The myth of Pioli

[B_Ambuehl]

LOL I wonder if he's sharing that loaded contract he got from Clark with Bellichik.

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/c...148&position=0

This time it’s personnel
Building to collapse
By Ron Borges
Monday, December 7, 2009 - Updated 4m ago
+ Recent Articles

MIAMI - Slowly but inexorably they are dissolving in front of our eyes. It is a process that didn’t begin this year for the New England Patriots [team stats] but way back in 2004, when nobody was paying attention to much else but the lifting of another Super Bowl banner.

That season they won their third Super Bowl in four seasons but also began a widely ignored decline that manifested itself emphatically the past month and came to a sad head yesterday at Land Shark Stadium when they lost for the third time in four weeks, blowing a 14-0 lead to be beaten at the buzzer by the Miami Dolphins [team stats], 22-21.

Five years ago, the Patriots draft garnered two starters, both on the first round. Not another player drafted in April of 2004 is still in uniform. That fallowness continued in 2005 when they again picked only two current starters. In 2006, they got only one, running back Laurence Maroney [stats], plus kicker Stephen Gostkowski. Then came the disaster of 2007, when only first-round pick Brandon Meriweather was good enough to still be in pro
football.

It is a bit early to know about 2008 but other than linebacker Jerod Mayo it again appears to be a sad lot. Second- and third-round picks Terrence Wheatley and Shawn Crable seldom see the field (Crable never has) and it is becoming increasingly more disastrous that cornerback Jonathan Wilhite sees so much of it. In those five years, the Patriots drafted 41 players and got eight starters, six on the first round. Otherwise they got what Bill Belichick kept saying was “value.” Yesterday, it didn’t look that way.

Free agency has produced similarly skimpy results. Early hits were made on Rodney Harrison [stats] and Mike Vrabel, but after that the cupboard has been bare. They paid $30 million to Adalius Thomas and promised he could cover Ocho Cinco and sack Peyton Manning. He’s done neither. Shawn Springs signed a three-year, $10.5 million deal last spring and hasn’t played a snap in a month, while poor Wilhite struggles out of position because he’s a nickel back asked to play corner and rookie Darius Butler goes out and proves that while he has potential he never saw receivers at UConn like the ones catching balls behind and in front of him now, as Greg Camarillo did on fourth-and-6 on the game’s most critical play yesterday.

While there were fruitful trades for Randy Moss and Wes Welker, they have netted big numbers but no championships, which is the same amount Moss’ teams have won since he first came into the NFL.

These facts led New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton to tell his team before last Monday night’s game to be stout hearted and unafraid because “this isn’t the team that accomplished all that stuff.” Although his language was more colorful, his point was clear. These Patriots aren’t those Patriots.

“It’s not for lack of effort,” center Dan Koppen said not long after Dolphins kicker Dan Carpenter nailed a 41-yard field goal and Tom Brady [stats] responded by throwing his second interception of the day with :35 to play as Cameron Wake hammered him.

Koppen is right. The Patriots’ problems are not from lack of effort or lack of planning. They are from lack of talent. Not so lacking that they aren’t competitive, but lacking enough that most every game is a struggle now.

Today everyone will say, “They need a better pass rush.” From whom?

They will say, “They need better pass coverage.” From whom?

Some will say they need to run the ball more to take pressure off Brady and his ailing ring finger, sore shoulder and aching ribs. By whom?

Years ago, Chuck Fairbanks said it best. “It’s not about X’s and O’s. It’s about Jimmys and Joes.” For half a decade with the Pats people believed otherwise. In Bill We Trust became the motto, but does anyone honestly believe Bill Belichick forgot how to coach? A guy who has been watching game film since he was 6 now can’t break down film and discover a team’s weaknesses?

That’s not the problem. The problem is he can’t ask people to do what they are not capable of doing. Or, worse, he does and you end up with Sam Aiken, a guy brought here to replace Larry Izzo [stats] on special teams, as your third receiver making one great catch for a touchdown and dropping two key ones. Did he have a great game or a disastrous one? Probably both, which is A) not his fault because he’s playing a role he was never supposed to, and B) not something Belichick can change.

