What a game! It looked like one of those shootout games where the last team to score wins, but then the Patriots pulled out a bunch of scores at the end to win 48-28.  The offense finally looks like the offense of last year. They played with the spread field offense, and Cassel and Moss both looked great.  While the offense was impressive, the defense still looks suspect. They still struggled on third down, but they did make the stops at the end of the game when it counted.

What a game! While the Patriots lost this game, it had to improve your confidence in Matt Cassel’s abilities. While also lowering your confidence in the team overall (so many stupid mistakes and bad defense on third down). This was another game where eliminiating any one of the mistakes would have won them the game.

Matt Cassel was very impressive. After still struggling in the red zone on the first two opportunities, he led them back from 24-6 with an all pass, no huddle offense. He made all the throws, including the ones in the red zone for touchdowns. And he led them on all important drive with a minute left, throwing a ridiculous pass to Randy Moss for the tying touchdown with one second left.

But the team overall worries me. They’ve made two many dumb mistakes. The Patriots started the second half with three good looking drives, each to be stopped by some mistake. Ben Watson fumbling the ball with no one around. A bad snap to Cassel. A dropped pass by Jabar Gaffney. And some terrible terrible defense on third down (including 3rd and 15 in OT).

Perhaps if they can cleanup the dumb mistakes, they’re that close to winning these games. Certainly Matt Cassel keeps getting better each week.

This was a nice win over a division rival.  I would say this was the best team performance so far this year.  Cassel looked the best he has all year.  He wasn’t taking too many silly sacks, he was throwing the ball well, and he was actually throwing the ball on patterns longer than 5 or 10 yards.  He had a lot of 15 or 20 yard throws.  Cassel ended the game 23/24 for 234 yards.  Another good sign was the running game.  Even with the 5th running back on the roster, undrafted rookie BenJarvus Green-Ellis, they ran very well.  In fact, Green-Ellis looks like a really good running back. He’s patient and sees the holes and doesn’t take many tackles for losses.  The Patriots offense was able to dominate time of possession, which is great.  Finally, the defense looked good as well, especially against the run, holding the Bills offense to 60 rushing yards and only 168 yards overall.  A solid performance all around!

The Patriots 18-15 loss to the Colts tonight was very frustrating.  It still seems like the Patriots lack some confidence in Cassel.  They didn’t let him throw deep to Moss against backup defensive backs.  And there seemed like too many plays where they went with a draw play on 3rd and long instead of throwing the ball.  But their running attack worked, and when Cassel did throw the ball he was throwing accurately.  He still seemed like he was taking too long to make decisions, or not seeing the field well, as many of his pass attempts turned into scrambles (he ran 5 times for 20 yards).

The Patriots still had chances to win the game though.  Jabar Gaffney had a chance at a wide open catch for a TD on a drive that ended in a field goal.  They could have gone for it on 4th and 1 later in that drive.  Had David Thomas not committed a stupid penalty on their second to last drive of the game, they should have gotten at least a tying field goal.  And their poor use of timeouts in the second half allowed the Colts to run a lot of time off the clock at the end of the game when it counted.

With that being said, playing the Colts this close in a night game in Indy is a positive sign.  The Patriots still have the second best record in the conference and are in a 3 way tie for the lead in the division.  The next three games are huge, as they play all three division foes.  These next three games will likely decide where the Patriots end up in the division (and thus their playoff chances).