That’s all folks. Well it will certainly take some time for this to all sink in. It was a miserable end, but a great run by the Pats this year. It wasn’t always perfect but the 2011 team was stocked with fighters. It always hurts to get so close only to fall short, and while it would be easy to get carried away it the “what does it all mean” of it all, let’s just take a moment and appreciate what this Patriots team did in 2011.

They overcame significant injuries, won the AFC East, the first overall seed, and defended home field and went to the Super Bowl. Ultimately it was Tom Brady and the offense’s inability to move the ball in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl that did the 2011 Pats in.

You can’t help but wonder ‘what if’ with Rob Gronkowski’s ankle. He was far less effective than I thought he’d be and it seems like the Patriots offense struggled because of it. 

After a week of getting thrown under the bus, it was not the defense that was most responsible for the Patriots demise. They gave up the last drive, but they made enough stops to put the onus on the Pats offense for failing to produce a single second half point. Of course some of the credit goes to the Giants’ defense, but ultimately this is where the game was won.

The Patriots head into another off-season with multiple high draft picks. We look forward to turning the page to our draft research and finding some players that could make the difference in 2012.

It was a painful end, but not as painful as 2007, so there was a familiarity to this end. It’s hard to argue the 2011 Giants weren’t the best team in football but the Patriots went down swinging like they did all season long.

The 2011 Patriots never lost a football game by more than eight points. The teams that beat them had to hang on to do so. 

There will be tons of talk about how this loss affects the legacies of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, but as I see it, this has to be a season that is respected in the Belichick reign. They might not have pulled it out, but they played like a team down to the last moment.