Its reality time.

AndyJohnson said:

If you mean they lost because the other team scored more points, then you are right, they lose the same time every time, Other than that, very dubious.

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Vaunted offense gets exposed when the schematic superiority is nullified and receivers can't win on straight matchups without smoke and mirrors.

No height, no speed, strength. Gronkowski is the exception.

They made mistakes. Riddley got knocked out and dropped the ball. Cant really blame him for that.. a helmet to helmet hit. Brady mismanaged the end of the first half.. bad mistake. Welker again in the biggest games drops a key ball. Bad mistakes. I also feel the coaching staff played way to conservatively especially considering that Talib was not out there. How many times did they cross the 40 yard line in Baltimore territory and punt it? But they will be there again next year. Dont buy into all this BS that the New England mystique is toast. They came up short but they also had some **** luck to go along with there mistakes.

The writer is correct in the fact that we haven't won a SB after we've changed our football philosophy. The Pats of 01-05 played with grit and physicality. They were a balanced team that liked to hit hard and pound the ball in your face. The recent Pats are soft on defense. We have no pass rush and our secondary is malignant. Our secondary looks good with Talib and Dennard, but we aren't sure if Talib is going to get resigned and... he looks to be injured often. Our rather when he's injured, our defense craps the bed. At least our run game is better than other years. Hopefully these young backs (Ridley and Vereen) will get even better next season.

Our offense is out of this world every season but they always implode in the playoffs. The competition is stiffer. The coaching is superior. They turn our offense one-dimensional because they stuff our small and slow receivers. I don't like to blame it on the mystique of a "deep threat", but point is that we have no receivers that can stretch the field, fight for jump balls, and relieve pressure off the middle of the field. I was watching the Atlanta game yesterday and man would I kill to have a receiver like Jones or White. Those guys are physical, intimidating, have a wide catch radius, fights for the ball, and command double teams. Lloyd is a great receiver, but he's more of a possession receiver than one that stretches the field.

Patradomous said:

I couldn't agree more with this articles assesment.

Last Stand: Baltimore Ravens Smash New England Patriots Mystique For Final Time

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Give the Harbaugh's their due and their time in the sun, they earned it and they are both good coaches, BUT there is a lot of parity in this league now. Besides, lets see them maintain some consistency after reaching the SB in this day and age like the Pats have. The Ravens have been good to okay for most of the past 10 years because of the pieces they have maintained on that thug-defense. Flacco has proven himself to be legit, but let's see how they maintain it as their geriatric defense is on the fast slide into mediocrity. Look how fast Sanchez and ryan went into the dumps when their D quickly got old.

DocHoliday said:

Vaunted offense gets exposed when the schematic superiority is nullified and receivers can't win on straight matchups without smoke and mirrors.

No height, no speed, strength. Gronkowski is the exception.

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So the similarity is we had a good offense and the other team scored more points?
Brady threw for over 300 yards yesterday, and we have 428 of offense.
We lost because:
1) We were inside the 25 6 times and came away with 13 points.
2) The defense allowed 3 consecutive TD drives.Pretty easy ones too.They drove a combined 197 yards on those 3 drives and only faced 1st down 1 time, running for 11 on 3rd and 2. That is about the worst 3 drives of defense you will ever see,
3) The most critical play of the game was a fumble by a player who was knocked unconscious and had his own leg cause a fumble either a millisecond before (according to the ref) or after (according to me) he was down.

Those are not the same reasons for past losses.

Triumph said:

Youre freaking nuts if you think McCourty can cover.

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You're nuts. McCourty isn't the stud he duped us into thinking he was his rookie year, but the guy is stable and versatile. He's worth keeping.

AndyJohnson said:

So the similarity is we had a good offense and the other team scored more points?
Brady threw for over 300 yards yesterday, and we have 428 of offense.
We lost because:
1) We were inside the 25 6 times and came away with 13 points.
2) The defense allowed 3 consecutive TD drives.Pretty easy ones too.They drove a combined 197 yards on those 3 drives and only faced 1st down 1 time, running for 11 on 3rd and 2. That is about the worst 3 drives of defense you will ever see,
3) The most critical play of the game was a fumble by a player who was knocked unconscious and had his own leg cause a fumble either a millisecond before (according to the ref) or after (according to me) he was down.

Those are not the same reasons for past losses.

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There's a reason we couldn't score in the red zone. When the field is short and there are more players blanketing a smaller field you need some height to get some tough catches.

Or we could run the ball. Which mysteriously left the arsenal.

DocHoliday said:

There's a reason we couldn't score in the red zone. When the field is short and there are more players blanketing a smaller field you need some height to get some tough catches.

Or we could run the ball. Which mysteriously left the arsenal.

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We ran 34 times.
We have been among the best red zone offenses for a long time.
You are trying to find one reason to peg not winning a SB on every year, and its just not there.
Unless the reason is not enough talent to be unbeatable.

Any Pats fan who feels REALLY ANGRY for more than a day should find another team and get a grip.