“We’ve got to find a way to play better football for 60 minutes in all phases,” Brady said. “Everyone has to focus on what they need to do better. I think that’s the most important thing. And be mentally tough to overcome adversity and if things don’t go your way, you’ve got to fight back. That’s a challenge for all of us. At times I think we do, and other times, I don’t think we fight very hard.”

The latter is a damning statement, but it’s also part of what separates the 2001 Pats from today’s. Remaining undaunted is a skill too and not everyone has it.

“We have leads in the second half, and leads in the fourth quarter,” Brady continued. “We’re just not closing the game out when we have the opportunity to. We’re searching for the answers, too.

“Coach always says, ‘You get what you deserve.’ In too many ways, you don’t deserve to win when you make as many mistakes as we do.”

That’s true whether you make them on the field or in the front office.

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by GoChiefs

The production from the running game has improved. Chambers is a massive upgrade. Pope is an upgrade. The pass blocking has improved quite a bit. It was very solid yesterday.

Cassel has not improved. His completion percentage and touchdown to interception ratio have taken nosedives in the last six weeks.

Are you blind? These things are obvious.

That's not what you were saying 2 weeks ago which again proves my point. Pope is an upgrade at tight end? . Come on man a craftsmen is only as good as his tools. The offense has to be pretty much one deminsional because of the defense.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

pioli was around for quite sometime before the pats with BB. i would bet that he was a little more important than that. we'll see. maybe they NEED EACH OTHER. BB isnt looking so hot himself so far on his own. maybe he'll be our next HC.


kidding kidding

Ernie Adams has been with BB since the ****ing 70's - and he has no more power than Pioli or anyone else in the organization had.

Belichick had final say on all football operations decisions.

This is backed up in print, in interviews, etc.

It's really not debatable.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

sorry i forgot you can read minds. we'll see how everything plays out

Feel free to ignore the rest of my post that details what happens if I'm wrong.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58

Ernie Adams has been with BB since the ****ing 70's - and he has no more power than Pioli or anyone else in the organization had.

Belichick had final say on all football operations decisions.

This is backed up in print, in interviews, etc.

It's really not debatable.

Looks like he could use some outside input right about now.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by billay

That's not what you were saying 2 weeks ago which again proves my point.

Sure it was. I've been dogging Cassel since Week 7.

And Pope is definitely an upgrade over Sean Ryan.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Now Dorsey (who was not drafted by this group as we all know) and Jackson have been relegated to never going to be better than serviceable and then the $ is thrown in there to prove they must be better than good to be a success.

Yet when the $ was discussed when draft time came around and some people thought it was too risky to throw that much $ at a rookie QB the answer to that was why the hell do you care, its not your money.

Now Cassel is the $60 Million failure. The money seems to be a pretty hot topic now, though it sure wasn't in April.

Do you understand the concept of value?

Would you pay a long snapper $15M a year?

Of course not.

Some positions are worth more than others.

5-tech isn't worth wrapping $60m into, whether you have the cap room or not.

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58

Feel free to ignore the rest of my post that details what happens if I'm wrong.

i didnt ignore anything, it WILL set us back if he's not the guy, thats not debatable so why waste my time typing about it?

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58

Ernie Adams has been with BB since the ****ing 70's - and he has no more power than Pioli or anyone else in the organization had.

Belichick had final say on all football operations decisions.

This is backed up in print, in interviews, etc.

It's really not debatable.

what does ernie adams do?

[DaWolf]

Originally Posted by GoChiefs

The production from the running game has improved. Chambers is a massive upgrade. Pope is an upgrade. The pass blocking has improved quite a bit. It was very solid yesterday.

Cassel has not improved. His completion percentage and touchdown to interception ratio have taken nosedives in the last six weeks.

Are you blind? These things are obvious.

I thought we were still in the "See Trent Green's first season here" phase.

Cassel isn't improving, at least over the last two weeks, but you can pretty much say that about every phase of the team. Defense, horrible. Running Backs, fumbling. Receivers, drops.

This may point to a deeper issue, coaching. And remember, Haley is the HC, OC, and QB coach. Thus far he has been piss poor at all three jobs...

