Bedard: Patriots' Coaches Most To Blame For Loss To Eagles
BOSTON (CBS) -- Just about everyone who watched Sunday's game can agree that it was an uncharacteristically sloppy performance from the Patriots, so Felger & Massarotti welcomed Greg Bedard into studio on Tuesday to help sort out the mess.
While Bedard said there was plenty of blame to be spread around, if he had to pin the loss on any one thing in particular, it would be the Patriots' coaching staff.
"I blame the coaches, overall," Bedard said. "This game felt very similar to the 2012 game against Seattle, which is the only time since I've been here (since 2010) that I held the Patriots coaches responsible for a loss. This is the second time. So two times in six years. It was just one of those games."
Bedard continued: "On the whole I thought that they sort of mailed in the game plans in this game. I thought that the offensive game plans was good in pieces, but I thought that Josh McDaniels should have come into this game and [dedicated to running the ball more]. ... I figured they would come out and just have Brady throw 20 times and try to beat this team into a pulp. They didn't do that. They ran the ball well early and then went away from it."
Bedard rated the defense, as a whole, as being "so-so."
"Defensively, they weren't prepared for some of the switches that the Eagles made in terms of using a lot more of Darren Sproles and Kenjon Barner to get to the edge. I thought they were ill-prepared for that," Bedard said. "And of course special teams, I didn't understand why they were punting in the middle of the field to Darren Sproles all game. The one that he returned for the touchdown was more toward the sideline, but there were other ones that were kicked right in the middle of the field. You'd figure going againgst a team as weak as this, you'd say, 'All right, what do they do well?' Number one or number two on our list has to be contain Darren Sproles. We're not going to let him return a punt for a touchdown.'"
Bedard said the Patriots coaches may have been caught in the middle of making corrections from the Denver game and looking ahead to the Houston game that they didn't put as much emphasis as usual on this, a non-conference game against a weak opponent.
"In general," Bedard said, "I thought that they went into this game saying, 'We're a lot better than the Eagles, even in our current state. We'll just let Tom be Tom and he'll take care of it, and we'll get out of this game with a victory and then we'll get people back.'"
As for the infamous drop kick onside kick attempt, Bedard said it wasn't the main reason the Patriots lost, but it was not insignificant.
"I don't want to overhype it too much, but I also don't want to minimize it," Bedard said. "I do think that that changed the game right there. That, coupled with the [Sam] Bradford throw on third down, that gave the Eagles new life. And it was a new game from then-on-out."
Bedard gave credit to the Eagles' coaching staff, but still remained surprised to see the Patriots look so ill-prepared.
"I don't think that the Patriots were prepared for [the Eagles' wrinkles]," he said. "There were just a lot of things that they weren't prepared for in this game, where normally they have that all taken care of."
Listen to the full segment below: