betterthanthealternative

How many years? If the current core group (Wilfork, Mayo, Spikes, Jones, Ninkovich, Hightower, McCourty, Wilson?) takes a collective step forward next year, it will be pretty darn close to the core group they had at the beginning of the last decade. There's a good chance they can do that, given the collective youth.

The bigger issues are staying healthy and getting contributions from players now not considered part of the core, at CB and DT in particular.

WhiZa

I think their stats are a bit skewed. Their D was horrible most of the season, but they still had the ability to shut teams down when they needed to especially in the post season. That's the key difference between their D and ours. We shut down the teams we were supposed to (Rams, Dolphins, Jax) just not when we needed to.

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A man named Brady

Lets keep it real, We were destroying teams without gronk this year and just massacred the texans with him playing like one series. Plus many of us said we were going to have no problem scoring on the ravens, so for people to throw out the gronk excuse is crazy to me.

The defense isnt great but 13 points and getting shut out in the second half is just inexcusable

supafly

The Gronk "excuse" is certainly a viable one. In the 2 biggest stages lately, we have not really had him healty. He's the best blocking TE in the game, and provides significant mismatches that can be taken advantage of, both before and after pre-snap reads. We missed him terribly in both the running and the passing game, particularly in the inability to run (once again) vs BAL's nickel defense, which they played in the high majority of the game.

One must factor into acct that we went down to Baltimore earlier in the season and put up 30 pts with Gronk, so he does make a lot of difference.


Yes, of course, but there were also some other variables in that game that have to be taken into context. For instance, we had the ball inside of FG range a total of 8 times in the game, and still put up 428 yds of offense, which normally does not equal 13 points. We had a 3rd down conversion rate of 7/15 a couple of Sundays ago, which would easily have been #1 in the league this year.

The wind caused us to punt 3 times of of those 8, so that needs to be factored in. I'm not making up excuses, I'm just trying to keep that point as a reminder. The ravens played tougher that day and deserved to win, however we also were leading 13-7 with only 5 min left in the 3rd quarter.

There was a point where Pollard made the personal foul on Welker and it moved the ball from our own 25 all the way to their 36. You could see the Ravens cracking a bit, and they were flailing around and moaning. The momentum was there for the taking. Unfortunately they couldn't get a first down and instead of attempting another FG, the wind caused us to punt yet again in very good territory.

The Welker drop very likely would have put the Pats up either 20-7 or at the very least 16-7, so that also comes into factor yet again. That really changed the outcome of the game in my opinion.

One last thing to consider is that the teams of the early dynasty period from 01 to 04 had 7/9 playoff games where they were giving up 14.4 points or less, so they were able to win close, low scoring games. In that 7/9 game span the offense was only averaging 18 points a game. This current defense has not been able to keep those low scoring affairs (typical in jan/feb matchups) close like before.

In the past 7 major losses (BAL 2x, NYG 3x, SEA, SF) we have had either late game leads or a tie (SF) in every single game deep into the 4th quarter. Many of them were actually double digit leads of 10+ or more. Yet in ALL of those 7 games, the defense was the side of the ball that lost it for us, as they cannot keep the opposition out of the endzone. I'd put it much more on the defense than the offense.

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Patiently waiting to defend the next "bubble" player in this summer's training camp.....

A man named Brady

I'm not saying gronk isn't important, of course he is. I'm just saying we can't keep throwing his name out for the reason we didnt score enough points and lost when

- we were dominating teams WITHOUT him(including destroying the texans with him barely playing)
- everyone knew he wasn't playing this game and most if not all of us said we were going to win this game(many said going away)

If I told you going into that game we would've scored 13 you would have laughed at me. And that's with knowing gronk wasnt playing. This isn't revionist history, go back and look at the prediction thread

I agree on the defense not closing games.The offense didnt play well in SB42, but when your handed a 4 point lead with 3 mind left you have to bring that game home. They let eli march down the field. Same thing with the SB last year