Still this Patriots team needs to play better

The New Orleans Saints played Tom Brady and the New England Patriots right off the field on Monday Night Football literally.With approximately five minutes to go, and the score 17-38 in favor of New Orleans, Bill Belichick effectively ran up the white flag.Belichick pulled, among others, Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and Wes Welker. It wouldn’t be a surprise if New England fans stopped watching then, because it seemed that the Patriots had stopped playing, or at least playing to win.Arguably, victory was no longer an option for New England. They were down by three touchdowns, and putting together three touchdown drives in the closing minutes of a game is almost impossible.Almost.But if any team knows that it’s not completely impossible, it should be New England. Kansas City came back in the second half and beat Pittsburgh Kansas City! Matt Stafford turned a Hail Mary pass into a legendary touchdown with no time left on the clock. In the waning minutes of the game, Tom Brady has been as good as any quarterback who has ever played the game. A touchdown drive can take as little as a minute to put together, and with a little over five minutes left, asking Brady and this usually potent Patriots offense to get back in the game doesn’t seem like an impossible task.Obviously, Belichick thought otherwise.

Maybe he was right; he does have three Super Bowl Rings and an undefeated regular season under his belt, so he does know something about football.The only reason to take out Brady and his starting bunch for Belichick had to be that the game was over. It can’t be that he wanted to give his second string a shot or that he was worried about injury. After all, Belichick leaves his starters in the game when his team is winning by a large margin late.Seeing a team defeated before the game is even over isn’t fun for a football fan, but it does happen.But what should be more troubling for Patriots fans is not that their team was beaten with five to go in the fourth, but that their team looked beaten after Brady’s interception in the second quarter.The interception, which led to a touchdown for the Saints, was the turning point in the game, and it happened in the second quarter. After that, it never seemed as though the Patriots were in the game.To not recover from an interception in the first half is a problem for a team going into December. The Patriots have not been a good second half team this year, and it is allowing teams to come from behind and get a win. Their division is down; the Dolphins, Jets, and Bills are not going to be able to overtake them.Still, this Patriots team needs to play better.

Their defense is struggling to stop anybody, and the only road game they won was over Tampa Bay in London.To make a successful playoff run, a team needs to be able to win on the road and play a full 60 minutes. When Belichick pulled his starters, it felt as though the Patriots were not a team that was going to grind out all four quarters.One loss to a good team doesn’t make the Patriots a bad team. They will make the playoffs, and once that happens, all regular season bets are off.Still, New England is going to have to show more grit if they want to make another run at the Super Bowl.. Cory Merrifield was not about to let the situation continue as it was."From my perspective," he said, "there was little being done. I wasn't going to sit by and just wave my team off to Los Angeles or another market." Currently, the Minnesota Vikings are ranked 31st out 32 teams in revenue generation. That means that since the NFL pools ticket sales and broadcast revenue, the rest of the NFL is subsidizing a large part of the Vikings. The Vikings have been lobbying the legislature for a new stadium for years, but with little progress.

With the current economic climate, rumor has it that, again this legislative season, no bill will be promulgated. After that, they have no obligation to play in the Dome and, if they so choose, are available to relocate to more financial-friendly digs. An exit reminiscent of the Colts, or the Browns, or the Texans, is not , Merrifield believes, what Minnesotans want And so he started SavetheVikes "It just hit me one day, about six months ago," Cory said "We needed grass-roots, fan-fueled lobbying. And I decided, if it was going to get going, really get going, I was going to step up and start it." To date, SavetheVikes has been up and running for approximately five weeks and has had over 10,000 hits on the site. The organization is also on Facebook, where it has over 7,400 fans and is growing daily by the hundreds. "I don't think this is a decision for the legislature to make unilaterally, without discussion, without input from the community.