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58

First, they are playing a much tougher schedule, and second, their defense isn't playing to expectations with the loss of Seymour and the injury to Mayo.

The numbers look comparable, but they've gone from facing Favre, Pennington and Edwards twice a season to Sanchez, Henne and Fitzpatrick.

The passing offense, however, has improved.

are you saying that sanchez, henne, and fitzpatrick are an improvement over farve, pennington, and edwards? really? serious?



WOW

[ChiefsCountry]

Patriots were the wrong freaking organization to mimmick. Should have went after somebody from Pittsburgh or Baltimore. They draft better, are used to money situations in small markets like ours, and have better players overall. Brady and Bellichick make the Patriots so dangerous. Just watch come January, that is when Brady is at his best.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

what does ernie adams do?

Belichick's long time right hand man.

I Had to cut part of this due to size.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=adams

PHOENIX -- You don't notice Ernie Adams at first, but he's always there in his own peculiar way. Walking the halls in the Patriots' complex, lost in his own thoughts, he will often ignore co-workers. In meetings, he has been known to fall asleep. After practice, he is almost always the first person Bill Belichick consults. On game day, he's in the press box with a headset on, running numbers, computing percentages and, some around the league insinuate, overseeing more insidious operations.

When Belichick is taking those lonely walks up and down the sideline, his head bowed as if in prayer, you can bet it's Ernie Adams yapping away in Belichick's ear. Some call him the smartest man they've ever met. A longtime NFL watcher compares him to "Q," James Bond's master of espionage and gadgetry. Author David Halberstam called him "Belichick's Belichick." No other team has anyone like him on its payroll. And yet, save for football insiders, he is virtually unknown. In an era of media oversaturation, there is exactly one more picture of Bigfoot on The Associated Press photo wire (two) than there is of Adams (one). And it's of the back of his head.

So here, in the ballroom of the Phoenix Convention Center, just six days before New England will attempt to complete a perfect season that Adams played a significant role in creating, I want to know what the almost-perfect Patriots think about their secret weapon: a guy with thick glasses and the sartorial sensibility of Mister Rogers; a guy who lived with his mother until she died three years ago.

Who, exactly, is Ernie Adams?

"I don't know what his job title is," linebacker Adalius Thomas says. "I didn't even know his last name was Adams."

"Ernie is a bit of a mystery to all of us," offensive tackle Matt Light says. "I'm not sure what Ernie does, but I'm sure whatever it is, he's good at it."

Finally, I approach receiver Wes Welker. "I'm writing a story about Ernie Adams," I tell him.

"Who?" he says.

"The guy who's always with Belichick who doesn't ever really talk."

"Oh," he says, recognition washing over his face. "Ernie."

He thinks for a second. "He's got to be a genius," he says, "because he looks like one."

THE FRIENDSHIP

This is why God created best friends. Inside a cavernous church, Ernie Adams sat through his mother's funeral, the saddest day of a man's life, and by his side, where he'd been for years, was Bill Belichick. Sept. 25, 2004 was a beautiful New England day, a Saturday morning during the Patriots' bye week. In the tree-lined suburb of Brookline, Mass., a small crowd had gathered in the Gothic Revival Episcopal Church on the corner of St. Paul Street and Aspinwall Avenue. The stone bell tower rose cold and medieval against the fall blue sky.

The mourners had come to say goodbye to Helen Adams, a woman who loved education and adored her son even more. Ernie and Helen lived together, like something out of a Victorian novel, one friend said, with much doting and an occasional trip to the old continent. At the end, Ernie took care of his mother. In the crowd were friends from childhood, high school and college. One of them was the headmaster of Dexter School, where Ernie went to elementary and junior high. "I was struck by the loyalty of Belichick to Ernie," Bill Phinney says.

That bond is the cornerstone of the Patriots' dynasty. In many ways, the traits we associate with Belichick and the Patriots are traits commonly ascribed to Adams. The humble pie? Classic Ernie, frequently described as having no ego. The rumpled hoodie? Again, classmates remember, classic Ernie. Together, Adams and Belichick have created the transcendently successful franchise they dreamed of creating back in high school.

