Defense matters, except for Patriots
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INDIANAPOLIS
Despite supplying the 21st century NFL with virtually uninterrupted excellence, the New England Patriots were not widely expected to be in or even near Super Bowl XLVI with this particular slapdash edition.
If the league's serious analysts weren't terribly bullish on the Patriots last summer, their queasiness was more than duplicated at Brady-Belichick headquarters, where the most notable offseason acquisitions were Chad Ochocinco and Albert Haynesworth, effectively representing, in that order, one discard who can't play and one who simply won't.
By the time Haynesworth was kicked off the team Nov. 8 after an ugly confrontation with defensive coach Pepper Johnson, the ceiling was crumbling -- New England had been spanked at Pittsburgh and, in a fourth-quarter slugfest against the very New York Giants it will meet Sunday, had lost to an NFC team at home for the first time in nine years.
The Patriots defense had settled in as the 31st best in a 32-team league, but, worse still, law enforcement operatives in Massachusetts had begun looking routinely for missing persons in the New England secondary.
"Coach told me that I would be in a defensive meeting that day, and that's what we did," was how wideout Julian Edelman remembered Bill Belichick lunging for the duct tape. "You're not going to say no to an opportunity to help the team win."
How Belichick figured that switching a seventh-round pass-catching sub into the starting nickel package would help anything wasn't entirely clear, nor was the reason he decided he could get away with playing rookie free agent Sterling Moore at safety in any way apparent. Moore had been cast into the street from the Oakland Raiders practice squad as recently as October. That made him roughly as qualified as Antwaun Molden, who arrived via waivers Sept. 1 and wound up starting at cornerback for the injured Devin McCourty half of November.
"At one point," McCourty said here Wednesday, "Vince [Wilfork] was leading the team in interceptions."
When a 370-pound defensive lineman is leading your team in picks, the defense is essentially upside down, and it never was more disoriented than on the night of Oct. 30 when the Steelers delivered the most decisive victory against New England all season, swallowing the ball for more than 39 minutes and limiting Tom Brady to fewer than 200 passing yards.
No team had done that before.
First Published February 2, 2012 12:00 am
