OT: Breaking news from this board: Pats might trade Bledsoe

jimnance said:

Sorry but if you weren't alive to see the Pats in the 60's and 70's then you're really not qualified to comment on how good or bad they were. Most of y'all commenting weren't even born and you're way off the mark. Let me set the record straight because I was there: the 60s Patriots were good more often than not in the afl- had dome exciting players incl. my namesake hands down best pats rb of all time. In the mid70's they hsf very good teams-and one great team-76-best team in the NFL that year. 76 was much stronger than the 85 team that went to the SB. Pats had decent teams in the 80's. The TRUE suckiness period was late 80's- especially early 90s. Parcells brought em back to respectability. The BB/TB era is the greatest longest- running dynasty in NFL history. I didn't think any team would ever do what the miners did in the 80s but Pats surpassed it. That being said- don't rewrite history. The actual team(I'm talking product on the field ONLY) was never a laughingstock except for brief period in early 90s. Part of that bad rep, wasn't due to the team but the ownership. Billy Sullivan was one of the biggest clowns to ever own an NFL team. But most of the actual teams weren't terrible- some good some mediocre. The biggest laughingstock in the NFL in the 60s was the steelers. Year after year they sucked.

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Don't forget the 78 team. They still hold the record for team rushing (3165/30td/4.7ypc), Offense was 4th in scoring and 1st in yards, the Defense was 13th in scoring and 9th in yards. Drama killed that season when Houston came to town for the Divisional game.

Fitzy missed his vocation in life. He should have been a sorts network interviewer. That 2007 draft day vid was great!

jimnance said:

Sorry but if you weren't alive to see the Pats in the 60's and 70's then you're really not qualified to comment on how good or bad they were. Most of y'all commenting weren't even born and you're way off the mark. Let me set the record straight because I was there: the 60s Patriots were good more often than not in the afl- had dome exciting players incl. my namesake hands down best pats rb of all time. In the mid70's they hsf very good teams-and one great team-76-best team in the NFL that year. 76 was much stronger than the 85 team that went to the SB. Pats had decent teams in the 80's. The TRUE suckiness period was late 80's- especially early 90s. Parcells brought em back to respectability. The BB/TB era is the greatest longest- running dynasty in NFL history. I didn't think any team would ever do what the miners did in the 80s but Pats surpassed it. That being said- don't rewrite history. The actual team(I'm talking product on the field ONLY) was never a laughingstock except for brief period in early 90s. Part of that bad rep, wasn't due to the team but the ownership. Billy Sullivan was one of the biggest clowns to ever own an NFL team. But most of the actual teams weren't terrible- some good some mediocre. The biggest laughingstock in the NFL in the 60s was the steelers. Year after year they sucked.

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Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

I'm thinking along the same lines as you but not completely.

I think the turning point came for the Pats at the beginning of the B&B era. Before that, with the exception of the Rust/MacPhearson years that you mentioned, the Pats were fairly successful in every decade. They just hadn't won it all yet.

I think the longest running dynasty is still the 49ers, but the B&B Show is without a doubt the top player coach duo of all time. Even with the handicapping of the team by the NYJFL, they're still going to shatter the 49ers record too.

I don't buy the Billy Sullivan hate. If not for him and the help of some of the old guard AFL owners, there might not have been a team in Boston. Sure, he didn't have the capital as some of those guys, but he kept the team going here.

I remember the Brady/Bledsoe War of 2001. That was when we (the Brady fans) had to listen to all of the "Drew could have done that" talk that dampened the Pats first SB win. At that time I teasingly named those fans the Bledsholes. Tom has silenced that crowd and his critics for good.

Yes, I liked Drew also, and if he didn't handle his demotion as well as he did in 2001 he could have split that locker room in two. His true class showed up during that time. But Tom just didn't make the mistakes that Drew made. Tom never forced a ball into coverage or made a dumb play. Drew did that far too often. Tom could throw that swing pass to the back swinging out of the backfield perfectly. Drew struggled with that. Neither QB was accurate on the long stuff but Tom usually missed long and out of the defender's range.

Galeb said:

Good teams rarely miss the playoffs. A 4-6 playoff record in 30 years is crap no matter what you think your eyes told you. Sure, I didn't watch games before the mid 80s. That doesn't change the fact that a team that makes the playoffs 6 times in 30 years, loses 50% more playoff games than they win and never wins a Superbowl, has been crappy more often than not.

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On the surface that argument makes sense, but dig a little deeper. The number of teams that make the playoffs has changed dramatically over the years. As a result, comparing number of playoff appearances and playoff won-loss records over time is a comparison of apples to oranges. Good teams may rarely miss the playoffs today, but that was not always the case.

There was a time that it was not the least bit unusual for a team that won twice as many games as they lost (or better), or a four-loss team to miss the playoffs entirely. Today on the other hand it is not the least bit unusual for a seven-loss team (or worse) to make the playoffs, while teams with losing records don't get eliminated until the final game of the regular season.

