Symantec Corporation, a security software that tracks suspicious Internet activity, discovered the first Haiti hoax on January 14, just two days after the earthquake struck. An unidentified scammer circulated a mass email that claimed to be from the British Red Cross Society. The scammer asked for donations on behalf of Haiti and begged people to “please give what [they could]…to help thousands of people there in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.” Unfortunately, the money went directly to the scammer rather than the British Red Cross. Similar emails from other scammers have sent people to phony websites that put destructive viruses or attachments on their computers.

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have also been used to exploit the kindness of those looking to help Haiti. Numerous groups and fan pages have sprung up, assuring people that for every member that joins, $1 will be donated to the relief efforts. These groups have circulated fake status messages that read, “If you believe in helping people let’s do this: PLEASE NOTE that this status is being tracked, the owners of Facebook have confirmed they will send $1 to the rescue fund for the Haiti earthquake disaster for every time this is cut and pasted as a status. You only have to leave it for a minimum of 1 hour. Let’s all do our bit to help.” Facebook owners later denied these claims.

Another scam has involved various texting campaigns. The Haiti earthquake marked the first time that texting has been used in a large-scale way to raise money after a natural disaster. While some of these campaigns were genuine, many were not.

Finally, some organizations have taken advantage of grieving families. These scammers promise that, for a fee, they will find missing loved ones in the earthquake-ravaged country.

Numerous complaints over these various hoaxes have incited the FBI to act. In a public advisory, the FBI urged people to “make contributions directly to known organizations rather than relying on others to make the donation on your behalf to ensure contributions are received and used for intended purposes.”
Perhaps the most disturbing example of these corrupt scams occurred during mid-February, when ten Americans were charged with child trafficking in Haiti. The Baptist missionaries were arrested during a border crossing when they attempted to bring 33 Haitian orphans into the Dominican Republic. They intended to take the children by bus to a 45-room hotel at a beach resort called Cabarete. However, many of these children lacked proper documentation and some were not orphans. According to Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, “One [8-year-old] girl was crying, and saying, ‘I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.’” Many of the children were hungry and thirsty. A two to three-month-old baby was dehydrated and sent to a nearby hospital. Bellerive says that “it’s not Americans that were arrested, it was kidnappers that were arrested.” While Haiti may view the church workers as “traffickers,” the Baptists say that they were “just trying to do the right thing.” Spokeswoman Laura Silsby says that “We came here simply to help these children…We went to the border based on the approval of the Dominican government to take the children into the Dominican Republic…[A] pastor entrust[ed] these precious children to our care because his orphanage collapsed and his churches collapsed, and he had nowhere for these children to go.”

Amidst the controversy, some Haitian parents believe that giving a child up for adoption to foreigners may be their best chance for a future. Saintanne Petit-Frere, a mother of six living in a tent camp, says, “My parents died in the earthquake. My husband has gone. Giving up one of my kids would at least give them a chance… My only fear is that they would forget me, but that wouldn’t affect my decision.” Adonis Helman says, “Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners… I’ve been thinking how I will choose which one I may give.”

As news of the Haiti earthquake slowly fades from the media, scams and hoaxes continue to plague the good intentions of well-to-do citizens. This corruption must be curbed if Haiti wishes to recover from its recent devastation.

As high schools and college admissions become more competitive, many teens have begun to think that sleep is optional. This is not the case. The body’s biological clock will not tolerate studying for a math test until 2:00 a.m., then waking up early to make it to school by 7:23 a.m. Sleep is necessary, especially for growing teenagers, but sleep-deprived high school students are learning this the hard way.

Science proves that teens tend to fall asleep later and wake up later than adults and small children. As a result of changing core circadian rhythms during puberty, teens find falling asleep before 11:00 p.m. difficult. Distractions such as text messaging, television, Facebook, and bright lights are also responsible for keeping teens awake. These special adolescent patterns clash with our early morning school start time. “A mistake we make is [thinking] that sleep is optional,” says Dr. Fred Danner of the Educational Psychology Faculty at the University of Kentucky. So many teens try to live without sleep – relying on coffee and Red Bull to fend off exhaustion. By doing this, teens try to fight the inevitable; all humans must sleep. “It may be that it’s the modern world, but we have old bodies. You can’t fool Mother Nature.”

