2007 AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONS

Can you believe it? The Red Sox are in the World Series. AGAIN!!!! For the second time in four seasons, the Sox are the best team in the American League.

This is something new for the Red Sox. We're used to long droughts in between World Series. It was 18 years in between 1986 and 2004. Eleven years in between '75 and '86. Eight years in between '67 and '75. Twenty-one years in between '46 and '67. Twenty-eight years in between 1918 and '46. For the first time since the 1910s, the Red Sox will be playing in a World Series multiple times in a decade. By the way, we won 4 World Series in that decade.

Game 7 last night was a nerve racking duel until both bullpens were in the game. Westbrook got out of tough jams with the double play ball. Matsuzaka also escaped trouble thanks to the double play. All in all, Matsuzaka pitched a solid game. He went 5, allowing 2 runs. He sputtered at the end, but he gave us a great chance to win the game.

Something we did reminded me of the 2004 team. We kept piling on. In Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, we got a nice lead, then sat back as Jason Giambi chipped away at us, then the Yankees rallied and won the game in extra innings. In Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, we got out to an early lead, but kept adding on. We did the same thing last night.

The MVP of the series was Josh Beckett. That was a no brainer. He went 2-0, pitching 14 innings, allowing 3 runs off 9 hits and 1 walk. He struck out 18. His 8 inning, 1 run performance in Game 5 was perhaps the turning point of the series. It forced a return to Fenway Park and seemed to bedazzle Cleveland's hitters for the remaining games.

An honorable mention should go to Kevin Youkilis, who hit .500 in the series. That is not a typo, he hit .500, going 14 for 28. He scored 10 times and knocked in 7. His OBP was .576, and he slugged .929. He hit 3 homers, a double, and a triple. He only struck out 3 times.

Another honorable mention should go to Manny Ramirez, who went .409 with 2 homers, 10 RBI, and an OBP of .563. Manny also had a big outfield assist of Lofton in Game 7. Although Lofton appeared safe, the throw was good enough to help fool the umpire.

Toward the end of the series, David Ortiz and Mike Lowell cooled off a bit. Ortiz had 3 RBI in the series and wound up with a .292 average. He did get on base, though, and was able to score 7 runs.

Lowell wound up with a .333 average for the series. He had 8 RBI, but only scored 3 runs, mostly due to ineffectiveness by the hitters behind him.

Dustin Pedroia and JD Drew started off slow, but picked up the slack at the end. Pedroia exploded last night and finished the series at .345 with 8 runs scored and 5 RBI. Drew had the big hit in Game 6 and wound up hitting .360 with 6 RBI in the series.

The bullpen trio of Papelbon-Okajima-Timlin performed perfectly. Combined, these three had 13.1 innings pitched, all scoreless. They allowed 8 hits, 4 walks, and struck out 9. Our other bullpen pitchers, well, they didn't do so good.

Julio Lugo had one of the worst playoff series I ever seen for a winning team. He was 5 for 25, somehow hitting .200. His OBP was .231, and he slugged .280 for an anorexic .511 OPS. Coco Crisp also had a disappointing series at the plate, but at least Coco fields his position, and fields it well. Lugo made what could have been a gigantic error in a 3-2 game last night, then he had that double clutch that prevented a double play being turned. He looks horrible.

The World Series begins on Wednesday at Fenway Park. Josh Beckett goes against lefty Jeff Francis. These are two of the hottest pitchers in baseball right now. It should be a hell of a game and a hell of a Series.

THESE ARE NOT THE 2004 RED SOX

The Red Sox face elimination tonight in their first must win game of the season. If victorious, they will face elimination again on Saturday. They need to win three straight games against Cleveland in order to continue the season.

In 2004, the Red Sox were down 3-0 against the Yankees. In Game 4, the Red Sox staged a 9th inning rally and eventually won the game in 12 innings. Game 5 required an 8th inning rally and a 14 inning effort. Games 6 and 7 were slightly easier, and the rest is history.

Listening to Boston sports radio, the 2004 team was alluded to at a rate of about once every 100 seconds. “In ‘04, we came back against New York.” “We were down 3-0 to the Yankees and still won.” “Tell Cleveland to ask Torre and the Yanks about what happened in 2004.” And so on.

