The Patriots' Week 9 matchup against the Packers was considered one of the better games on their schedule and could have put their season back on track. Although they just beat the Dolphins, they also lost to the Bears on Thursday Night Football and could use a win over another NFC foe to bring their record to 6-3.
That would've kept them in the AFC title picture, and while it's not entirely gone, the Patriots are slowly but surely proving they can't overcome the long list of injuries that have dominated their season.
It was especially true in last week's game for the defense, which was surprising given that it hasn't lost nearly as many players to injury as the offense. What stood out most was Christian Gonzalez's struggles, leading to the worst performance of his career, which made for an easy game for the Packers to win.
That game is one that Gonzalez would surely like to forget, even saying as much to reporters immediately after the loss. But his performance was so bad that it cannot be just swept under the rug and treated as a big nothing, as Ty Law emphasized this week.
Mike Vrabel made it clear that Gonzalez's performance wasn't acceptable, which is one thing to hear from your head coach. But hearing it from a New England legend puts a lot of pressure on the cornerback ahead of their international game on Sunday.
Christian Gonzalez cannot simply move on from his historically bad Week 9 performance
During an appearance on WEEI's The Greg Hill Show earlier this week, Law was asked about Gonzalez's poor showing last Sunday, allowing 7 receptions for 105 yards to Matthew Golden and 3 receptions for 82 yards to Christian Watson.
Law, who has openly expressed his support and admiration for Gonzalez in the past, had a lot to say about what he saw from the cornerback last week, and he wasn't exactly sugarcoating his disappointment or astonishment over just how bad he was.
"I'm a Christian Gonzalez fan. I just expect more out of him. I see the talent, the athleticism, the size. He has all the intangibles to be exactly who he's being paid to be...I have never—I mean, I have absolutely never—been a part of a situation in my 15-year career that a secondary played that bad. And when you got $50 million a year worth of cornerbacks, that’s unacceptable.
It’s absolutely unacceptable. [I'm not] here to tear anybody down or tear Christian Gonzalez down at all. But we expect more. You got the bag. You got to play better. And then it just wasn’t the coverage. It started carrying over into the tackling and the willingness to tackle and things like that. So I’m just seeing a lot of things that’s not right when it comes to the New England Patriots' secondary.”
Although the entirety of the Packers' offensive success cannot solely be blamed on Gonzalez, he set records with how many yards he allowed by not one, but two receivers total on the day, and his response to it all didn't go over too well, either.
Green Bay totaled 478 offensive yards in Week 9, with 372 coming from Jordan Love, who had no issues at all. In fact, it quickly pushed him to the top of the MVP conversation, another sign of how bad the Patriots' defense was.
Gonzalez played a major role in that, and he will have to prove in Week 10, against another highly powered offense, that he can bounce back from a rough game and play like the highest-paid cornerback in the league.
As Law said, that's what the Patriots are paying him for, so having another game like he did against the Packers would be a disaster. The hope is that we will never see that kind of effort, or lack thereof, from Gonzalez ever again, and hopefully he demonstrates that on Sunday in Munich.
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