Teens that do not get enough sleep are often cranky, less focused in school, and more susceptible to illness. Car crashes, a leading killer of teenagers, are more likely to occur when kids are sleepy and unfocused.

The harmful side effects of sleep-deprivation encourage some high schools to delay their start times. Research done at the University of Kentucky found that when some local high schools delayed their start times by an hour, the percentage of teens getting at least eight hours of sleep per night jumped from 36 percent to 50 percent. Two years after this one-hour change was made, the University of Kentucky found that the car crash rates for teenage drivers dropped 17 percent. Oxford University found that “by delaying the start of school by one hour and moving more demanding subjects to later in the day, absenteeism and depression fall.”

Many high schools in cities such as Tulsa, Denver, and Minneapolis have adjusted their start times so students can get more sleep. However, the National School Boards Association and the National Association of Secondary School Principals have not taken positions on adjusting high school start times. Instead, they have recommended that the issue of start times be addressed locally.

A later start time at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School would increase the health, happiness, and overall sanity of the whole student body. Although a later start time is probably not in our near future, students should try their hardest to fit eight hours of sleep in, every night. Avoiding caffeine after noon and turning off the television, computer, and cell phone in the early evening helps the body prepare to sleep. Going the whole year without sleep is not possible, so there is no use in trying. Sleep is not something to feel guilty about; it is something that is essential to the health and safety of everyone.

Under this controversial policy, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals may only serve in the military if they do not exhibit homosexual conduct.

Soldiers are discharged if they partake in a homosexual act, declare that they are homosexual, or attempt to marry someone of the same gender. Since its enactment, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has been challenged and upheld five times in federal court. Despite the policy’s steadfast history, recent criticism suggests that homosexuals will soon no longer need to hide part of their identity while serving their country.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was the brainchild of former president Bill Clinton. During a presidential speech, Clinton had promised that homosexuals would be allowed to serve openly in the military. Congress opposed this idea, and Clinton compromised with DADT. Clinton hoped that DADT would protect homosexual troops and put heterosexual troops at ease.

Before DADT, servicemen often harassed homosexuals in an attempt to persuade them to resign or turn themselves in. For instance, naval serviceman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. was assaulted and stomped to death in a bathroom by a fellow serviceman in 1992. “Blanket parties,” which consisted of several soldiers, were also known to torture gays in the barracks at night.

A blanket would cover a homosexual troop’s face before he or she was assaulted.
A 2006 Zogby International poll of U.S. military members found that 48 percent of those polled thought that homosexuals have a negative effect on unit morale. However, since the DADT policy makes homosexuals anonymous in the military, it keeps soldiers from blaming anyone for bad unit morale just because they are gay.

Since DADT was enacted, everyone from researchers to regular civilians have voiced their opinions. Gregory M. Herek, a research psychologist at the University of California at Davis, has concluded that “there is nothing about lesbians and gay[s]…that makes them inherently unfit for military service, and there is nothing about heterosexuals that makes them inherently unable to work and live with gay people in close quarters.”

According to Herek, the only factor keeping a heterosexual service member from embracing a homosexual service member is prejudice, and prejudice can be overcome. After all, homosexuals are just as able to serve in the military as heterosexuals. The American Psychological Association states that “empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention.” The opinion of the public regarding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” varies. A poll in April 2009 showed that 48 percent of Americans approved of the DADT policy.

A small number (8 percent) believed that the policy was too tolerant of homosexuals, and 37 percent thought the policy was too strict. In terms of the opinions of servicemen and servicewomen, a poll conducted in 2006 found that 26 percent were in favor of homosexuals serving in the military, 37 percent opposed to it, and 37 percent expressed no preference or were not sure.

