Ravens' Nick Boyle Not Overly Impressed With Patriots' Defense: 'We'll See How Good They Are Once We Play Them'
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- In case you haven't been paying attention, the Patriots' defense has hit the wayback machine in a number of areas this season. For one, they're actually playing defense, which came pretty close to being outlawed over the past 10 or 15 years. And secondly, they've proven eager to take any comment from any opponent and use it as bulletin board.
Whether that comment has been completely innocuous (see: Sam Darnold's "find a weakness" comment) or misconstrued by the media (Jarvis Landry's dedication to winning after the bye) has mattered little. If you say anything negative about these guys, they'll find a way to feature your words prominently inside the walls of Gillette Stadium.
Apparently, though, Ravens tight end Nick Boyle has not gotten the memo. If he had, he probably would not have said this on Wednesday, per ESPN's Jamison Hensley:
"We'll see how good they are once we play them. I don't think they've seen anyone like our offense or like Lamar. They're a good team and we'll need to bring our 'A' game."
Tsk, tsk, tsk. When will they learn?
Of course, if we were to dissect the comment, we would determine that Boyle -- who has just 12 catches for 145 yards with no touchdowns this season -- is correct. The Patriots certainly have not faced anybody like Lamar Jackson, who is a unique threat in the NFL. They've instead faced Ben Roethlisberger, whose lack of mobility and penchant for chucking deep balls might make him the actual antithesis of Jackson. They've faced deadly duos of Ryan Fitzpatrick/Josh Rosen and Josh Allen/Matt Barkley. They've faced Luke Falk, Colt McCoy, Daniel Jones, Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield. Not quite a murderer's row of quarterbacking.
And, again, of course an NFL player is going to express confidence in his team's chances on a given Sunday. Otherwise, he and the rest of his team would be more doomed than we can even imagine.
But that's not even the point. The point is quite clear: It is unwise to give the Patriots anything to sink their teeth into as they prepare to beat you. They're already the deepest and most suffocating unit in the entire NFL (by a mile), and they've shown multiple times in just the past two weeks that they're willing to use anything they can to keep the fire burning.
The Patriots have a history of this, from Rodney Harrison uncovering doubters in the midst of the one of the most dominant two-year stretches any team has ever had in NFL history, to Bill Belichick taking personally some nonsense promises from Freddie Mitchell, to Tom Brady and Randy Moss shoving it in Anthony Smith's face back in 2007, the list of fallen opinionated opponents is long.
This year has been a throwback in that regard. After Darnold said he and the Jets needed to "find the weakness in the defense," you may have noticed Kyle Van Noy's robotic answers after the Monday night win against the Jets, which centered on that comment about a weakness. Devin McCourty injected that commentary into his pregame pump-up speech, too.
Even Belichick helps chum the waters, according to one unnamed player who said that the head coach has passed along that non-guarantee guarantee by Landry a week ago.
This week, reporters will now ask the Patriots if they use comments like this as motivation, and they'll all dutifully say the same thing: "Nope. That's just a confident football player. Every player should be confident entering a game. We don't think about it." But based on what we've seen in just the last 10 days, we know what's going on behind the scenes.
So, Nick Boyle, you know what? You just made the the Patriots' list.
You did nothing wrong from a logical standpoint, but logic doesn't often have a home in the world of sports.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
