In a surprise move to some, the Patriots released two-time Pro Bowl safety Brandon Meriweather this week in their final round of cuts. Meriweather's play at safety was always a point of contention among Pats fans, and both sides have a pretty good argument. On the one hand, Meriweather gets results. He hits hard and can read QB's well enough to make picks. His presence in a backfield can cause quarterbacks and receivers to totally change their game plan. The problem is, Brandon Meriweather is a gambler. Belichick's defense, especially in the backfield, doesn't allow for a whole lot of gambles. For every positive Meriweather brought to the defense you can argue a negative right back and both people engaged in the argument would be totally right.
In other words, Brandon "Big Bang Clock" Meriweather is a complete and utter enigma.
His career with the Patriots started off well. He was a young, athletic safety mostly confined to special teams but occasionally seeing the field as 3rd safety. He filled in when Rodney Harrison got injured in 2008 and the Patriots had found their new big hitter. He was a little rough around the edges, made some obvious mistakes and didn't always show particularly natural instincts but made up for it with his nose for the football and devastating hits. "He'll grow out of it," everybody said, "he's just young."
Well the years went on and Meriweather continued gambling. Sometimes it worked, but a lot of times it did not. Some statisticians had Meriweather as one of the worst defensive safeties in the entire league last season, despite his second Pro Bowl selection. The choices he made on the field sometimes were baffling, and he drove you nuts because you saw what he was capable of. He was an excellent traditional tackler in college and showed many flashes of it in the NFL but seemed to switch to full-time launch mode once he became the starting safety and was a real liability in the run game. In college he could wrap and tackle better than almost any defensive back in the nation but the Brandon Meriweather from UMiami was barely recognizable on the Patriots, check out this video : Meriweather Miami
And yes, you can look at any football player's highlight video and talk about how good he is but does anyone remember the last time Meriweather chased anyone down? Do you remember the last time Brandon Meriweather stayed back on a fake and saved a ten yard run from being a 25 yard run? His entire game became picks and hits over the middle, and there is a long list of safeties who have made a lot of money in the NFL basing their games around those two concepts, but Meriweather was capable of being so much more. He was one of the best run stopping safeties in college and in the NFL he struck more fear in the hearts of his own team on running downs. Instead of finishing his tackles he would just plant and launch and before you knew it Ray Rice is 80 yards down the field for a touchdown and the 2009 AFC Divisional Game is already over before it even started. It seemed like he fell for every play action or pump fake. Nobody with his skill set should ever be as much of a liability on the field as he was, and if they were that bad their rookie year they should have figured it out along the way. Meriweather just never figured it out. And the more he was rewarded for his style of play with Pro Bowl selections, the more he deviated from the potential upside the Patriots saw in him.
From the day he arrived, it was sort of clear that Brandon Meriweather was a weird guy. He debuted a couple of rap songs on 98.5 The Sports Hub's "Toucher And Rich" show one of which contained a vignette in it where Meriweather is basically organizing and negotiating a massive drug deal but has reservations about it due to the fact that one of the dealers he is negotiating with shot one of his lil' homies. He speaks with a tone and pitch reminiscent of Mike Tyson, not even Mike Tyson, but a white guy doing a Mike Tyson impression. Like that Mike Tyson-esque boxer on the Simpsons mixed with Pee-Wee Herman. All of his sound bytes are instant sports talk radio hits. He's going to absolutely kill on Chicago sports talk radio. Oh yeah, and there was that time he borrowed a hat from one of the "Patriots" who fire their antique rifles on the sideline when the Patriots score a touchdown and wore it during a post game interview. In case you missed it, it looked like this:
Whether you loved Meriweather or hated him, he's gone now, leaving the Patriots very thin at the safety position, and giving Patriots fans flashbacks of the Lawyer Milloy departure in 2003. The difference is that in 2003 the Patriots had Rodney Harrison waiting in the wings, whereas the 2011 Patriots have Sergio Brown and ...... Sergio Brown waiting in the wings.
He was frustrating to watch, but he made plays and totally changed games from time to time. That, combined with his priceless sound clips means that I'm gonna miss the guy. Especially if Chung/Brown is going to be the season-long safety combo, in which case I fear I may miss him a lot, freelances and all.
If things get rough for the Pats secondary this season I will likely look back on the Meriweather days fondly, and might even throw on a little tune to remind me of #31. The kid from Florida who never quite figured it out.
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