Week 1 Monday Night Football - New England @ Miami & Oakland @ Denver

IMO, the keys to this game are going to be Matt Light and Nate Solder. There was actually a very interesting discussion on Finheaven where everybody was debating where Cameron Wake, Jason Taylor, and Koa Misi should be lined up. The consensus was that because Nate Solder has struggled mightily against bull rushes and Matt Light can no longer deal with speed rushes, Wake should be lined up on the weak side and Wake/Misi should be lined up on the strong side. That's interesting because the inside linebackers (Dansby and Burnett) excel at both blitzing and coverage. Further, Miami's defensive backs are excellent in run support and blitzing and are up to the task of dealing with New England's so-so receiving corp.

All of this leads me to believe that Nolan is going to fully open up Pandora's Box of Zone Blitz on Brady. If the pressure is there consistently, Brady is going to panic and start making un-Brady-like decisions because he's always done that. If he gets blindsided a couple of times, his physical courage is going to tap out and he's going to start making Alex Smith-like decisions just to avoid the pain (again, he's done this more often than not against Miami). That's going to 3-and-outs at the very best and back-breaking turnovers at the very worst.

Flipping the page, under the above situation I believe Miami's offense is going to have room to breath. NE's defensive success last year was largely because opposing offenses were forced to try to keep up and the defense had the lead they needed to tee off and not worry about mistakes. If NE's offense struggles under pressure, their defense has two options: blitz like madmen or play conservative. The former would be a mistake because Henne has never had problems picking apart blitzing defenses (probably the one area he's never had problems with) and the latter would have more success but would allow Miami to dictate the pace of the game. To that area, I fully believe (because Miami has been practicing it) that once the Patriots have Fat Albert and Wilfork in the game, Henne is going to go no-huddle hyper-tempo and wear their defense out with short-intermediate passing, screens, and misdirection runs that will set up for the kill shot.

I honestly believe all of the above was Miami's gameplan from the outset. I just think that with Vollmer out and Solder playing for him, with NE in front of a soldout crowd on the road on MNF, and with the embarrassment of last year on the team's mind, New England is in trouble. This is, to my mind, going to be like Wk3 of 2008 all over again. Which means I'm going to be ROFLMAO during the entire game.
 
Leaving before 6am in the morning to head for work. I'll miss the early game for sure as I should arrive at around 6:30pm if the trip is good.
 
Miami RB DanielThomas (hamstring) is inactive for Monday's game against the Patriots, Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald reports.
 
Say what you will about the Pats offense, Miami was damn impressive as well. As much as all the Henne crap is out there, he is the #3 or #4 Qb in most fantasy leagues. Heck of a game.
 
S.Janikowski is just an MFBA, tying the record for the longest field goal of 63yds, yea i know it was at Mile High in Denver but he makes long FG's no matter where he kicks at and the Raiders have the confidence to let him kick them 50+ yard FG's wher most teams dont.

The Raiders played some solid D, J.Campbell needs to step up and get the receivers the ball more or McFadden will be short lived if he is the only offensive weapon going every week.

As you can imagine im as happy as a pig in $hit today with pulling out a win vs. the Broncos
 
DearbornDolfan said:
Meh. I believe a game record that Marino was involved in was broken tonight. Disappointing effort by the Fins' defense.
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I thought the game plan you spelled out in how to best attack Light/Solder was very good. Too bad MIA didn't follow it because other than a few plays late Solder owned Wake.


And so much for the defenses usually being ahead of the offenses at the beginning of the season. Henne and MIA torched NE's defense just as bad as Brady and co. did to MIA's.
 
Anyone hear Jaws say $hit? LOL I was like..Whaaa???? Did he? Nawww.....then later in the broadcast he apologized LOL Funny stuff right there.
 
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