Archives for January 28, 2019

After eight Super Bowl trips the New England Patriots have had their fair share of all kinds of Super Bowl bye week intrigue. The first time around against the Rams they were the scrappy backup QB underdogs, facing a mighty passing attack that was looking for a second Super Bowl.

It was supposed to be the birth of the Rams dynasty, instead it was the birth of the Patriots’. And here we are, 18 years later, after Spygate, Deflategate, TB12gate and every other little gate in between, once again in the only game that truly counts when you’re a dynasty.

Now we’re debating how good the AFC East has been over the last two decades and whether or not Julian Edelman is a hall of famer. I’ll take that over Super Bowls 42 or 49 bye week intrigue any time.

I always try to look at each year in and of itself. That’s what Bill Belichick does. With the benefit of hindsight it’s easy to look back and connect common threads between these individual teams.

The 2018 Patriots have some of the very best of them — a tough, resilient football team that plays hard together. They’ve made the clutch plays. And they’re another in a long list of fully functional football machines.

Did they suck on the road this year? Yup. But were they also one of the most balanced and fundamentally sound teams of the Belichick era at home? Definitely.

That home team has showed up twice in the playoffs against two very good teams. Hate them all you want, but the Patriots proved their doubters wrong by following the path of the 2001 and 2004 teams, teams that won the AFC Championship on the road against a favored opponent, redeeming their in-season stumbles.

Because they sucked so badly on the road this year made it doubly satisfying, especially against such a talented team who had haunted them a couple times in recent history.

Let’s hop into a bunch of Posits on some of the key storylines.

[Read more…] about Pats Posits: Super Bowl Week LFG