Projo Pats Blog

BY ROBERT LEE
Journal Sports Writer

FOXBORO -- Miami linebacker Joey Porter gave the Patriots plenty of bulletin-board material for yesterday's game.

Talking about Matt Cassel, Porter said, "I just know he's not a Tom Brady. So if it's not Tom Brady, it shouldn't be that hard."

He didn't stop there.

"You treat him like you treat a backup," Porter said. "How do you prepare for a backup? He don't get that many snaps, right? So you throw the kitchen sink at him. That's what we're going to do."

If that wasn't bad enough, Porter added that the Dolphins were going to go to Foxboro and leave winners.

It turns out he was right - about everything.

The Dolphins blitzed Cassel early and often, sacked him three times, intercepted a pass, forced him to fumble, and rarely gave him a lot of time to make throws.

The result was a sub-par 19-for-31 for 131 yards with one touchdown and one interception outing for Cassel, and a 38-13 Miami victory.

"They are a different team with Tom leaving," Porter said after the game. "Not to take anything away from Matt Cassel, but those are just tough shoes to fill for any backup."

Confusing Cassel was the name of the game for the Dolphins.

"We had a couple of different packages and came after him a little bit," said Porter, who had three sacks a forced fumble, and six tackles. "We made him make some tough decisions. We just didn't let him sit back there and make him feel like he had all day."

Porter said that it is very hard for a quarterback who has not started a lot of NFL games to pick up blitz schemes and coverage packages when a defense is continually changing them and that's why he was confident that the Dolphins' could confuse Cassel.

"You just don't understand how hard it is for a quarterback to come in and pick up all of those blitzes and all of the defenses when he hasn't really been doing it for that long," Porter said. "It doesn't matter if he's been in the league that many years, the preseason isn't the same as the regular season. He had only started one game coming into this [game]...I feel like we should be able to rattle any quarterback under those circumstances."

As far as guaranteeing a victory, Porter said those words never came out of his mouth.

"Ya'll said that I guaranteed a win. I said that it would be good for us to come up here and get our first victory."

"The thing about Joey is he's always fired up and he channeled that energy today," Miami defensive end Vonnie Holliday said. "He did an ubelieveable job. I've never seen Joey not fired up to be honest with you but he came out and continued to put pressure on [Cassel]."

 Tags  Joey Porter matt cassel Miami Dolphins New England Patriots

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