Where art thou, Stephen Gostkowski?
One of the storylines that I haven't seen reported in the Pats' season is that the team seems to have lost all confidence in their kicker.
Yesterday, early in the game (down 7-3), we faced fourth-and-7 on the Bills' 29. And we went for it. And nobody in the booth, and nobody I've heard afterwards, wondered why we went for it. It would have been a 47-yard field goal -- challenging but doable. And the distance was rather too far to have a strong likelihood of making it. (Put it this way -- in terms of average outcomes, my understanding is that we had about an 80% chance of making the field goal and about a 40% chance of making the first down.)
Yet, we went for it, got stopped a yard short of the first down, and turned the ball over on downs. In fact, Gostkowski has kicked field goals from 24, 24 and 22 yards this season -- that's it. He also missed a 41-yarder and Matt Cassel fumbled the snap on a 43-yarder.
Come back, Adam, all is forgiven! (All right, almost all.)
Oh, and can we have a new punter too? After discarding three punters in the preseason, we seem to have got ourselves an idiot who can't punt the ball more than 30 yards. Maybe we can steal the Bills' punter, who booted it an amazing 75 yards yesterday -- and that off a shortened dropback. (So, to be fair, it was the kicking equivalent of a 70-yard punt. But that's still amazing.)
Yesterday, early in the game (down 7-3), we faced fourth-and-7 on the Bills' 29. And we went for it. And nobody in the booth, and nobody I've heard afterwards, wondered why we went for it. It would have been a 47-yard field goal -- challenging but doable. And the distance was rather too far to have a strong likelihood of making it. (Put it this way -- in terms of average outcomes, my understanding is that we had about an 80% chance of making the field goal and about a 40% chance of making the first down.)
Yet, we went for it, got stopped a yard short of the first down, and turned the ball over on downs. In fact, Gostkowski has kicked field goals from 24, 24 and 22 yards this season -- that's it. He also missed a 41-yarder and Matt Cassel fumbled the snap on a 43-yarder.
Come back, Adam, all is forgiven! (All right, almost all.)
Oh, and can we have a new punter too? After discarding three punters in the preseason, we seem to have got ourselves an idiot who can't punt the ball more than 30 yards. Maybe we can steal the Bills' punter, who booted it an amazing 75 yards yesterday -- and that off a shortened dropback. (So, to be fair, it was the kicking equivalent of a 70-yard punt. But that's still amazing.)