New England Patriots Stock Watch: Darrelle Revis, Brandon Browner Up
By Cyrus Geller
Here is this week’s New England Patriots stock watch:
Up
Darrelle Revis
Revis has been awesome this year, so when I say this was by far his best game as a Patriot, that is an extremely impressive feat. Revis completely locked up Golden Tate, and spent some time shutting down Calvin Johnson and Eric Ebron as well. This defense is one of the best in the league this year for a number of reasons, but it all comes back to number 24 dominating on the outside.
Brandon Browner
The list of players that have shut down Calvin Johnson is very short, but I think we can now add Brandon Browner to that list. Yes, he had safety help over the top for the majority of the game, but he was physical with Megatron, and made life tough for him from start to finish. Browner is good, guys. Watch out.
Julian Edelman/Brandon LaFell/Tim Wright
After a few weeks of non-stop Rob Gronkowski talk, yesterday was ruled by the “other guys”. LaFell, Edelman, and Wright took advantage of all the single coverage they were seeing, and put together an extremely impressive performance. The Lions elected to double and triple Gronk all game long, which gave these guys easy opportunities to torch whoever was covering them. They combined for 25 receptions, 223 yards, and two touchdowns.
Offensive Line
Tom Brady dropped back 53 times against the best defensive front in football, and wasn’t sacked one time. He had all day to throw, and as we said in the week leading up to the game, if Brady had time, he would slice up Detroit’s secondary. This offensive line has come into its own over this seven-game winning streak, and this was their most impressive performance yet.
Down
Jamie Collins
Collins had a rough start to the game, as he was flagged twice in the beginning stages of the game, and never really got going like we expected him to. The good news? New England still won by 25.
Refs
20 total accepted penalties, and they all seemed to be questionable calls. The officiating crew really slowed this game down, and made it tough to watch at times.