logoThis morning I’d like to try something new with the Sunday Links. I’m looking for something a little less time-consuming, for one thing.

I’m less inclined to link everything I read/find on Sunday morning. It seems by the time I’ve written a coherent reference for each link, and Word-Pressed them into your living rooms, you could have found them all for yourselves, and had time for breakfast.

That just increases the SL pointlessness factor ten-fold. The sponsors are starting to get a little restless. You don’t think the folks at Tidal TV want some clicks? I have to do something.

Today’s Top Ten Links

People love lists. There’s something about lists that makes people want to read them and say, “This list sucks. I could make a better list than this.” That’s why Rolling Stone has chosen the Top 500 Rock n Roll Albums of All-Time eight or ten times already. Lists are gold, Jerry.

Lists are also easy. A couple of sentences and a bullet point and you’re out of there. It’s like the one-night stand of writing. I feel like Sinatra or somebody. The money’s on the dresser, baby.

So I figure I’ll ‘go cliché’ and take this occasion to launch my own top ten list of the best Pats links in this morning’s Sunday papers.

1. Gaffney comes to grips with it, by Chris Gasper, Boston Globe. Gasper grabs the top spot of our debut effort simply for pointing out that though eight games, the Pats have already gained 67% of the rushing yards they had all of last season. And while you’ll no doubt read elsewhere this morning that Jabar Gaffney is presently well short of his 2007 production, only Gasper notices that Gaffney is actually ten yards ahead of where he was last year at this very point.

2. Mike Vrabel: There’s a Place for more pay, by Ron Borges, Boston Herald. Some old school rabble rousing from ‘Look for the Union Label’ Borges, who is so hopelessly in the tank for the players that he waits until the very end of this piece to casually remind us that they are already taking 60% of the revenue under the present CBA. Sixty percent. And that’s apparently not enough, not when the owners are putting up Christmas Tree Shops in the parking lot. I can’t help but wonder how Borges would frame a quote like “At the end of the day, I think they will have to learn to survive with their 40 percent” if it had come from Robert Kraft and not the late Gene Upshaw.

3. QB keepers harder to find, by Mike Reiss, Boston Globe. The venerable Globe ‘Notes’ columns were a formative part of our youth; remember pouring through Peter Gammons’s baseball notes to find what amounted to buried treasures when it came to news? That’s a harder task in today’s Internet world, as most readers are able to access that sort of information on a daily basis. Mike Reiss is undaunted, though; his weekly NFL Notes column continues to inform and illuminate. Take, for example, this plum from this morning – twelve teams have had backup quarterbacks start a game this season, and only four have a winning record.

4. Common threads for AFC East foes, Patriots Beat by Andy Vogt, MetroWest Daily News. This is not a familiar name to me, but leave it to MWDN (originally home to such luminaries as Reiss and Albert Breer) to find the talent. Vogt’s game set-up is the most comprehensive in any paper this morning.

5. Pats enter crucial stretch in division play, Inside the Patriots by David Brown, New Bedford Standard Times. Brown lays out what’s at stake as the Pats enter the crucial three-game stretch of divisional games that begins today, including a quick turnaround to face the Jets this Thursday night.

6. Pats time now, by Glen Farley, Brockton Enterprise. A nice compliment to Brown’s piece, as Farley notes that few teams are better at stretch runs than the Patriots.

7. Buffalo hunt, Scouting Report by Jim McBride, Boston Globe.  The granddaddy of scouting reports, deeper and more detailed than any of its competitors.

8. Bills prone to turnovers, Patriots Notebook by Karen Gurgeian, Boston Herald. The steady, underappreciated KG puts her finger on the biggest reason for Buffalo’s recent slide.   

9. Bills are currently a fragile bunch, by Rich Garven, Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Garven says the Bills’ recent epidemic of injuries hasn’t helped either.

10. Pats cornerback Hobbs stands tall on gridiron, by Shalise Manza Young, Providence Journal. Anybody who likes Ellis Hobbs, fast becoming my favorite Pat, is okay by me.

That’s it for this week’s Top Ten. For more, please visit patriotslinks.com.

Scott Benson is the Editor and Co-Founder of Patriots Daily. He can be reached at scott@patriotsdaily.com.

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