With every passing year, the LGTB (Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual) community becomes more accepted in the U.S. Since DADT’s creation in the 1990s, the LGBT group has encouraged many large U.S. cities to have gay and lesbian community centers. Most colleges have support centers for LGBT students, and an increasing number of states are accepting same-sex marriage. Although only 17 years have passed since 1993, the citizens of the U.S. have become more open minded, which begs the question: does the DADT policy still belong in today’s society? In 2007, 28 retired generals and admirals encouraged Congress to repeal the DADT policy. These generals and admirals reasoned that 65,000 homosexual men and women currently serve in the military, and that there are over 1,000,000 gay veterans. In 2008, 104 retired generals and admirals signed a similar statement. Furthermore, in 2009, Colin Powell, former secretary of state, stated that the DADT policy had been “correct for the time,” but that “sixteen years have now gone by, and I think a lot has changed with respect to the attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy and a law that should be reviewed.”

President Obama, too, is jumping on the bandwagon. During the State of the Union Address on January 27, 2010, Obama said that he plans to collaborate with the military and with Congress to “finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.” The State of the Union Address was the first speech of Obama’s in which he committed to repealing the law by the end of this year.

The majority of military forces in the Western Hemisphere no longer have policies that exclude homosexuals. Twenty six countries partake in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), which commits its members to mutual defense in case of attack by outside forces. More than twenty-two of these countries allow gay people to serve openly in the military. In the European Union, Greece is the only country that does not allow homosexuals to serve in the army. As a result, Greece recieves much criticism from the other countries in the EU. In 2009, Argentina, Uruguay and the Philippines allowed gay men to serve openly in the military.

Speaking about homosexuals in the military, Consul David Saranga of the Israeli Consulate in New York City said, “It’s a non-issue. You can be a very good officer, a creative one, a brave one, and be gay at the same time.” Clearly, more and more people have been gradually accepting the fact that homosexuals are no less capable than heterosexuals of serving their countries.

Homosexuals cannot be harmful to the military. The number of homosexuals discharged from the military in the years following September 11 dropped significantly. While it may just be a coincidence that right after a devastating terrorist attack, the number of gays in the army decreased, there could also be a plausible explanation. When the U.S. needs people to fight, it is not choosy. When the U.S. faces an attack, suddenly who is gay and who is straight no longer matters; everyone knows that a homosexual fights just as hard as a heterosexual. Right now, the U.S. needs all the reinforcements that it can get.

“Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East,” said a U.S. general in 2007, “and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.” In light of this statement, perhaps it was not such a great idea for the U.S. to discharge fifty-nine Arabic speakers between 1993 and 2009 for their homosexuality. Since Bill Clinton’s passage of the DADT policy, we have outgrown it in the past sixteen years.

Perhaps the American people have realized that if a person is courageous enough to fight for his or her country, sexual orientation does not matter. A person willing to die for his or her country should be honored, respected, and treasured, not persecuted by silence.

Indeed, homosexuals bring a unique perspective to the army, for they are always fighting two wars – one for America, and one for the right to express their true identities.

Although insults and crude remarks easily slip out, and we think in the end that no actual harm is done, think again. In such an instance, someone’s reckless behavior or bullying, whether it be verbal or physical, can dramatically alter a person’s life.

In Phoebe Prince’s case, the bullying was so insufferable that she ended her life because of it. An innocent fifteen-year-old girl who had moved from Ireland to the small Western Massachusetts town of South Hadley had expected to be introduced to a new and better life in the United States.

Instead, she was harassed until she felt the only way to end her lingering misery was to commit suicide.
We live in a generation where Facebook, texting, and instant messaging are all prevalent forms of communication. However, as harmless as some of these communication systems may seem, these were what bullies used to provoke Phoebe. Malicious comments such as “Irish slut” and “whore” were frequently flung at Phoebe in the classrooms, in the hallways, on the phone, and on the Internet.

She was just a girl who just happened to like a senior guy that one of those bullies liked as well. What happened in the end? She got so fed up that one afternoon, she walked from school to her house, walked up the stairs to her room, and hung herself in her closet. Her twelve-year-old sister discovered her body several hours later.

Our job as students, teachers, and parents is to learn from this tragedy and to never allow it to happen again. Although we cannot stop bullying one hundred percent of the time, we must still be aware and make an honest effort to.

Being the “new kid in school” is a lot more complicated than many people speculate it to be. He or she might speak differently, dress differently, or have different beliefs. Some of the most common bullying incidents occur because the bullies perceive the victim as “different.” And since when is this a bad thing?
We should be taking this as an opportunity to meet new people and to branch off from our typical group of friends. Forget about what society expects you to do; make a difference for those who are not accepted as the norm. If Phoebe simply had had a single close friend or relative who was aware of her torment and had the guts to stop those bullies, she might be alive right now.

