People accuse us of many things. High on the list are poor personal hygiene, bad table manners and cheesy pick-up lines ("Which way to Scoop Street, baby!?!" being an old favorite despite its rather low rate of success).
One thing we're not accused of is rehashing lame clichés. Originality, in fact, is one of our strong suits – the yin to the yang of our questionable bathing habits. Still, in light of San Diego's 41-17 pummeling of defending Super Bowl champion New England in Week Four, it's hard to resist tossing a cliché out into the ring of online pigskin pugilism: the straw that broke the camel's back.
In the case of the defending champs, that straw is the loss of Rodney Harrison. After a seemingly endless pile of missing players stacked one on top of the other, the backbone of the New England defense finally snapped under the weight of this most recent loss. The first game of the post-Harrison era was, quite simply, New England's ugliest defensive performance since the height of the Pete Carroll Era. And it provides a startling contrast to the team's proven ability to overcome previous personnel losses.
Few teams in NFL history, for example, suffered greater devastation to its defensive backfield than the 2004 New England Patriots. Starting cornerbacks Tyrone Poole and Ty Law were each sidelined with injuries for most of the season (Poole, a starter on New England's 2003 championship team, played just four games in 2004).
Backup corners-turned-starters Randall Gay and Asante Samuel each missed a game due to injuries, as did safety Eugene Wilson and backup DB Dexter Reid. Over the course of the 2004 season, New England defensive backs missed a combined 34 games to injuries.
It forced the New England coaching staff into triage mode in an effort to save an ailing secondary and salvage a season:
- Gay, an undrafted rookie free agent, became a full-time starter.
- Back-up linebacker and career special-teamer Don Davis started two games at safety and made several other appearances in the secondary.
- No-name players like Earthwind Moreland and Hank Poteat were called up from Nowheresville to make contributions in the defensive backfield. Poteat wasn't even on an NFL roster until hearing from the Patriots at the end of the 2004 season and does not find himself on an NFL roster today. Still, he appeared in all three postseason games for New England last year, including Super Bowl XXXIX, where he recorded one tackle.
- And, most famously, veteran wide receiver Troy Brown was forced into duty in the secondary and made the most of it: He picked off three passes, tied for second best on the team.
Amazingly, the team not only survived but excelled. The Patriots finished tied for second in the league in scoring defense (260 PA) and won the Super Bowl. Even the loss of perennial Pro Bowler and potential Hall of Fame cornerback Ty Law had little effect on the ability of the New England's defense.
As the Cold, Hard Football Facts noted last season, the Patriots surrendered 15.0 PPG with Law at corner and 15.1 PPG without Law at corner.
The depleted 2004 Patriots even had the testicular fortitude to turn in one of the great defensive masterpieces in NFL history, holding the high-powered Indianapolis Colts offense (32.6 PPG) to just 3 points – a single field goal – in the divisional playoffs. Only twice in the entire history of the NFL had there been a bigger differential between a team's regular-season scoring average and the points it scored in a playoff game (-29.6). Oh yeah, New England won that game, and the AFC title game, with Pro Bowl defensive lineman Richard Seymour, who some say is the best in the game, sidelined with an injury of his own.
All of this came on the heels of a 2003 season in which an injury-ravaged Patriots team won a Super Bowl despite fielding more starters, 41, than any champion in history.
The Patriots defense, in other words, seemed virtually immune to the effects of injury. Until Week Four of the 2005 season.
Through all these previous struggles, there was one constant in the New England secondary: Rodney Harrison. He was the only defender to start all 41 games the Patriots have played from the beginning of the 2003 season through Week Three of 2005.
In 2003 and 2004, he recorded 264 tackles, more than any other defensive back in football. And he was arguably the MVP of the 2004 playoffs (
scroll to the bottom of this story), forcing six turnovers in three games and returning an interception for a touchdown while recording one sack and a team-leading 27 tackles. Not too shabby for three games of work.
Throughout his career, Harrison has recorded more sacks than any defensive back in NFL history (27.5), and he's the only player in the history of the league with more than 25 sacks and 30 INTs (31) to his credit.
Then on Sunday, in New England's first game without Harrison as a starter since 2002, the Patriots not only suffered a loss, they suffered a loss of historical magnitude:
- The 41-17 smackdown at Gillette Stadium ended one of the longest home win streaks in NFL history. The Patriots last suffered a home loss on Dec. 22, 2002, a stretch of 21 games and 1,015 days.
- New England last surrendered 41 points in the middle of the Pete Carroll Era, in a 41-10 home loss to Atlanta in 1998.
- You have to go back 12 years, to the dawn of the Bill Parcells Era, to find the last game the Patriots surrendered more than 41 points. In September 1993, the N.Y. Jets slaughtered New England, 45-7.
Of course, the defeat may have been a long time coming. In fact, since white-washing Indy in the 2004 postseason, the New England defense has yet to truly shut down another opponent. The Patriots have now allowed six straight opponents to score 20 or more points on it – Pittsburgh (27) in the AFC title game, Philly (21) in Super Bowl XXXIX and the first four opponents of 2005 (Oakland, 20; Carolina, 27; Pittsburgh, 20; San Diego, 41).
How bad is that streak? Consider this: Even the 1990 New England Patriots, who went 1-15 and hold the distinction of being the worst team in franchise history, never allowed six straight opponents to score 20 or more points.
The problem for New England now is not that it's struggling defensively. The problem for New England now is that it outright sucks defensively. In the middle of Sunday's game, San Diego racked up five straight scoring drives against a defense last season that was one of the best in football: 57 yards and a TD; 78 yards and a TD; 80 yards and a TD; 75 yards and a TD; 72 yards and a FG.
The Patriots have now surrendered 108 points in four games, worst in the AFC. And only three teams in the entire NFL have given up more points, and all three reside in the lowly NFC West (Arizona, 110 points; St. Louis, 111 points; San Francisco, 132 points). So the Patriots began to show cracks even with Harrison in the lineup. And now without him, they suffer a monumental loss.
No Harrison. Historic defeat. You do the math. We've done ours: The loss of Harrison is the straw that broke the champ's back.