There are two major problems with comparing the peril of the 2007 Sox with the near doom of the ‘04 club. These Red Sox are not the same as those Red Sox. And these Indians are not the same as those Yankees.

The four consecutive games won by the Sox in ‘04 were started by Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, and Derek Lowe again. The three games the Red Sox need to win this year will be started by Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling (3 years older than in ‘04, of course), and Daisuke Matsuzaka. The ‘04 Sox had two Aces in the hole, the ‘07 Sox have an Ace, an aging Jack, and a wild card.

The bullpen work in ‘04 was handled by Mike Timlin (4.1 IP in those last 4 games), Keith Foulke (5 IP), Allan Embree (3 IP), Bronson Arroyo (2 IP), Pedro Martinez (1 IP), and Tim Wakefield (3 IP). That bullpen was very deep. Mike Myers got the tough lefties, and Curtis Leskanic had 1.1 innings of work in Game 4 to get the win.

The bullpen for the ‘07 Sox is strong up front with Jonathan Papelbon (37 Saves, 1.85 ERA), Hideki Okajima (2.22 ERA), and a suddenly resurgent Mike Timlin (3.1 IP this series with 1 hit and no walks allowed). But after that, things get messy. Manny Delcarmen has allowed 3 runs in 1.2 innings. Jon Lester has yielded 2 in 3.2 innings. Javier Lopez gave up 4 in a single inning. Eric Gagne shall never again pitch in a Red Sox uniform. Papelbon, Okajima, and Timlin have combined for 8.1 scoreless innings in this series, but unlike in ‘04, there is a steep drop in performance as one goes down the list of bullpen pitchers.

The 2004 Red Sox had a complete lineup from 1 to 9. Johnny Damon led off, followed by Orlando Cabrera. Then came the big bats of David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez. Kevin Millar, Trot Nixon, Jason Varitek, Bill Mueller, and Mark Bellhorn rounded out the lineup, a lineup which scored 949 runs in the regular season (5.9 per game) and 90 runs in the post-season (an astonishing 6.4 runs per game).

The 2007 Red Sox lineup is nowhere near as complete as the ‘04 club’s. The leadoff spot has been passed from Coco Crisp to Julio Lugo to Kevin Youkilis to JD Drew to Jacoby Ellsbury finally to Dustin Pedroia (and perhaps back to Ellsbury). Whereas the 2004 Sox had some hitters at the bottom of the order to continue big innings, make pitchers work harder, put up a few extra runs, and turn over the lineup; the 2007 team has four holes in Drew, Jason Varitek, Crisp, and Lugo, all of whom hit .270 or below this year. The Four Horsemen of the Pop Out have combined to go 12 for 60 (.200) this series. The Red Sox scored 867 runs this season (5.4 per game), and have scored 40 runs in the post-season (5.7 per game). However, 19 of those 40 runs came in two games. In the other 5 games, they’ve averaged 4.2 runs per game.

In the 2004 ALCS, the bottom of the order made major contributions. In the 9th inning rally of Game 4, Kevin Millar (hitting 7th that night) led off the inning by drawing a walk from Rivera. After pinch runner Dave Roberts stole 2nd, Bill Mueller (the 8 hitter) drove him in with a single. In Game 5, Jason Varitek (hitting 7th) knocked in the tying run in the 8th inning with a Sac-Fly. In Game 6, the big hit was by 9th hitting Mark Bellhorn, whose 3 run shot provided the Red Sox with what turned out to be the game winning runs. In Game 7, Damon knocked in 6 runs with 2 homeruns. Four of the men he knocked in were from the bottom of the lineup.

The 2004 Red Sox had Derek Lowe, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Keith Foulke, Mike Timlin, Allan Embree, Tim Wakefield (in the pen), Bronson Arroyo, Mike Myers, and a strong bottom half of the lineup to fall back on. The 2007 Red Sox have Josh Beckett, a 40 year old Curt Schilling, and a very lost Daisuke Matsuzaka. When and if these guys fail to go enough innings, the likes of Manny Delcarmen and Javier Lopez come into pivotal situations with the game on the line. And the bottom of the order is an easy 1.1 innings for any pitcher to navigate through.

