I know a lot of people aren’t going to want to hear a Patriots fan talk about his misery over the last five years, especially when we’ve seen more wins than anyone else. The difference though, is that when you win a lot your expectations get pretty high, making the disappointment even harder to handle.
The higher your expectations get raised the harder they can come crashing down.
So with that in mind let’s rank the crappy endings of the last five years starting with the most tolerable.
5. 2008 (missed playoffs): The real misery came in the first quarter of the first game when TFB went down for the season, but after that, once we slowly started to at least appreciate the Matt Cassel year you couldn’t help but have some kind of expectations. Especially when the Pats were in the hunt for the division title right down to the last weekend. Ultimately not making the playoffs was okay, because the 2008 Pats could not beat an elite team, and were really saved by a cake walk schedule.
4. 2009 (Loss Ravens Wild Card): I think we can all agree that the magic was missing in 2009. 2010 made this even more apparent. Maybe had Welker not gone down in week 17 it would’ve been a little more disappointing, but when we faced reality we knew that this team wasn’t going very far in the playoffs. They were owned from the opening drive, so it was apparent the season was ending then and there pretty quickly. In a season filled with tough losses this one was just the icing on the cake.
3. 2010 (Loss Jets Divisional): If you told me in the summer of 2010 that the Pats season would end in the divisional round I probably would’ve thought that sounded about right. Especially when you factored in the injuries to Ty Warren and Leigh Bodden. The fact that it came at the hands of the Jets is what made it hard to handle. But when you consider what this young team did in 2010 there’s far more reason to be optimistic about the future, whereas in the past whenever the season ended you had no idea how many veterans would still be around. Now this team has a solid young base on defense, some versatile threats on offense, and we’ll still have another few years of elite play from Brady. It is no stretch of the imagination that the Patriots will be picked as Super Bowl 46 favorites by many, especially after doing whatever they want on draft weekend.
2. 2006 (Loss Colts AFCCG): Put it this way, the Pats were one half away from playing the shitty Bears in the Super Bowl, which would’ve almost assuredly meant their fourth Super Bowl in six years. But the Colts rammed it down their throat for the entire second half. To come that close with Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney as the WRs speaks to how good this team was. It also shows what a veteran defense means in the playoffs.
1. 2007 (Loss Giants Super Bowl 42): Obviously. I could make an argument that this was the most disappointing end to a season for any sports team of the last decade. They were under three minutes away from being the undisputed greatest NFL team of all time. Funny how one miracle catch and one Plaxico Burress touchdown later, and the 2007 Pats are a punchline. I still appreciate what that team did, and while 18-1 may be a joke to a lot of NFL fans, I take pride that they had the balls to go undefeated and how close they came. To only laugh at 18-1 is to totally discount what it took to go 18-0, and I will never forget that.