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Source: Boston.com
Two sports articles today, both related to the Patriots:

No New Defensive Coordinator for Pats
So apparently, Belichick won’t hire a defensive coordinator this year. It is true that Belichick is a defensive mastermind. But is it really to the team’s benefit if Belichick puts more work on himself? A boss or a manager is supposed to find talented people and delegate tasks to them, not take it all on himself. Is it that he trusts no one else to do this job? Or is it that he believes so much in his own system that he will not take any diversion of opinion? Either way, I think that Belichick or anyone putting that much extra work on themselves is a bad idea and, if not the cause of an eventual burnout, will be the reason the person would end up becoming the team scapegoat should things go wrong.

Manning > Brady?
Dan Shaughnessy thinks so. To be honest, I don’t think I ever believed that Tom Brady was better than Peyton Manning. I like the Patriots, but I don’t hate the Colts like most Pats fans do and I also respect Manning’s talent and awareness of his situation. And I’m not oodling over Brady like a lot of Pats fans do, either; Matt Cassell came in a year ago and put up some pretty good numbers himself. It was almost like we didn’t really need Brady to have a good year, as long as we had good coaching and good talent in the receiving corps and the offensive line. Brady is indeed an important player and he is the face of the team, but at the same time, he isn’t quite at godly status.

Source: Boston.com
Read Article

Once regarded as merely flawed, the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots are now clearly vulnerable, and with that realization comes a reduced level of fan expectation.

Bob Ryan pretty much hits it.

Read Article | High School Sports Graphic
Both links from Boston.com

They are players who share uniforms because there are too few to go around, players who yearn for more qualified coaches on the sidelines and a few fans in the empty stands, players who never make it to the field because of academic woes and the scourge of deadly street violence.

In a golden age of professional sports in Boston, they are portraits of a bleak reality for student-athletes in the city’s public schools.

A truly moving article about the lack of sporting programs in Boston high schools. One interesting point that really got me was that the exam schools, namely Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant, are the schools that have the widest selection of sports. The students who are gifted but not gifted enough to make it to an exam school get fewer choices. After reading it, I wrote something out on my iPod:

Sometimes I wish that celebrities and athletes helped out the schools more. The state and local governments tend not to always give enough to best help students succeed in school, sometimes leading them with shoddy classrooms, shared uniforms, or poorly conditoned books. The wealthier people make millions of dollars, all of which they definitely do not need. Their money alone could bring the school system to a surplus; their money alone could keep the system afloat. They are sometimes outside of the politics, the beauracracy, the counterproduction that these kind of machines bring with them. Sometimes I wish I had the money just so I could put a smile on the children’s faces when they hear they can take a field trip to a new place and explore, when they have the materials to feel like they can succeed, when they actually feel that other people care about what they’re doing. Life isn’t all about money, but when you’re trying to fund programs, it becomes important to have it. It buys the best equipment, and more importantly, the time of the most inspirational people. In the end, the money is the instrumental value that allows the children to be instilled with the intrinsic power of good teaching, coaching, and role modeling.

I really do hope that Boston can regain some prestige in their athletic department. This is the first part of a seven part article on the Globe, and I look forward to the new updates.

UPDATE: Here are all the updates from the Globe’s report.

David Ortiz has been in quite the slump since the season started. He hasn’t hit one homerun all season and has a .208 batting average (at the time I wrote this). It’s good to keep faith in your players, but I am getting a bit worried and losing some hope in him. My resident assistant from this past year mentioned to me that all a designated hitter does is practice hitting, as they don’t play the field. Part of me wants the Sox to take him out for a while (they’ve done it for two games to this point) and see if they can get another power hitter on. But another part of me doesn’t want to be so vicious; it wants to give him a chance. Maybe he just needs some time. Or perhaps he should work on getting his batting average up at least. That way, if we don’t get homerun power out of him, we at least get a guy that can drive in some runs or get on base himself. The issue with bigger baseball players like Ortiz is that without power, they lose a lot of oomph. They can’t run very fast, so they can’t steal bases or beat out the throw to first base. I think it’s just a little tough for them and perhaps a bit too one dimensional.

Source: Reiss’s Pieces (Boston.com blog)
Read Post

Matt Cassel, the backup quarterback for the New England Patriots who played the entire season since Tom Brady sustained an injury, had some rounds with the media on Thursday 1/22. When asked if there may be a quarterback competition in New England next season, he said:

This is Tom’s team. The Patriots have been Tom’s team. He’s built that franchise up with his own two hands. He’s the guy, and he was the MVP the year before. I realize that. He’s been such a mentor for me that I would say ‘No, there is no quarterback competition.’ But I’ve learned so many things from Tom, and hopefully it’ll help me in my career.

This is such an honorable response from a man with such class. Also, when asked about whether he’d return to the Patriots as Brady’s backup, he said:

If the situation is what it is, then I would accept it and I would continue to do what I have done my entire career which is work hard, put my best foot forward and continue to work on the things that I need to and put out my best effort.

As much as he does not mind being Brady’s backup, I feel like Cassel’s performance, for his sake, should get him playing time on another team. For his sake, it would be nice for him to go somewhere else to advance his own career. But perhaps he is so much more into his team and the pride he has for it that he does not mind staying where he is. Unfortunately, things like this don’t get a lot of press, but Patriots fans, and football fans in general who may read about it, should respect and honor his decision. I know I will.

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