How Far the Patriots Have Fallen From Grace

[frankb03]

My basis point is that starting sometime in the last 1/3 of the season, there has been a slow delcine in how impressive the Pats have been in their games;obviously some of it had to do with how great they played during the first 2/3 of last season;it would be asking too much for a team to maintain that.
However, the decline9for a lack of a better word) began before Brady got injured and carried over into SuperBowl.

Did you really expect NE to continue to compete at the level they were the first half of last season? Teams make adjustments. Teams find weaknesses.

Most other teams would love to experience the so called 'decline'. In the NFL teams are never as good as they seem. They're also not as bad as they look.

I can't prove it, but I maintain that even if Brady didn't get hurt, they would not have been anywhere as awesome as they were at the beginning of the season although the odds would have still been very good to at least make the playoffs if not win the division.

I agree! They're aging defense is a year old. They're offensive line was exposed by the Giants as a weakness. Teams would have exposed that weakness this season.

I still believe they win 12 or 13 games with Brady. I still believe they win 10 games without Brady.

[savage1]

Did you really expect NE to continue to compete at the level they were the first half of last season? Teams make adjustments. Teams find weaknesses.

Most other teams would love to experience the so called 'decline'. In the NFL teams are never as good as they seem. They're also not as bad as them look.




I agree! They're aging defense is a year old. They're offensive line was exposed by the Giants as a weakness. Teams would have exposed that weakness this season.

I still believe they win 12 or 13 games with Brady. I still believe they win 10 games without Brady.

Fair enough-can't argue with any of your points except that I don't think they would have won more than 11 games even with Brady at the helm this year. Obviously, we will never know now.

[frankb03]

Fair enough-can't argue with any of your points except that I don't think they would have won more than 11 games even with Brady at the helm this year. Obviously, we will never know now.

We'll never know. At worst with Brady they split with Bills and Jets. They lose at SD and Indy. Both those teams haven't been very impressive. They possibly lose at Seattle. The only home game they might lose is vs. Steelers. They also have Denver at home but Denver proved this past weekend they're not a good road team.