"It's really the story of a friendship," says Michael Carlisle, a successful literary agent who was Adams' high school roommate at Andover.

Adams and Belichick met in 1970. Adams had been at Phillips Academy in Andover, an elite New England boarding school, for three years. In that time, he'd become a campus legend, famous for his quirky attire and habits. He wore high-top cleats and old-fashioned clothes, looked and talked like something from the 1940s. His three obsessions were Latin, naval history and, strangely, football. So he consumed books, mostly obscure titles, with a scholar's thirst. One he ran across was called "Football Scouting Methods" by a Navy assistant coach named Steve Belichick. As Halberstam details in his biography of Belichick, "Education of a Coach," only about 400 people bought the book: professional scouts and 14-year-old Ernie Adams. So, imagine Adams' surprise when, as his senior year was beginning, he walked out onto the football field and encountered a young man with "Belichick" written on tape across the front of his helmet.

Bill Belichick had recently enrolled at Andover for a post-grad year, hoping to raise his grades and test scores so he could get into a good college. A few questions confirmed Adams' suspicions. Are you from Annapolis? Are you related to Steve? Yes and yes. Belichick thought it was strange that a kid would have read his dad's book. Adams recognized something familiar in Belichick. He recognized himself. "He actually was pretty good in his judgment of people," says Hale Sturges, the professor in charge of South Adams Hall, where Adams lived.

They've been like brothers ever since, spending hours after practice breaking down film, diagramming famous plays of Vince Lombardi, Adams' idol. They snuck into Boston College practices to "scout." Together, they played on the undefeated Andover team, the first time the two men tasted perfection.

Adams got his first big break after college, starting as an administrative assistant with the Patriots in 1975 and landing an actual assistant coach's job with the New York Giants in 1979. Immediately, he told Giants coach Ray Perkins there was another young coach he should hire. Something in Adams' voice made Perkins listen. Adams was already a man who demanded trust; Perkins calls Adams' opinion on football "gospel." So, Perkins picked up his phone and set up a meeting. After three hours in a hotel room, he had his new special teams coach: Bill Belichick. "Ernie's recommendation opened a big door for Belichick," Perkins says.

Belichick's career took off. He had something inside him that Adams did not -- maybe ego, maybe a hunger for greatness and glory. But wherever Belichick went, Adams soon followed, his arrival buried in the agate pages or reporters' midweek notebooks, his job title sufficiently vague to inspire more questions than answers. But there he was, in the background, breaking down film, offering Belichick unfettered honesty. When the Browns hired him, Halberstam wrote, it was Adams who cautioned Belichick to read the description of owner Art Modell in Paul Brown's book. "Don't say you weren't warned," Adams said. "It's all spelled out."

Stop after stop, no one was really sure how Adams spent his days, only that he had Belichick's ear. "When they talk," Carlisle says, "Bill knows that Ernie goes back to 1970. There is no bulls--- between them."


THE JOB

This brings us to the million-dollar question: Behind the quirks and the strange attire and the random attacks of sleep, what is it that Ernie Adams, you know, does? Years ago, Modell offered $10,000 to anyone who could tell him. No one could. A few years back, during a team film session, the Patriots players put up a slide of Adams. The caption read: "What does this man do?" Everyone cracked up. But no one knew.

In the broadest definition, Adams seems to be a man who loves to be in the background of greatness. Many things have his fingerprints on them, such as the game plan that engineered the upset of the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. Yes, Adams and Belichick figured out how to neutralize Marshall Faulk on the plane ride to New Orleans. Adams is involved in a lot of surprising things; he's a kind of "Forrest Gump" of sporting success. Like, say, the best-selling book "Friday Night Lights," which documented high school football, and later became a movie and a television show. That's right. "I'm indebted to him because he really turned me on to Odessa, Texas," says author Buzz Bissinger, who went to Andover with Adams and Belichick.

Adams' contributions to the Patriots begin with film. Hours and hours of film, often in his darkened office. He has been doing this for years, first at Northwestern in the early 1970s, where he convinced coaches to let him go from student-manager to scout. "He was a prodigy," says Rick Venturi, an assistant on that Wildcats team.

