The Brady Bunch Revival -or- How The Dolphins Defeated The Patriots (The Prequel) UPDATED 11/6/09

Well it's hard to figure out the 2009 New England Patriots.  Sure they have Brady back, and he keeps saying every week about how he's in the best shape of his life and how he doesn't feel sore after games, etc.  They put up a 59-0 blowout in the snow versus the lowly Tennessee Titans.  They should've lost to a lousy Buffalo team in week 1.  They ran away from the Bucs in London 35 -7, but I watched that game and they didn't seem to be playing any better than Tampa Bay was.  Truth is a series of turnovers and lack of experience really hurt the Bucs in that game.  They were able to run all over the Pats defense, who got almost no pass rush at all.  But Tampa Bay made mistakes, and lots of them, and the Pats took advantage.

Here's the strengths I've identified with the Patriots:

• Brady is a great QB, but they don't rely on his arm.  The truth is no team runs the screen as much as New England, and any QB can handle that.  But it's the threat of Brady's rifle that backs defenses up and makes them overcompensate with the blitz.  The absolute key player on the field offensively is Wes Welker because he is the prime screen target, and he'll turn a 3 yard dump-off into 12 yards a first down almost every time.
• The secondary.  I know it seems every week we're going up against a badass secondary but this is the NFL, get used to it.  Now, word is that Johnathan Wilhite, one of their four 'starting' cornerbacks, may have swine flu.  They rotate Wilhite, Leigh Bodden, Shawn Springs, and Darius Butler (all 4 have started this year) heavily, so they are usually well rested.  Of course the main attraction in their defensive backfield is safety Brandon Meriweather, the 3rd year Miami product.
• Finally, the Pats have the entire NFL Network, ESPN, and CBS networks backing them up at all times.

The weaknesses?  Well I wouldn't say there's any weaknesses.  I would say there's a few 'average' things about this team.  Granted, in order for us to beat them in their house on Sunday, we'll have to suppress their strengths to make them look average, and stomp their average aspects to the point of weakness.  We did it last year in Gillette Stadium.  

Here's how we'll repeat:

• Everytime we play the Patriots, we spend way too much time trying to figure out how we're going to stop Randy Moss.  And most of the time, we get killed by guys who aren't named Randy Moss.  Moss is dangerous and of course we want to keep him under wraps as much as possible.  But I wouldn't gameplan specifically for him, instead focusing on how we're going to close off the middle of the field and protect against the screen. We'll have to hold back on the 5 and 6 man pass rush to do so, but we'll want pressure on Brady as well.  So we'll have to do a good job of disguising the rush.  With our outside linebacker corp, this shouldn't be that hard a task, but we seem to have not figured it all out yet.  How about the occasional inside blitz with Reggie Torbor (let's face it, Crowder and Ayodele are not pass rushers, but Torbor has shown ability to slip past the blocks up front and get into the backfield.
• Offensively we need to put up a lot of points.  Typically these games take somewhere between 35 and 50 points to win.  I don't think we can hit 50, but we should be able to hit 35, assuming we don't turn the ball over, and we score TOUCHDOWNS, not field goals, on 5 possessions, approximately 50% of a game's drives.  Driving the length of the field should also eat up most of the clock, preventing Brady from getting too many opportunities.
• Special teams.  A perfect way to tip the game in our favor would be to own the field position battle.  A few more long returns from Ted Ginn could start things moving for us.  Hopefully he will return a punt or two as well.  After Bess fumbled a punt last week, I would expect him to be in the doghouse, opening the way for Ginn.
• And finally, as much as I hate to admit it, there must be something in Dan Dierdorf's words that help the Patriots out.  If we can get him to say two or three positive things about the Dolphins, who knows?  It couldn't hurt.

UPDATES

• Channing Crowder and Jason Ferguson are both listed as DOUBTFUL on today's injury report.  Perhaps Soliai gets his first start of the season, or perhaps they move Starks into the middle and let Merling start at RDE.  Torbor will start in Crowder's absence.