The sum of all fears

Your Uncle Buck was in attendance for Sunday night's Patriots-Broncos game at Gillette Stadium, and has to say it was the worst he's seen the Pats play in "The Razor" since the place opened. The 17-7 loss highlighted many of the fears the Pats fans had about the 2006-07 edition but is it possible that this wake up call came at exactly the right time?

Coming into this season, looking at the roster, the following opinions could be made regarding the 2006-07 Patriots and here's how those opinions seemed to balloon into fact Sunday:

- The Patriots screwed up by letting Deion Branch and David Givens go, when they could have signed them both: Brady and his new wide outs didn't just look bad against an impressive Denver defense, they looked lost.

- The Patriots secondary is too short and will again struggle with taller receivers: 5'9" Ellis Hobbs, 5'10" Asante Samuel and 5'10" Eugene Wilson made even Jake Plummer look good against wide receivers Javon Walker, 6'3", and Rod Smith, 6'0".

- The one player they could have easily over paid was Adam Vinatieri: Even though AV was on the bench with the Colts on Sunday. Stephen Gostkowski's 2nd blocked kick in the last two tries certainly didn't do anything towards helping the Pats forget about "Mr. Clutch."

Okay so the refs were awful and the Pats defense kept it close until the 4th, but just about everyone would say a win in Cincinnati next week would go a long way in making this bitter taste go away. Who knows what will happen with Denver, with the problems Jake Plummer has with just about every other team, they could be a non factor down the road. Getting a win over the Bengals, who were beaten up in a strange win against Pittsburgh, would be a huge tie breaker come playoff time...And who doesn't think the Pats are gonna take the East and make a run at things with the remaining schedule against the AFC East, the NFC North and the AFC South.