Allen: Not a learning experience

I haven't learned anything from this Patriots training camp. Neither have you. Really, neither has the media whose job it is to report on the team.

We've watched the preseason games and observed the team appear to struggle mightily on offense, and even not seem to be putting in a full effort on defense. To our eyes, these are alarming sights. When you see two kicks get returned against the Patriots special teams in one quarter, you can rightfully say that there is still plenty of work to do. When a deer standing in the middle of the road staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck looks more composed than your backup quarterback who would be stepping in to lead the offense if the unthinkable should happen to Tom Brady, then too, you have reason to be a little concerned.

The problem is, we don't know what the goals of each preseason game really are. We're pretty sure that winning these games is just an added bonus if things happen to fall that way, but as far as what the team is hoping to accomplish with each outing, only the coaches and players known, and they're not going to tell us what those things are.

We rely on the media to help us with some of those things, since they're around the team on a daily basis, but for the most part, we only get snippets of information, who might be hurt, who showed up for practice, which players were practicing in which roles during the time that the media was allowed to observe. We might hear about a great catch, or that someone is moving well, but not too much beyond that. Earlier on in camp, many fans went down and attended the open sessions of camp, but you couldn't really do more than a superficial analysis of how things were going at those sessions.

See, the difficulty in judging camp stems from the fact that the public, and even the media, can observe maybe 10% of the total work being put in. That's sort of just an arbitrary number picked out of thin air, but you get the idea. The preseason games, and sort portions of practice open to the media are the only public aspects of training camp. Everything else is behind closed doors.

So we have no idea if how things are going in the meetings. We don't know if the rookies and other new players to the roster are fitting in well and learning the system as fast as they should be. We don't know how each player did in their own offseason conditioning program leading into training camp. Whether or not the chemistry in the locker room and out on the field is developing is unknown at this point. We have no clue if, during the film sessions, that players called on to comment on the action are saying the right things or not. Is each player up to snuff on their playbook? We don't know.

All of these things take place behind closed doors, and are crucial to the building of a successful team. What happens during the preseason games isn't always indicative of how things are going in that 90% time period of private work. The 1981 Patriots went 4-0 in the preseason, and then went 2-14 in the regular season. The 2004 Patriots went 1-3 in the preseason, and went on to a 14-2 regular season and a Super Bowl championship.

On the other hand, sometimes it does mean something. The 1990 Patriots went 0-4 in the preseason, and then went 1-15 in the regular season. What does this preseason mean?

Check back in February and find out.

Bruce Allen is the creator of Boston Sports Media Watch, which has recently been recognized by SI.com as one of the best non-corporate sports web site's on the Internet.