Gantt, spot on

Gantt was not pleased with my criticism. If he was more clever, he would have responded with "It is what it is."

 

I recognized during the game that Houston is a good team. They are a hell of a lot better team than the one we lost to in '03. I don't know if they'll stay good all year, our bad luck to catch them at the wrong time. Green will probably not stay healthy all year and even if he does those older legs will not remain fresh. And if Johnson misses much time, Texans fans will be wearing black.

 

My point was actually that you cant compare the Panthers and the Patriots...

 

but doesn't that kinda defeat his point that only talent and execution matter. even well coached teams with the best talent will lose to bad teams on occassion. if you don't come out ready to play with some fire in your belly you can get beat by the worst of teams.

 

Here's the best way to answer that; if these guys didn't have the desire to prepare throughout the week, throughout the offseason, including long rehabs for some, and play every Sunday, then they wouldn't even be in the league right now.

 

No, that's ridiculous. The Patriots don't win consistently because they're more emotional than other teams. In fact, they've often been described as business-like, which serves to further illustrate how silly it is for some fans to fixate on passion. The Patriots win because they acquire the right players, they teach those players what to do, and they generally fulfill their assignments. Plus it doesn't hurt to have Tom Brady. I wonder how many Super Bowls they'd have if they hadn't lucked into him.

 

MOW?

 

He did get cut, though. Pretty bad when we basically handed him the starter job in the offseason.

 

Peppers, Jenx, most would say Morgan, and then Lucas.

 

Fox preached enthusiasm because JR was preaching enthusiasm. Remember how, when the Pats game ended in 2001, JR was talking about how we were going to find an offense that fit Weinke (shotgun, and so on) and then proceeded to bench him and not run the style of offense we advertised? It's not that running a more conservative O was a bad thing, or that Fox being something other than a raving, uncontrolled mess on the sideline was a bad thing. At the time we needed to sell what we could sell.