The next time you see someone new at your school, introduce yourself and show him around. Be that friend who the individual can turn to. This is the least you can do to help. Help the so-called “loser” who sits alone every day at lunch or the kid who is always battling antagonists. Stick up for that person. Accept somebody who is not necessarily “normal,” according to your standards. If you do, you are impacting yourself and another person in far more ways than you had ever considered.

News of Phoebe’s death spread from South Hadley to New England to the rest of the nation. Even people in Phoebe’s homeland of Ireland have offered condolences to Phoebe’s family and joined the fight against bullying. Following her death, thousands of people have spoken out against those mean girls, flocking to school committee meetings in South Hadley and joining remembrance pages on Facebook. Outcries of “expel those girls who caused Phoebe to commit suicide!” have not gone unanswered; school officials at South Hadley High School recently expelled two of the girls. The other bullies have left the school voluntarily.
Unfortunately, it took a young girl’s suicide to rejuvenate the fight against bullying; we must hope that now people will truly take to heart the meaning of “think before you speak.”

Contrary to the atmosphere of love that surrounds this day today, the legend behind Valentine’s Day is filled more with slaughter and gore than with sappiness. The story started in Rome, 269 A.D., when Emperor Claudius sought to build his dream army to crush his enemies.

However, without a draft, no one wanted to volunteer for war, and the Emperor immediately assumed that it was because his men did not want to leave their wives. Of course, he did the most logical thing that came to mind: he outlawed marriage so that his male subjects, free from the occupation of their wives, would willingly sign up for war and adopt an instinct to kill. Of course the people did not follow this ridiculous new law, and rebelled as society.

Valentine, a young priest, rose to the scene, conducting marriage ceremonies in secret. Before long, he was caught by Claudius’s men and incarcerated. In jail, he fell in love with the prison guard’s daughter; it was this pair of sweethearts that gave a name to the holiday that would bear Valentine’s name two centuries later. On the day he was to be executed, he wrote a letter to his darling, thanking her for loving him in his last days, signed “Love from your Valentine.” And that was how the first Valentine happened to be.
Many AB students adore Valentine’s Day. For girls like Boyeon Chae who found her perfect guy just two weeks before the 14th, it will be extra special. As AB junior Henry Neale says, “Valentine’s Day is the day in the year where you can appreciate how lucky you are to have met that one special person.”
For those who have not found their special someone, the singles still love Valentine’s Day, partly because it marks the start of vacation, and also because it is simply an excuse to have fun, by oneself or with your friends.

Freshman Brooke Hatanaka states, “Valentine’s Day is a time for single women to sit around and appreciate their singleness… and watch love movies.” Sophomore Jenni Ruan supposes that “you really don’t need a guy for Valentine’s Day. I mean, you could have plenty of fun with your friends… and Valentine’s chocolate is yummy.” Even some guys are infatuated with Valentine’s Day. Tony Yu agrees with the sugar, and adds “there’s so much love in the air,” remarking that carnations and singing valentines are “kewl.”
Some use this day to their advantage; to Henry Neale, it is the “one day of the year where you’re allowed to kiss in public and not look weird.” Olivia Gutfreund sees it as “tacky, but cute” and adds that it is a “good way to make people get you stuff.” Friends play pranks on one another by writing anonymous love letters and secret admirers use the veil of a cute heart slip and a carnation to reveal their feelings, if not their identities.

Others share math jokes. This year, sophomore Martin Ma received a heart that read, “Will you be my cardioid?” For those of you who do not know, a cardioid is a math graph that looks like a heart. Free kisses, free stuff, and free math… there is everything to gain and not much to lose on Valentine’s Day.

Contrary to the atmosphere of love that surrounds this day today, the legend behind Valentine’s Day is filled more with slaughter and gore than with sappiness. The story started in Rome, 269 A.D., when Emperor Claudius sought to build his dream army to crush his enemies.