The 2007 Indians are not the 2004 Yankees. In Game 5, the Indians will have CC Sabathia on the mound. If there is a Game 6, it will be Fausto Carmona. Neither one looked sharp in Games 1 and 2, but both had amazing years. Combined they are one of the best 1-2 punches in baseball.

In Game 4 of the ‘04 LCS, the Yankees started the ancient Orlando Hernandez. In Game 5, it was Mister Mediocrity: Mike Mussina. The Game 6 starter was Jon Lieber. Kevin Brown started Game 7. I’ll take Sabathia-Carmona-Wetbrook-Byrd over the Yankees’ foursome any day of the week.

The ‘04 Yankees also lacked a strong middle-relief. Tom Gordon and Tanyan Sturtze set-up Rivera, but then there was the likes of Paul Quantrill (4.72 ERA in ’04) in the middle. Quantrill got the loss in Game 4. Esteban Loaiza (5.70 ERA in ’04) was the loser of Game 5. Javier Vasquez (4.91 ERA as a starter in ‘04) allowed 3 inherited runners to score in Game 7. He also allowed 3 more runs of his own, which let the Red Sox pull further away from the Yankees.

The Indians’ bullpen has Borowski at the end. Borowski has the highest ERA in the pen. But apart from him and Tom Mastny, every other bullpen pitcher had an ERA below 3.00 this year. Aaron Fultz was at 2.92, Jensen Lewis was at 2.15, Rafael Perez was at 1.78, and Rafael Betancourt had a 1.47 ERA and a WHIP of 0.76. Betancourt, Perez, Lewis, and Fultz, along with Borowski; spell much more trouble for the Red Sox than Paul Quantrill or Esteban Loaiza did.

What the 2004 Red Sox did was impressive. Maybe I’m just being pessimistic, but I don’t think the 2007 Sox can semi-repeat what that team did in ‘04. That team was very special. They were also very good from top to bottom. Moreover, the 2007 Indians are much harder to beat than the 2004 Yankees. I will be much more impressed with this year’s team than the 2004 team if they come from behind and win this series.

Even if the Sox pull it out, the Rockies aren’t going to lose a single game until 2012.

HOW BOUT THEM PATRIOTS?

The Patriots hadn't played a team with a winning record until yesterday. It was only the 5th time in NFL history that undefeated teams played each other in week 5 or later.

The Patriots have now outscored their opponents by 138 points this season (23 points per game). To put that in perspective, in their 21 game win streak in '03 and '04, the Pats outscored opponents by 190 points (9 points per game). These are not your older brother's Patriots.

Yesterday's victory was much closer than the 48-27 score would suggest. The Pats scored a garbage time touchdown. This wasn't running up the score. This was a rushing TD by Kyle Eckel, and was essentially a reward for the Naval Academy graduate for busting his ass in practice week in and week out. See, Coach Belichick was indeed programmed with a heart.

The Cowboys were the only team to have a 2nd half lead over the Patriots so far this season. They're also the first team to put up more than 20 points. They're also one of the few teams to force a turnover from Tom Brady.

After the game, Terrell Owens said "The game could have gone either way." Tony Romo said "It wouldv'e been interesting had there not been a holding call on that 4th and 1 play" referring to an apparent 4th down conversion pulled back because of a penalty, which forced Dallas to punt.

The Cowboys were penalized 12 times for 98 yards. However, the refs did not seem to have it in for Dallas. Most of these calls were procedure penalties before the snap. Dallas was offsides three times, started falsely twice, and had an illegal shift penalty.

Neither team played their best possible game. Maybe it was all the mid-week hype. Maybe, for Dallas, it was their emotional trip to Buffalo and a short week. Maybe, for the Pats, it was playing a great team on the road for the first time this year.

Dallas was penalized incessantly, this coming after an offensively impotent 1st quarter. The Cowboys did not get a 1st down until 14:39 had elapsed in the game.

The Patriots tackled sloppily. There was no better example of that than Marion Barber's safari through the end zone, being wrapped up by four different Patriots, none of whom could complete their tackles and bring Barber down for a safety.