We have gone from the playoffs consisting of one game to two, to as many as four for the championship team. The expanded format means that the total number of wins will obviously be more now. For older teams the improved competition due to their being fewer teams in the post-season makes their cumulative won-loss winning percentage appear to be mediocre. A more accurate comparison would be a current teams' W-L record in the Super Bowl, or in conference championship games plus the Super Bowl, or comparing playoff appearance from past years to current appearances in a conference championship game.

jmt57 said:

On the surface that argument makes sense, but dig a little deeper. The number of teams that make the playoffs has changed dramatically over the years. As a result, comparing number of playoff appearances and playoff won-loss records over time is a comparison of apples to oranges. Good teams may rarely miss the playoffs today, but that was not always the case.

There was a time that it was not the least bit unusual for a team that won twice as many games as they lost (or better), or a four-loss team to miss the playoffs entirely. Today on the other hand it is not the least bit unusual for a seven-loss team (or worse) to make the playoffs, while teams with losing records don't get eliminated until the final game of the regular season.

We have gone from the playoffs consisting of one game to two, to as many as four for the championship team. The expanded format means that the total number of wins will obviously be more now. For older teams the improved competition due to their being fewer teams in the post-season makes their cumulative won-loss winning percentage appear to be mediocre. A more accurate comparison would be a current teams' W-L record in the Super Bowl, or in conference championship games plus the Super Bowl, or comparing playoff appearance from past years to current appearances in a conference championship game.

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I did dig deeper when in a previous post I compared the pre Kraft Pats to examples of teams that I was told were worse. Only 3 out of 7 of the teams used were clearly worse than the Pats, and 3 were clearly better. It's not apples to oranges when you are comparing the exact same years for each team. Now that it's been established that it's an apples to apples comparison, I shall address the rest of your argument.

There are two problems with using "the record of teams that missed the playoffs" as a metric. First, there is a metric that measures exactly how hard it is for teams to get into the playoffs; total number of teams/teams that make the playoffs. Second, there was much less parity before the days of the salary cap and free agency. In other words, more teams had really good or really bad records vs. .500 ish records than in today's game.

Here is a grid showing the proper metric for determining how hard it is to get into the playoffs after each expansion and format change. I left of before the merger because the # of teams differed between the AFL and NFL.

Timeframe Total Teams Playoff teams Total/Playoff
2002 expansion 32 12 2.67
1999 expansion 31 12 2.58
1995 expansion 30 12 2.50
1990 format change 28 12 2.33
1978 expansion 28 10 2.80
1976 expansion 28 8 3.50
1970 Merger 26 8 3.25

Although it was more difficult to get into the playoffs until 1990, it was never greater than 1 in 3.5. Less teams in the playoffs and less playoff games certainly affects the number of playoff games played, but it has no bearing on Win Percentage. Not only that, less teams in the league means a team should make the superbowl more often.

Even though it was siginificantly easier to get into the playoffs after 1989, only 3 years (9%) of the timeframe I cited took place during that period. On average during the previous period a team should have made it into the playoffs more than once every 3 years. The Patriots (Who weren't in the playoffs from 1990-1993) were in the playoffs less than once every 6 years. No matter how you slice it, before Robert Kraft purchased the team in 1994, the Patriots fielded a crappy team more often than not.

Sources:
National Football League playoffs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timeline of the National Football League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I guess we will agree to disagree. I don't buy into the 'Patriots were always terrible before 2001' mantra that so many fans of other teams love to parrot.

The Patriots had two really bad dry spells: the post-Holovak/pre-Fairbanks era (error?) of Clive Rush and John Mazur from 1967-73, and the post-Berry/pre-Parcells era of Rod Rust and **** MacPherson from 1989-93. Over a period of about forty years, that should not be unexpected. With only a very few exceptions that is the norm.

The Patriots have had a grand total of 18 losing seasons in their entire existence. Seven occurred in the first down run referenced above, five more in the second span. There was also one more losing season under Fairbanks, Parcells and Belichick.

As we have witnessed over the last fifteen years, it is really, really, really hard to win a championship. Not winning the Super Bowl does not equate to being terrible.

The Patriots pre-Kraft, or pre-Belichick/Brady were not horrible. Average perhaps, but not nearly as bad as many fans of other teams would love to convince everyone.

jmt57 said:

I guess we will agree to disagree. I don't buy into the 'Patriots were always terrible before 2001' mantra that so many fans of other teams love to parrot.

The Patriots had two really bad dry spells: the post-Holovak/pre-Fairbanks era (error?) of Clive Rush and John Mazur from 1967-73, and the post-Berry/pre-Parcells era of Rod Rust and **** MacPherson from 1989-93. Over a period of about forty years, that should not be unexpected. With only a very few exceptions that is the norm.

The Patriots have had a grand total of 18 losing seasons in their entire existence. Seven occurred in the first down run referenced above, five more in the second span. There was also one more losing season under Fairbanks, Parcells and Belichick.

As we have witnessed over the last fifteen years, it is really, really, really hard to win a championship. Not winning the Super Bowl does not equate to being terrible.