However, without a draft, no one wanted to volunteer for war, and the Emperor immediately assumed that it was because his men did not want to leave their wives. Of course, he did the most logical thing that came to mind: he outlawed marriage so that his male subjects, free from the occupation of their wives, would willingly sign up for war and adopt an instinct to kill. Of course the people did not follow this ridiculous new law, and rebelled as society.

Valentine, a young priest, rose to the scene, conducting marriage ceremonies in secret. Before long, he was caught by Claudius’s men and incarcerated. In jail, he fell in love with the prison guard’s daughter; it was this pair of sweethearts that gave a name to the holiday that would bear Valentine’s name two centuries later. On the day he was to be executed, he wrote a letter to his darling, thanking her for loving him in his last days, signed “Love from your Valentine.” And that was how the first Valentine happened to be.
Many AB students adore Valentine’s Day. For girls like Boyeon Chae who found her perfect guy just two weeks before the 14th, it will be extra special. As AB junior Henry Neale says, “Valentine’s Day is the day in the year where you can appreciate how lucky you are to have met that one special person.”

For those who have not found their special someone, the singles still love Valentine’s Day, partly because it marks the start of vacation, and also because it is simply an excuse to have fun, by oneself or with your friends.

Freshman Brooke Hatanaka states, “Valentine’s Day is a time for single women to sit around and appreciate their singleness… and watch love movies.” Sophomore Jenni Ruan supposes that “you really don’t need a guy for Valentine’s Day. I mean, you could have plenty of fun with your friends… and Valentine’s chocolate is yummy.” Even some guys are infatuated with Valentine’s Day. Tony Yu agrees with the sugar, and adds “there’s so much love in the air,” remarking that carnations and singing valentines are “kewl.”

Some use this day to their advantage; to Henry Neale, it is the “one day of the year where you’re allowed to kiss in public and not look weird.” Olivia Gutfreund sees it as “tacky, but cute” and adds that it is a “good way to make people get you stuff.” Friends play pranks on one another by writing anonymous love letters and secret admirers use the veil of a cute heart slip and a carnation to reveal their feelings, if not their identities.

Others share math jokes. This year, sophomore Martin Ma received a heart that read, “Will you be my cardioid?” For those of you who do not know, a cardioid is a math graph that looks like a heart. Free kisses, free stuff, and free math… there is everything to gain and not much to lose on Valentine’s Day.

The story of Kiss Me Kate is an entertaining one. Main characters Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham are a divorced couple acting in a production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Their mutual hatred comes in leaps and bounds throughout the course of the show as Lilli recieves flowers meant for Fred’s new girlfriend, thugs come to collect a debt Fred does not owe, and Fred spanks Lilli on stage.

On the side, Lois Lane and Bill Calhoun have love troubles of their own, though Lois maintains that she is always true to him “in her fashion.” Junior Katy Early and senior Alex Rose starred as Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham. Many of the actors had the difficult job of portraying two characters within one role: one in the play
as a whole, and one in Shrew. Everyone pulled this off spectacularly well, but none more than Rose and Early. Their onstage dynamic was flawless as they argued as a divorced couple and as prospective fiancées, all in the same show. Early’s performance blew the audience away, combining vocal ability with the heaving objects across the stage with frightening force (musicians in the pit were in danger on more than one ccasion).

Maddie Freeman and Chris Pullerits played their supporting roles of Lois and Bill perfectly, adding more comedic romance and great singing (and dancing) to the play. Sarah Olofson opened the second act with the catchy “Too Darn Hot,” one of the most memorable numbers of the show.

Kiss Me Kate is a very funny show, filled with innuendo and slapstick, but nothing induced laughter more than Eddie Flannery and Oliver Tejeda did in their roles as Thug One and Thug Two. They were told to collect Fred’s gambling debt and ended up trapped in Shrew. They stayed in character in the background the entire time, and Flannery and Tejeda’s accents were a highlight of the show.

The crews of shows rarely get the recognition they deserve. But they were responsible for every detail of every set, every prop, every scene change, and every light set used in the show, and they did a spectacular job with Kiss Me Kate. As far as the audience could tell, everything went off without a hitch. The sets looked fantastic, painstakingly painted props were hurled across the stage, and the well-designed costumes added realism to the show.