The Pats also hurt themselves with penalties. On defense they seemed slow at times. On TO's TD in the 2nd quarter, Samuel and Wilson ran into each other. On special teams, they allowed a big return. Then there was that sack and fumble which kept Dallas in the game early on. Had Brady held onto the ball and the Pats score on that drive, the game would have been close to over.

Tom Brady was the star of the game with 388 yards, and a career high 5 TDs. It would have been 6 touchdowns (a new franchise record) had the officials not called a bogus pushing off penalty on Moss. Brady also ran for two 1st downs.

An unsung hero of this game was Kevin Faulk, who replaced the injured Sammy Morris, who replaced the injured Laurence Maroney. Faulk had 13 carries for 50 yards (3.8 YPC) and also caught 3 passes for 24 yards.

The Patriots won in Dallas for the first time ever. Dallas is not an easy place to play for any visiting team, especially with the Cowboys playing so well this year. This is the most impressive win of the young season for the Patriots.

The Pats stay on the road next week, going down to Miami to face the 0-6 Dolphins. This game has "TRAP" written all over it, and Miami has always been a tough place for us to play in.

BOSTON VS. NEW YORK

The title isn't a mistake, I'm well aware of the fact that we're playing Cleveland in the ALCS. This article, however, is a comparison of the sports in Boston and the sports in New York.

Ladies and gentlemen, Boston is on top of New York across the board. New York sports suck compared to us.

Let's start with baseball. The Yankees may have won the season series against us 10-8, and they may have come from 14 games behind to make the divisional race exciting, and they came back from a crappy start to win the Wild Card. But they lost to the Indians in the LDS. Despite spending over $1 billion since 2000, the Yankees haven't won the World Series in this century.

We all know by now that the Yankees were eliminated last night by Cleveland. We also know that the NY Mets suffered one of the most embarrassing collapses in regular season history. With the Red Sox winning the AL East, and advancing to the ALCS, Boston baseball is doing much better than New York baseball.

Let's move on to football. The NY Giants are actually doing pretty well, with a 3-2 record. It's still very early in the season to be making any judgments, except for maybe one: the Jets suck. Mangini's squad is 1-4, and it isn't because people are videotaping their signals. The Jets are so pathetic that their fans cheered Chad Pennington getting injured.

Meanwhile, the Patriots are one of three 5-0 teams in the NFL. They've scored 182 points (most in the NFL) which is 36.4 points per game. They've also allowed the 6th fewest points (4 of the 5 teams ahead of them have only played 4 games). So far, the Pats have outscored their opponents by 117 points, or 23.4 per game. Again, it's still early, and the schedule gets much tougher from here on out, but as of right now the Pats are viewed as the #1 team in the NFL. But even though it's early, New England already has at least a 4 game lead on every team in the AFC East.

The Jets and Giants have a combined record of 4-6. Even together, they don't match the Patriots' win total. Boston is definitely ahead of New York in football.

The basketball season hasn't started yet, but let's just look at what the Knicks and Celtics did in the off-season. The Celtics acquired two studs in KG and Ray Allen. The Knicks were busy dealing with sexual harassment suits. Advantage: Boston.

In hockey, the Bruins suck. The Rangers are good, and if you want to throw in the Devils and Islanders, they're good too. Advantage: New York. But it's hockey, c'mon.

How about college football? Neither Boston or New York are hotbeds of college sports. But Boston has a D-IA team within its city limits. New York doesn't, but there is a team that became so popular last year that the Empire State Building was lit up in its school colors. Rutgers became New York's team last season. Probably not all New Yorkers, but what else do they have? Army? Syracuse? Maybe UConn?

Anyway, Rutgers sucked. After rising to #10 in the country due to crushing Buffalo, Navy, and mighty Norfolk State, Rutgers has lost 2 in a row and dropped from the rankings. Boston College, on the other hand, is 6-0 for the first time since 1942. BC has had some cupcakes on their schedule, but they did go down to Atlanta and beat Georgia Tech. The Eagles are ranked 4th in the nation and have the inside track to winning the ACC Atlantic Division. Advantage: Boston.

Oh yeah, the Revolution are also ahead of NY/NJ in Major League Soccer standings.

So the only sport in which the New York metro area has a clear advantage over Boston is hockey. In baseball, NFL football, basketball, college football, and even soccer, it is all Boston.