Game was lost well before the Ridley knock out play. This game reminded me of the Rams/Patriots SB game with the Pats playing the role of the Rams and the Ravens playing the role of the Pats.

AndyJohnson said:

We ran 34 times.
We have been among the best red zone offenses for a long time.
You are trying to find one reason to peg not winning a SB on every year, and its just not there.
Unless the reason is not enough talent to be unbeatable.

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The offense should never sputter and die like it does. Time and time again its held to a fraction of output during the playoffs against a certain type of team.

When it does you have to come to the realization that once the scheme advantages are gone - Ravens stopped the no huddle this year, this team cannot beat straight matchups. Receivers can't beat one on one, and CBs can't defend jump balls.

It's truly a talent issue.

I find it interesting that anyone who feels like calling it as it is is told by homers to go follow another team. So much for discussion and divergent opinion.

As fans some of us bristled at the comments made by Houston defenders that the Pats fast pace offense was a gimmick. I actually think we were bristling at a poor choice of words by a pro football player....they are not exactly rocket scientists now are they?

So let me try to decipher.

At any level in football and particularly true in developmental football, unless you can beat the other team physically, your opponent does not feel that you have truly beaten them. While it is true that the level of complication and sophistication grows exponentially when you to the level these guys are playing at it is still true that if the opponent does not feel like you are capable of going out there and beating them physically, they do not feel like they are beaten nor do they feel like you are superior. It is not more complicated than that. If you do beat the opponent while leaving him feeling that you could not physically beat them then virtually everything you did effectively falls into the category of a "gimmick" as far as they are concerned.

What the writer failed to realize is how difficult it is to win Super Bowls, why winning 3 in 4 years was so incredible. Just because we went 3/4 doesn't mean anything less than 9/12 is a disappointment. They are tough to win because they involved factors you simply cannot predict or control, and there's this little thing called the salary cap.

AndyJohnson said:

We ran 34 times.
We have been among the best red zone offenses for a long time.
You are trying to find one reason to peg not winning a SB on every year, and its just not there.
Unless the reason is not enough talent to be unbeatable.

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I agree with Mr. Johnson. Its not one thing, it's a multitude of things that happen over the course of a game. The defense needs to stiffen and help the offense and doesn't. The offense needs to take some of the pressure off the defense and get them some rest and doesn't. Multiple failures are responsible for our not winning the SB since 04.

The only time I can think of that was all the D's fault was SB 42...the offense handed them a lead with 2 minutes and change left and Special Teams gave them excellent field position. Their only job was to not allow a TD drive of 85-ish yards and they couldn't.

ausbacker said:

I find it interesting that anyone who feels like calling it as it is is told by homers to go follow another team. So much for discussion and divergent opinion.

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What I find interesting is that anyone who is not a "homer" (second from the bottom above only pedophiles who murder in the caste system of homosapiens) is someone who is always "calling it like it is." Self- righteous much?

Jackson 2 said:

What I find interesting is that anyone who is not a "homer" (second from the bottom above only pedophiles who murder in the caste system of homosapiens) is someone who is always "calling it like it is." Self- righteous much?

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English please.

The battle between chicken littles vs homers is outstanding. If you're not amused by it, that's your issue.

Patradomous said:

Give em 13 days. One of em will win.

Crap article my ass.
They've lost the same way in the biggest games the same way for the last 5 years.Punch them in the mouth and they stall, spit, backfire, fart and sputter.
And the defense succumbs from the pressure. I've seen enough of the arena ball crap.

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"Arena ball crap?" The rules of the game changed and the Patriots changed faster than any other team. Did you see who the Eagles selected as their head coach? Did you watch the 49ers offense with Kaepernick?

I guess you really hated the way the Patriots hung 83 points on the Texans in two games and the way they jumped out to a 38-13 lead in the divisional round. One bad half of football does not delegitimize the offense that led the league in points and yards.

DocHoliday said:

The offense should never sputter and die like it does. Time and time again its held to a fraction of output during the playoffs against a certain type of team.

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You are defining 'certain types of teams' as teams that we lose to, similar or not.

When it does you have to come to the realization that once the scheme advantages are gone - Ravens stopped the no huddle this year, this team cannot beat straight matchups. Receivers can't beat one on one, and CBs can't defend jump balls.

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We had 428 yards of offense. We moved the ball as well as we do in any game. We were inside the 25 6 times and got 13 points. That is very unlike this team, and it wasn't because of the Ravens. Virtually every drive was stopped by the Patriots not making a play that was there that they almost always make.
Wide open Lloyd stumbled on a slant and couldn't pull it in. Welker had 2 drops. Vereen had a drop. Solder held on a converted 3rd down. Brady ran in to the ref. We missed on 8 of 15 3rd downs, and off the top of my head I just named 6 of them. Make those plays and the offense ends up having a great day. Those are plays that are normally made.

It's truly a talent issue.

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Its always a talent issue, but in this case it was a series of plays they are more than talented enough to make, and just didn't on this day.

In the end: Players > Scheme. But there were plays that had to be made last night that weren't. Really shocked to how bad the offense was in the red zone.