Every winter, AB enjoys another opening of another PC show. Kiss Me Kate went above and beyond the very high standards set by previous musicals.

Developing the film began about fifteen years ago, and all the hard work put into it has paid off: Avatar has broken many box office records and was nominated for nine Academy Awards. Avatar was the first film to ever earn over two billion dollars in the box office, and was shown on the most IMAX screens in history.

James Cameron, the director of both Avatar and Titanic, had planned to start filming Avatar before 2000, but he decided that the technology then was not sophisticated enough to record his film the way he wanted.
Since development of Avatar began, many moviegoers have been excited over how it would compare with James Cameron’s Titanic, then the highest grossing film of all time. Avatar quickly replaced Titanic as the highest grossing film – a place Titanic had held for over twelve years.

Set in the future on the moon Pandora, Avatar artfully portrays the exotic atmosphere and its inhabitants, the Na’vi, tall blue people with tails and a sort of feline allure. The plot is a classic “dense man fights for what is important to him” with some “meets alien girl of his dreams” weaved in. Jake Sully, an ex-Marine, travels to Pandora to negotiate with the natives about the mining of unobtanium, a valuable mineral.
He meets with the natives using his avatar, an alternate representation of him in the form of a Na’vi. He falls in love with Neytiri, a Na’vi princess, and with his experiences with her, discovers the wrong in the humans’ plans to destroy things that are important to the Na’vi in order to get to unobtanium-rich areas on Pandora.
Some AB students have mixed feelings about Avatar. As Tony Yu puts it, “[Avatar] was so good I wish I could be an avatar.” However, he has a question that has been on his mind since he saw the movie: “What’s the unobtanium for anyways? They never say what it’s used for!” This is a distracting gap in detail that is never explained.

Bhavana Vissapragada was pleased that the film mentioned global warming, but thought, “The political references were very blatant.” While Hannah Sim saw the storyline as “too obvious,” Mengtong Zhang “didn’t like what the people look like when they transform because they are ugly,” but found the plot rather “impressive.” Many, like Jenny Ruan, enjoyed the “amazing graphics” most of all.

Avatar has something for everyone: stunning effects, romance, sci-fi, action, war, and the defeat of human greed, all stirred ingeniously into one recipe to be savored by millions.

The brilliance of this film has made the upcoming sequel highly anticipated as well, so everyone should to keep his or her eyes peeled for this soon-to-be hit!

2. The Baltimore Ravens physically dominated the running game. The biggest surprise in the game was that the Patriots completely submitted to the Ravens on defense. As the game progressed, Baltimore showed that the first play, Rice’s big touchdown run, was not a fluke. The Ravens running backs continually ate up yardage no matter what direction they went. Earlier in the year, Coach Belichick made adjustments to fix obvious problems with the defense. One example was in Miami when he called a timeout to make adjustments against Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams with the “Wildcat” formation. Against the Ravens, the adjustments that the Patriots made were ineffective. No matter what lineup or scheme New England implemented, the Ravens ran the ball down the Patriots’ throat.

3. The Big Three struck. Earlier in the week, during the breakdown of the game, analysts discussed the importance of stopping the Ray Lewis, Terrel Suggs and Ed Reed. Very little time passed before the three defenders emerged as difference makers in this game. Linebacker Ray Lewis blitzed up the middle and sacked Tom Brady. Later, outside linebacker Suggs beat Patriots lineman Matt Light around the corner for a sack, forced a fumble, and made the recovery. Finally, safety Ed Reed intercepted a pass at the sideline for a big return.

4. The game resembled an early-season contest with the New York Jets. Then, Brady did not have star receiver Wes Welker. The way the quarterback looked against the Ravens bore resemblance to his past struggle with the Jets defense. Unfortunately for Brady, his receivers did not get the same type of separation that he had come to expect from Welker. In other words, more balls were deflected and tipped, leading to interceptions.

5. Familiar problems arose. Throughout the course of the year, two of the Patriots’ biggest questions were “Who would be the third receiver after Randy Moss and Wes Welker?” and “How would the young defense perform?” First, with the loss of Wes Welker, the offense was not the same. As for the young defense, it played well at times but looked like it was playing at regular season speed when it was supposed to be at playoff readiness.