New York sucks.

PATS ACCUSED OF CHEATING, JETS ACCUSED OF WHINING

In 2001, it was the Raiders who bitched about the tuck rule. Then their fans, and overnight radio loser JT the Brick concocted a conspiracy theory involving the NFL, Homeland Security, and the Kennedy assassins. They ignored the fact that their team still allowed two field goal scoring drives after the tuck rule play, and since that year, their team has been a joke that gets funnier and funnier.

Also in 2001, the Steelers complained that the "best team" didn't win the game between them and the Patriots. Because Bill Cowher was focused too much on his hard pounding run game, and impenetrable defense to give any attention to his special teams play, he proceeded to whine like a baby.

Then there the Colts in 2003 and 2004. This bunch of sissies whined that Patriots players hit them during plays. Eventually, the Colts whined so much that an entirely new set of rules for pass coverage were written by the NFL. Now the Colts could get 5 yard penalties and automatic first downs if anyone even looked at Marvin Harrison in a mean way.

Then last year the Chargers joined the whining. Tomlinson threw a tantrum when the Patriots mimicked Merrimen's Lights Out dance on the Chargers logo. Ladanian even went so far as to accuse Coach Belichick of being classless. Meanwhile, LT ignored the steroid use of his teammate who was mocked, as well as the DUI his other teammate picked up in the off-season.

And now it's time for the Jets to join the circus of bad losers.

Eric Mangini, who has connived, plotted, and schemed in a vein effort to surpass the Patriots in the AFC East, now has a new ploy. He has accused the Patriots of stealing signs. He's borrowed a page from baseball and applied it to football.

Before every defensive play, the defense on the field receives the play call from the sideline. But they get their play in the form of hand signals from the sidelines. In an effort to prevent these signals from being decoded, teams often employ three or more signalers, with only one man giving the true signs.

In this weekend's 38-14 demolition of the Jets, a Patriot employee was noticed on the sidelines with a video camera. The Jets have alleged that this man was taping the Jets signalers in an effort to figure out which plays the Jets would be running on defense. The NFL has since confiscated the tape and the camera, and will be investigating the matter.

First of all, in order to decipher the Jets signals, the Patriots would have to find all of the signalers, record every play, compare it to the signals, and hope to find a pattern with one of the signalers. Then they could apply it to gameplay, and maybe be able to tell when the Jets were blitzing, when they weren't, and things like that.

If this happened, then it's a form of cheating, and the Patriots should be punished. But I have my doubts. It seems like it would be too difficult to do this within a game. But I haven't seen any of the tapes or anything, so who knows?

This whole thing stinks like dirty diapers. Mangina and the Jets are crying because they got spanked. And they try to pull this mind game crap all the time. This and the whole business with Reche Caldwell after he got released is just another vein attempt by Mangina to overcome the fact that the Patriots are much superior to the Jets. It isn't the first time another team has acted like children after we beat them. And it won't be the last.

The Jets can join the Raiders, Steelers, Colts, and Chargers in the ever growing list of teams that need to grow up.

M-O-S-S MOSS MOSS MOSS!

I think the only Patriot that didn't have a good day was Matt Cassel, who fumbled a perfect snap during a field goal attempt. Cassel didn't even get to do the kneel down to end the game.

We just rolled all over New York. Maroney had a solid day, Brady was great, Moss was monstrous, the defense was impressive against the run and rushing the QB, and Ellis Hobbs tied an NFL record for longest play ever.

We started off with a surprisingly run heavy drive that was textbook. We had pretty bad field position, which I was worried about, because for the past 4 or 5 years, we've been a team that wins by winning the field position battle, and gradually wearing down an opponent. Not anymore, it looks like. We started at the 9 and went 91 yards on 11 plays for the touchdown.

We sputtered a bit for the rest of the 1st quarter. We also used up all our timeouts. We played some sloppy football at times, which cost us a few opportunities. We could have put this game away earlier than we did.

Cassel had a fumbled snap, we used up our timeouts thanks to the Jets' no huddle offense, Welker dropped a ball that would have been a drive continuing first down, and so on.

