Michael Holley’s book War Room really touched on this with some good behind-the-scenes stuff. Really, it was about the only super interesting Patriots stuff in the whole book.
Essentially I think the 2006 AFC Championship game made it clear to the Patriots that the league was heading toward more and more and scoring and the Pats were going to have to keep up.
As they picked up Stallworth, Welker and Moss, it was up to Josh McDaniels to figure out how to use everyone, so a lot of the credit of the 2007 offense has to come to him. You look at those first two months and they were really unstoppable.
But like all football trends teams started to catch on a bit to what they were doing. It took a team like the Giants, who could get excellent pressure rushing just four guys, while using seven in coverage, to ultimately knock them off.
Of course 2007 was also just the right mix of an elite veteran defense making their last stand, Brady, Moss and Welker in their prime, and the whole Spygate saga that lit a fire under the whole team’s collective ass to not only win games but to totally dominate teams and prove that video tapes had nothing to do with why they were winning games.
