Offensive, defensive lines have poor showings in Opening Day loss

Among the biggest were how the offensive and defensive lines were going to move forward after such a putrid showing. 

Tom Brady was sacked twice, was strip-sacked another time and had to do more dancing around to avoid pressure than I've seen in a long time. 

There had been questions raised before the season started about how the offensive line would fare throughout the year, and if yesterday told you anything, it's that this could be a season-long problem. Everyone looked bad, especially Sebastian Vollmer, who let Cameron Wake blow by him several times throughout the afternoon. 

On the other side, the defensive line barely generated any sort of pass rush throughout the game, save for Jerod Mayo's sack of Ryan Tannehill on a delayed blitz call. The defense as a whole had been majorly hyped up coming into the opener, with everyone, myself included saying it would be elite. That still very well could be the case, but after yesterday, it might take a little longer to get to that point than some of us thought. 

Players such as Chandler Jones, Rob Ninkovich, Dont'a Hightower and others were virtually non existent. Ninkovich saw a reduced role yesterday, and I'm really not sure why that was. I also did not see much I liked from Darrelle Revis yesterday, as he was beat for a touchdown by Mike Wallace and almost gave up a second, as Wallace clearly had him beat by a few steps, but he caught the ball out of bounds. 

The worst part about the defensive line was how they let Knowshon Moreno and Lamar Miller run right through them. Last season, the run defense was a strength of this team, and it seemed to be a glaring weakness yesterday. Vince Wilfork, playing in his first regular season game since Week 4 of last season, summed it up best. 

Vince Wilfork on 2014 season: "It's not how you start, it's how you finish. But we started (expletive)."
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) September 7, 2014

If there were any silver linings from the defense as a whole, however, it's that they forced a few turnovers, and did keep the Patriots in the game at points in the fourth quarter when they were still down by three. I see the defensive issues being a quicker fix than the offensive line. Despite players saying there was nothing good to take away from yesterday, the turnovers are a plus, and the few instances when the defense had to make plays and did.

An unrelated silver lining to all of this, if you're still looking for one: Steven Ridley didn't fumble, so there's that...

Anyway, I'm in no way ready to hit the panic button yet, and I am still very confident in this team's chances to do something special. It's only Week 1. But for the people who are freaking out already, ask yourself this: would you rather have something like this happen later on in the season or in the playoffs, or have it happen right now and have much more time to fix it?

Also, this has been thrown around a lot already, but think back to the last two times the Patriots lost their season openers. What happened? This is nowhere near close to being over.

What do you think of the struggles of the lines? Follow me on Twitter - @JesseGaunce

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