The Jets tied it up after the fumbled snap, but we did something that we seemed to always do a few seasons ago: score right before the 2nd quarter ends. Moss accounted for 55 yards out of the 73 total yards on the TD drive.

We exploded in the 3rd quarter. Hobbs returned the kickoff for a 108 yard touchdown. Then Pennington got hurt (which seemed to please some Jets fans. you stay classy, New York). Then we had a 4 play, 85 yard drive, with Moss catching a 19 yard pass to begin it, and a 51 yard pass to end it. Moss outran three Jets to catch the 51 yard bomb and score the touchdown. The way New York was playing, the game was over at 28-7.



The Jets responded with a touchdown drive that made the game 28-14, but their drive took nearly 5 minutes. We got the ball back and proceeded to drain the life out of the clock.

"Clock Killin" Sammy Morris just doesn't have the same ring as "Clock Killin" Corey Dillon, but Morris did to New York what Dillon had been doing for us. The Pats drove for 10:28, draining over one sixth of the game's length off the clock, kicking a field goal, and leaving 6:44 for New York to score three times.

Heath Evans got the game sealing TD behind Seau's blocking. Seau basically threw himself into the Jet linebackers. He missed everyone, but prevented Vilma from jumping at Heath, who was leaping behind Seau, over the goal line.

The story of the game was the Patriots offensive line. Brady had all day to pass, and the zone blocking seemed to work well for Maroney and Morriss. We ran for 137 yards, and Brady was only hurried once.

Part of Brady having so much time was due to our receivers. In order for the Jets to blitz, they would have to cover Moss, Stallworth, Welker, and so on, man-to-man. Covering Randy Moss man-to-man just doesn't work. So the Jets didn't blitz us very often. And when they did, we made them pay.

Brady looked good, but he also had about 20 seconds to find open receivers, and when he didn't find anyone open, he'd toss the ball in Moss's general direction, and Randy would jump 7 or 8 feet, and come down with the ball.

I was really impressed with our defensive play. We held New York to 60 yards on the ground. We stuffed a lot of plays early on and broke up a lot of those long scoring drives Pennington and the Jets like to put together. We also did a great job of pressuring Pennington. We sacked him 5 times, and kept him busy in the pocket all day.

We made some mistakes, and very easily we could have won this game 41-7, or even 48-0. We're going to have to work those kinks out when we play teams like San Diego and Indianapolis. However, we're 1-0, and we're already a game up on everyone in the AFC East, because they all lost yesterday.

And by the way, Belichick and Mangini had a short handshake after the game. And who friggin cares?



No photographers were harmed by Coach Belichick.

PATRIOT PESSIMISM

I remember when we traded for Randy Moss, people would come up to me and ask: "What do you think of the Moss deal?" My simple reply:

"19-0."

We had just acquired one of the most talented receivers in the NFL, along with two other very good receivers, and an amazing and versatile defensive player in Adalius Thomas. We went 14-5 without these guys, and came a few dropped passes away from making it to the Super Bowl.

Obviously, my projection of 19-0 was not a serious prediction. But I did feel supremely confident in the Patriots, and felt as though they were the favorites to win the Super Bowl. And I still feel that way. But with the beginning of the season looming on Sunday, I'm starting to have doubts.

Maybe doubts isn't the right way to describe it. I think we will win the Super Bowl, and go 17-2 or 16-3 overall. BUT, if we don't, if we fall on our faces and go 9-7 and miss the playoffs, or go 10-6 and lose in the 2nd round, I can easily see how it will happen. The margin of error for this and any other NFL team is so slim, that almost any team could go 17-2, or 7-9.

So if we fail this year, here are some of the reasons why:

Missing players:
You expect to be injured and missing players in the middle or end of the season. But the Patriots will be starting with Richard Seymour out for 6 weeks, and Rodney Harrison suspended for 4 games. These are two keystones to our defense. Thomas can step up and rush off the outside, but there is no replacement for Harrison's presence in the defensive backfield. We play the Jets and the Chargers to start the season, a pair of playoff teams, and we'll be missing two of our best defenders.

Samuel Holdout:
Asante Samuel has rejoined the team, but he missed most of training camp during his holdout. The Patriots are better with him than without him, but for the first few games, he will not be at top form. We have two divisional games in the beginning of the season, and winning them will be huge for our playoff drive. But what are we going to get out of Samuel?