By now, after years of evolution, Adams sees film differently. Not just as random actions, but a genealogy of the game of football. When a defender moves, he recalls watching or having read about the first time a defender moved like that, even if it was 50 years ago, and he knows why, which tells him how to counteract the move. He has a photographic memory. Perkins tells a story of Adams' memorizing the Giants' thick playbook. In one night.

So, every week, the Patriots get the kind of analysis that only high-powered hedge funds or, say, NASA can afford. "Nine times out of 10," Bissinger says, "Ernie sees something nobody else sees."

That memory and those hours of studying film make him an unparalleled resource for assistant coaches. Want to know what a team does, and why? Want to know what a team has done on third-and-short in the red zone in the past 10 years on the road? Ask Adams. He'll know.

Adams' reach doesn't stop there. The Patriots are famous for compartmentalizing: The scouts can't watch practice, the game planners don't know who they are going to draft, and so on. But Adams is into everything. During the draft, according to Michael Holley's "Patriot Reign," he's in charge of running through the team's value chart, figuring out who will best fit their needs. This is the perfect assignment for someone who spent several years in the late 1980s as an analyst and trader on Wall Street and, as an investor, is known for spotting profitable trends shockingly early.

Pats owner Robert Kraft, a successful businessman in his own right, discusses economics with Adams. Belichick jokes that he wishes Adams would manage his portfolio. And the roots of the Patriots' insistence on value, and not letting emotion get in the way of sound investments, sound like they might have sprung from the mind of one Ernie Adams. "Warren Buffett and Ernie are actually somewhat similar," Carlisle says. "I have met Warren Buffet. Warren is one of these people who is phenomenally rigorous in his analysis. If there was someone you might associate with Ernie, it is someone who is [also] slightly asocial."

Adams' official title is director of football research, and he does a lot of that, too, trolling the world for things that might offer the slightest advantage. A year or two ago, an Andover teammate ran across an obscure out-of-print book on nonlinear mathematics. He thought Adams might find a use for it, so he mailed it to him. Adams had already read it. Or there's Rutgers statistics professor Harold Sackrowitz, who got a call from Adams a few years back. Adams wanted to talk about some research Sackrowitz had just completed, dealing with how teams try two-point conversions far too often. Adams sent the professor the Patriots' when-to-go-for-two chart, and asked Sackrowitz to tear it apart. Of the 32 NFL teams, the statistician told the New York Times, only the Patriots called.

Here's another example: The academic paper of a Berkeley researcher, referenced in the same Times story, dealt with how teams punt on fourth down far too often. That paper ended up on Belichick's desk. Now, how do you imagine it got there?

On game day, Adams wears a headset in the press box, a direct line to Belichick. Adams advises Belichick on which plays to challenge, and charts trends. "The one thing the Patriots do better than anyone else is they adjust and make halftime adjustments," Sturges says. "Ernie Adams is the guy who does that."

Are there other game-day duties? While it is commonly accepted that most teams try to steal signals, and New England was actually caught in the well-publicized Spygate incident, one former Patriots insider said a videotape of signals wouldn't help the other 31 teams nearly as much because they wouldn't have Ernie Adams there to quickly analyze and process the information.

And, if any of this happens to be true, Adams' love of military history suggests he might see deciphering signals as just part of winning a battle. Friends say he is wildly competitive. "Behind the exterior of a guy who lived with his mother," Bissinger says, "he is a guy who is really savage about winning games."


Courtesy of Phillips Academy, copyright John Hurley 2005
Working strictly behind the scenes, Adams had a giant hand in the Patriots' success.

THE MAN

But that doesn't totally answer the question, does it? Knowing what Adams does cannot explain where a mind like his comes from. Did it come fully formed from the womb, or was it created slowly? Certainly, at an early age, he searched for strong male influences. His father, who wasn't around much, was a career Navy officer. As he grew up, Adams studied naval history and tactics almost as much as he studied football. But from the beginning, there was something strange about him. As a high school teammate describes him: "Odd, in a good sense."

