. Gailey stick to the run more!!!!!!
The good part about that I guess is that our run game can get shut down and we can still have a decent game with Fitz throwing the ball.
Ridley coming back is going to be big. Not only adding another dimension/ but Ivory's health. Bilal Powell looks useless, (except for pass protect) and Stacey is so-so.
And here is the problem: all runners like him are either injury prone, have short careers, or both. Go back to Earl Campbell and the man was a beast..... and then his career was over in just a few years. Go into the '90s and you can look at someone like Jamal Anderson. He was a very good RB, but he wore down rapidly. Unfortunately RBs already have short careers and these sort of RBs who make their living running over opposing players as much as around them often have even shorter careers. Sweetness is something of an outlier, but then again Payton only ran you over when he wanted to. Many of these others relied on it far more and it really wore their bodies down. From what I can see, Ivory is more susceptible to small, aggravating injuries than some of these others before him. However, if he were used more sparaingly and strategically I think he may have a decent length career. Just my $.02
The patriots made a decision to force us to throw and it worked. They stacked be boxes when Ivory was there and didn't have to respect Stacy
