Breer is a douche with a grudge. But disregarding his twitter and post-game remarks and focusing on his column, I agree with what he says to a certain extent, though it's nothing new. The Pats do play one game at a time, but they also always have the long term view of the season. BB calls it "climbing the mountain", and it's clear that he views the season as a developmental process. Winning each game is important, but not all games are equal, and developing the team for the stretch run and playoffs is clearly a goal. Again, this is nothing new. It's been that way for years.
It seems clear that this year's team has evolved into something special in terms of the "next man up" approach and in terms of being able to make adaptations to injuries and personnel changes. We went into the season expecting to see an offense built around Gronk and Hernandez, and we haven't had them healthy on the field together for more than the first game against Tennessee. Instead, the running game has emerged as a huge part of the offense, and the coaching staff has used new weapons in ways that weren't expected. Edelman, Stallworth, Branch and Vereen have all come up huge in games down the stretch. It makes it much harder for other teams to game plan against the Pats when they can beat you in so many ways, and when they are resilient at weathering losses. The loss of Hernandez early in game 2 against Arizona clearly threw the offense off it's entire gameplan, but the loss of Gronk and Woodhead early against Houston didn't phase them at all, even though Brady admitted afterwards that they had an entire set of plays designed around those 2 guys.
