Quibbling with John Tomase
The Boston Herald’s Patriots beat writer John Tomase has taken over the departed Al Breer’s Tale of the Tape segment on the Herald’s The Point After blog.
In his anlysis of New England Patriots game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Tomase writes:
Any examination of the game has to start with Sammy Morris. Laurence Maroney’s fill-in rushed 21 times for 117 yards and a score. The most interesting aspect of his night was the team’s decision to shelve the zone-blocking scheme tailored to Maroney’s shiftiness and cutback ability in favor of more down blocking and power plays that favor Morris’s straight-ahead style.
The latter approach also better handled the Bengals’ stunting front four (and five, when the dearth of linebackers forced them into a 5-2), which can be challenging to block on zone plays because it’s harder to identify where the defenders are coming from.
I argue that the Patriots went away from zone blocking in the game against Buffalo and that Maroney is better served by point-of-attack blocking rather than zone blocking. As I speculated in a post last week, I imagine the Patriots will go back to something zone blocking-ish the next time they face a 3-4 defense.
The main problem with Maroney is not the blocking schemes but that he is simply not as good as was assumed when he came out of college. He is good, but he’s not that good. He evidently isn’t very durable, either.
