This is always how it is on both sides of the ball. Were they better with the best tight end in the NFL in the lineup? Of course. But each season is a story unto itself.
The Patriots experiment in those early weeks to find out what they have. Sometimes you’ll see a random player getting a huge spike in playing time for apparently no reason. This is to see what his strengths are and if there’s a way to use him effectively. Maybe that player sticks or maybe they’re never seen again, it’s up to how he performs.
After the first four-to-six games they start to get a sense of who they are, again, on both sides of the ball. Who are the clutch players? How are defenses playing us? Can we threaten all dimensions of the defense? Where are our weak links?
Once questions like these start to get answered they will start to play to their strengths and hide their weaknesses as best that they can.
Invariably the Patriots are always rock solid after Thanksgiving, but look at some of their early season losses in recent years. The Cardinals in Foxboro, the Bills, even games they don’t lose that are strangely close.
It boils down to the fact that the football season is a campaign and, as I wrote yesterday, it’s about putting your best team out there to compete in January and that one game in February.
It’s not about blowing the Cardinals out in Week 2. They of course want and expect to win those games, but the early weeks are as much about self-evaluation as it is winning the game.
So by the playoff game against Indy what did they know? That their running game was a huge strength, that they could play man or zone defense, etc. When they played to those strengths and avoided what they weren’t good at, we saw the true 2013 Patriots.
Against the Broncos they just couldn’t hide their weaknesses, especially after Talib went down and they got in a hole. They couldn’t man up and their offense wasn’t explosive enough to come back in that situation.
So, the experiment will start again in 2014 with or without Gronk. They’ll feel it out in early weeks and then start to refine everything once November hits.