Maroney:
Laurence has been wearing the red shirt for most of training camp, and he will be our only main option in the backfield this season. He's never been a runningback for a full 16 (and up to 20) game season He was very good last year, for a rookie. But he had a lot of help from Corey Dillon, which he won't be getting this season.

We ran for about 1,800 yards last year, with Maroney accounting for 745 of those. Dillon got a lot of hard yards, wearing down opposing defensive lines, which allowed Maroney to slip tackles, run to the outside, and get his kind of yardage. Maroney now has Sammy Morris and Kevin Faulk supporting him, but Faulk is not a power back like Dillon was. Morris isn't half bad, he's actually a solid back, but he is no Corey Dillon. I think it's safe to say that our running game will not be as good this season as it was last year.

Moss + Stallworth + Welker
We really have no idea what to expect from this combination of guys. Brady has never had a WR as talented as Moss. Nor have we ever had as many deep threats as we do now. I've never been a big fan of the deep ball. I think it's important for the deep pass to be a threat, but I prefer the medium routes that guys like Branch and Givens used to run to perfection, spreading out the defense horizontally, as well as vertically. I think Welker and Watson will be able to do this, and we could potentially have a really dynamic passing offensive, but it could all collapse just as easily. It's an unknown. Also, Moss just started to participate in full practices.

Loss of Daniel Graham
Ben Watson has shown some potential to be a very good TE. He was one of our best deep threats last year. But Graham was a leader, an excellent blocker, and a very good complimentary tight end to Watson. I like David Thomas, though, but we've only seen him for a few plays. I think having multiple tight-ends will be key to our offense, ensuring that linebackers don't rush Brady and have to cover TEs, creating mismatches, and blocking for Maroney. How David Thomas performs will be a big part of how we perform as a team.

Distractions
Tom Brady just had a baby, Rodney Harrison just got suspended for HGH, and Randy Moss is a potential distraction bomb waiting to detonate. The Patriots are just as vulnerable as any other team to being distracted by all this off field crap. In the past, we've been able to remain focused no matter what, but that could all change easily.

I still think we're the top team in the NFL because of who the coach is, who the QB is, who the team leaders are, and how our talent performs. My prediction is a 13-3 regular season, and a Super Bowl victory.

I can't wait for Sunday.

NICE AND EASY

I'm glad that Terry Francona finally listened to me and benched Ortiz against Kazmir. And I'm sure it was me and only me that made Terry come to this conclusion.

End of sarcasm.

This was a nice, easy, and enjoyable victory. No Eric Gagne, no small army left in scoring position, nice starting position, and early offensive opportunities exploited.

Is Mike Lowell a dark horse for MVP of this team? Without his 85 RBI, where are we? For most of the season, he's led the team in RBI. For a while, he was the team leader in homeruns, as well. I really do hope we extend his contract and keep him on the team. He seems like a quiet guy, he's no Kevin Millar, more of a Billy Mueller kind of guy. He produces, he fields well, and he seems to gel with this team. He'll also make about a third of the money A-Rod will make. Is Mike Lowell on the same level as Rodriguez? No. But is A-Rod three times better than Lowell? No.

I'm really glad Ortiz was benched, and Kielty was hitting 3rd. I know it didn't really seem to work out as Kielty went 0 for 5, but before the game, when the lineups were announced, I think Francona put out the best possible lineup to score runs.

It was also nice to beat Scott Kazmir, and beat him pretty badly. Nothing against him, I'm just sick and tired of watching Manny and Ortiz looking like fools every time Kazmir throws that low slider.

Kevin Cash had his first start with Wakefield, and looked pretty good. I think it's either very smart or very fortunate for the Sox that we have some knuckleballers in AAA to give guys like Cash and George Kotteras some experience catching the knuckleball.

And how about Timmy Wakefield this year? He's a huge reason why we're in 1st place. his 4.35 ERA is unremarkable, but I think he's pitched better than that number suggests. This was his 13th Quality Start of the season. And for the $4 million Wake is earning this year, he might just be one of the best values in baseball. He's now tied with Beckett and Lackey for most wins in the Majors.

Lester goes tomorrow night.