Dexter athletic director George Dalrymple hasn't forgotten the first time he ever saw Adams. The boy was in third grade and Dalrymple walked into the locker room to find, gathered in total silence, a group of first and second graders. In the center stood Ernie, reading them "Winnie the Pooh." That year, Adams began playing football. He adored the game, latching on to Coach Dal. A quote from Vince Lombardi in the coach's office would stay with Adams, inspiring a lifelong love affair. Football is only two things. Blocking and tackling. Even then, Adams showed hints of what was to come. His favorite play, installed at his request, was a goal-line, tackle-eligible play. Adams was the decoy. The play almost always worked. He didn't mind not getting the credit. "It was part of winning," Dalrymple says. "He liked to win."

While in sixth and seventh grades, Adams read Lombardi's book "Run to Daylight" about 20 times. His obsessive personality drew him further into the web of this game, one with X's and O's he could control, men he could make appear whenever he wanted. It was simple, something missing in the 1960s. The campus and nearby Harvard were exploding in anger over the Vietnam War. Everything was turned upside down. "He was very old-fashioned," Bissinger says. "He was sort of the Lombardi era. Something about him was out of the 1940s. He was just different. He had no knowledge of rock 'n' roll or sex or drugs. The [high] school was rampant with it. Everyone was stoned. Everyone was drinking. And there was Ernie in his high-top cleats talking football with the head coach."

Still, the environment at Andover encouraged his searching. He has been lucky that way. His entire educational life, he has lived and studied in incubators of creativity. Dexter educated John F. Kennedy and Washington Post legend Ben Bradlee. Andover is famous for its students, too. Dr. Spock went there. So did Samuel Morse and Duncan Sheik, as did both Presidents Bush, and Jeb Bush, who graduated with Adams. (Scooter Libby also went to school with Adams.) Humphrey Bogart went to Andover. Jack Lemmon, too. Bart Giamatti and Bill Veeck. Senators, ambassadors, Medal of Honor winners, Nobel laureates. Andover is a place that encourages its students to dream of greatness and achieve it. Only, they didn't quite know what to do with a kid who wanted to be great at … football. Teachers wrote worried letters to his mother. So did Sturges, who thought Adams had the potential to do anything he desired. "I wanted him to try different things and move out of his little cubicle-type thinking," he says. "It never really happened."

But Adams took his task seriously, devoting his senior project to the study of the Andover football team's tendencies. "We throw around too many words," Bissinger says. "We throw around 'brilliant' too much and 'genius' too much, but I really believe this: Ernie was a scholar at football. And he was a scholar at football at Andover. Kids were scholars of physics. Kids were scholars of Latin. Kids were scholars of math. And here was this sweet, goofy guy who was a scholar of football."


THE MIND

That is how this mind was molded, but still, it does not take us into the mind itself. Only Ernie Adams can do that, and he won't. You might have noticed Adams isn't quoted here. He's rarely quoted anywhere or, for that matter, seen anywhere. Especially this week, when he's searching for the tiniest advantage. "Look for him at Super Bowl parties," Sturges told me. "Look for him. And I bet you won't find him. He is going to spend every minute out there preparing for this football game. It means everything to him."

Remember that if you happen to catch a glimpse of Ernie Adams on Sunday, wearing a headset in the press box, in the ear of a coaching legend. Think about the miracles of fate that brought him from a book-lined room in South Adams Hall to the center of the football universe. Look into the quiet corners of the Patriots' success and see a man who seems more fascinated with those who study greatness than those who are great themselves.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

are you saying that sanchez, henne, and fitzpatrick are an improvement over farve, pennington, and edwards? really? serious?



WOW

You are to reading comprehension what Frank Stallone is to popular music.

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

You are to reading comprehension what Frank Stallone is to popular music.

ok i re-read it i see what he said now. sorry

[OnTheWarpath15]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

are you saying that sanchez, henne, and fitzpatrick are an improvement over farve, pennington, and edwards? really? serious?



WOW

No, you idiot.

I'm saying that statistically, the 2009 defense compares to the 2008 defense - but that's not the case, as any Patriots fan or someone who watches them regularly can attest to.

Their defensive rankings are still in line (in part) because they have the luxury of facing 3 inexperienced QB's twice this season.