Linebacker Brandon Spikes is the team’s best run-stopper

For much of the year, coach Bill Belichick’s unit was the team’s weak link, as he faced endless questions about the no-name players he signed. But after beating the Broncos 45-10 and allowing a season-low 252 yards, the reality may have changed. They were fundamentally sound and hard-nosed, well-schooled and opportunistic. Some of the recent improvement is due to the return of two key cogs up the middle. Linebacker Brandon Spikes is the team’s best moncler jackets run-stopper, but he missed the second half of the season with a sprained MCL. Now that he’s been back for two games, he is the best answer to stopping Ravens running back Ray Rice. It’s not just in the way he tackles. Spikes routinely blew up guards and centers against Denver, allowing others to make the tackle. You can’t replicate that. As for safety Pat Chung, his hard-hitting ways and range covers the middle of the field is the best answer for covering tight ends such as Dennis Pitta. The defense can now guard inside out, pushing up the middle, setting the edge and giving runners nowhere to go. In pass coverage, they can blanket between the numbers and force quarterback Joe Flacco to make throws he doesn’t want to make. In short, they are hitting their stride at the right time. … By turning tight end Aaron Hernandez into a running back, the Patriots made every team left in the playoffs think. If Hernandez can become a runner and be effective, what else will they do? Vince Wilfork at guard? Logan Mankins at defensive tackle? Nate Solder at tight end? They’ve made themselves impossible to game-plan for. Hawthorne rocket venture Space Exploration moncler Technologies Corp. again delayed its mission to rendezvous with the International Space Station. The company, better known as SpaceX, planned to send its Dragon capsule into space aboard its 18-story Falcon 9 rocket Feb. 7 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. But on Monday the company said that more engineering work was needed before it would embark on the historic mission. SpaceX did not give a new launch date. The company already has a $1.6-billion contract to haul cargo in 12 flights to the space station for NASA. If the upcoming rendezvous mission is successful, the company would start in earnest to fulfill the contract. "We believe that there are a few areas that will benefit from additional work and will optimize the safety and success of this mission," Kirstin Grantham, a SpaceX spokeswoman, said in a statement. "We are now working with NASA to establish moncler outlet a new target launch date, but note that we will continue to test and review data. We will launch when the vehicle is ready." The mission has been more than a year in the making since SpaceX became the first private company to blast a spacecraft into Earth's orbit and have it return intact in December 2010. The company wanted to go to the space station less than a year later, but the launch date was pushed back to February, and now it's unclear when the mission will take place. SpaceX makes the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket at a sprawling facility in Hawthorne where fuselages for Boeing Co.'s 747 jumbo jet were once assembled. However, the hardware is sent by big rig to Cape Canaveral for launches. To date, the Falcon 9 rocket has had just two successful test launches. SpaceX wants to rendezvous with the space station to demonstrate it is the clear front-runner to take over the lucrative responsibility of cheap moncler running more cargo missions — and possibly carrying astronauts — to the space station for NASA now that the space shuttle has been retired.