Patriots take Pointers from NFL Football Champions
The New England Patriots will hope they can do what the Steelers did to the Cincinnati Bengals offense.
What Pittsburgh did to Cincinnati's offense Sunday, as the Steelers are fond of saying, is what they do. They blitzed the statuesque Carson Palmer, over and over. When it didn’t work, they did it some more.
So the thinking might go that a blueprint has been drafted for the Patriots. After all, the Steelers sacked Palmer six times, and that followed the Browns, running a virtually identical scheme to Bill Belichik's, taking Palmer down four times in Week 2.
And though center Rich Braham has been on the shelf, and the heat has been relentless on Palmer, the Bengals' quarterback is more than willing to shoulder his share of the blame.
''I'd say out of the 10 sacks, at least half the sacks are my fault,'' Palmer said. ''I need to do a better job of realizing there's nothing there, and there's nothing more that can be made of this play. We did a great job last year and we've had a couple of issues here and there, but it's nothing that's worrying us or our offensive line.''
The primary worry of most around the Cincinnati Bengals is that Palmer's mobility is still limited by the reconstructive knee surgery he underwent in January, which has made him something of a sitting duck.
But Palmer's golden arm, clearly, is still in great shape. And Palmer's arm is a big reason why the Patriots will have to pick their spots Sunday in Cincinnati.
Surrounding the Bengals' quarterback are even more reasons to be careful, particularly receivers Chad Johnson, Chris Henry and T.J. Houshmandzadeh. Because even though Palmer has become familiar with the turf during the last two weeks, he made the Browns and Steelers pay with his playmakers running through secondaries undermanned by the defensive play call.
In the process, Palmer has completed 64 percent of his passes for 545 yards and six touchdowns in those games. Moreover, he has connected on 14 passes of more than 15 yards.
The New England Patriots need to be careful come Sunday or else, they'd have yet another loss staring them in the eye.
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posted by JEFFDSTUFF at 11:37 PM
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