The Patriots pre-Kraft, or pre-Belichick/Brady were not horrible. Average perhaps, but not nearly as bad as many fans of other teams would love to convince everyone.

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You're arguing against something different than what I'm actually saying. I'm not saying the Pats were always horrible. My argument is that before Kraft, more often than not, the Patriots didn't field a good team. You're calling a team "average" that made the playoffs at less than half the frequency that an average team should have. This doesn't mean that they never fielded good teams during that time period, but from a legacy/success standpoint, they were certainly in the bottom third of the league, a tier made up of mostly expansion teams.

The foundation of your argument was thoroughly squashed. Your perspective needs some re-evaluation.

Galeb said:

The foundation of your argument was thoroughly squashed. Your perspective needs some re-evaluation.

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In post #28 you state "lets not pretend that a team with 4 playoff wins in 33 years wasn't crappy most of the time", and in post #34 you claim that there were only three franchises historically worse than the Patriots prior to 1993.

We can agree to disagree on how good or bad the Patriots were or were not prior to 2001, but I do not believe that my perspective is in need of re-evaluation or that my argument was thoroughly squashed. For several of those years only two teams in the entire league made the playoffs. Eighteen out of 50+ - and that's including years of being one or two games game below .500 - does not equal "most of the time".

Unless of course anything less than a championship is 'crappy'.

jmt57 said:

In post #28 you state "lets not pretend that a team with 4 playoff wins in 33 years wasn't crappy most of the time", and in post #34 you claim that there were only three franchises historically worse than the Patriots prior to 1993.

We can agree to disagree on how good or bad the Patriots were or were not prior to 2001, but I do not believe that my perspective is in need of re-evaluation or that my argument was thoroughly squashed. For several of those years only two teams in the entire league made the playoffs. Eighteen out of 50+ - and that's including years of being one or two games game below .500 - does not equal "most of the time".

Unless of course anything less than a championship is 'crappy'.

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First, most = more than half. Given that the Patriots had 17 losing seasons in the 33 years that I cited, the statement that they fielded crappy teams more often than not is true.

Second, I never said there there were only 3 teams worse than the Pats. The person I responded to gave 7 examples of teams that were worse than the Pats, of which only 3 were clearly worse. Again, my statement was true.

Third, there were never more than 10 teams in the AFL, so your assertion that only 2 of 18 teams made the playoffs is completely false. During the 10 years of the AFL, the Pats only made the playoffs once which, like the later periods, was at half the frequency that an average team should have made the playoffs.

Your assertion that I said anything remotely similar to the idea that "anything less than a championship is crappy" is a total fabrication. A losing record is crappy, and the fact that the Pats had more losing records than winning records from 1960-1993 has already been cited.

Of your 4 attempts to counter my argument, one was a fact that was proven completely false, two were assertions that I argued something that I did not, and the 4th, the notion that the Pats fielded crappy teams more often than not, holds true unless you believe that a team with a losing record isn't crappy. Your argument has gone from the realm of squashed to completely eviscerated.

OMG, Can't we all just get along? You guys both have valid points, backed up by well-researched facts. "The fight's not here, it's out there!!!" I was a HUGE Pats fan especially when Fairbanks took over, and watched intently and excitedly in '73 and '75 when our records were horrible, but the team was loaded with good young talent and character. Analysis of Patriots fandom specifically, involves significant subjective, intangible and unique factors, which led to them being in fact beloved in ways similar to or even more than their professional sports counterparts in Boston.

The Pats' history is an endless sea of stories of ignominy (at the hands of Billy Sullivan), humiliation and embarrassment. But we loved them. Given the national hatred of the Celtics, and tepid fondness for the Sox or Bruins, I am profoundly amazed at how many people from other parts of the country I run into who aren't even fans, but still appreciate Pat Patriot and the Pats. They were, above all else, lovable. And that is what is missing today.

IcyPatriot said:

Surprised the trade Brady thread has not been summoned from the bowels of the forum.

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Give it time, especially if Jimmy G lights it up and the Pats are 4-0 when the GOAT returns. Lol

Everyone knows Micheal Bishop is the future. Duh!

1960Pats said:

I don't buy the Billy Sullivan hate. If not for him and the help of some of the old guard AFL owners, there might not have been a team in Boston. Sure, he didn't have the capital as some of those guys, but he kept the team going here.

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Pretty much spot on with your post EXCEPT for the last paragraph. What you said about the Sullivan's is all myth. NE at the time was the 6th largest TV market in the country. We were getting a team, if not in 1960 very soon thereafter. The Sullivan's chronic mismanagement of the team was legendary right from the start. We DID have the occasional decent team and some surprisingly good coaches (Saban, Holavak and Fairbanks off the top of my head), but those idiots soon drove the best of them away.

You can see their bad footprint from the bad field to the bad crowds that they attracted. By the 70's going to a Patriots game was NOT something you did with your family, at least anyone under 21 in you family.

As an aside, back in the 80's I played tag football for the Celtics front office for about 5 years. Jan Volk ran the team and played (another old fogey who couldn't let go ). Based on some of the stories I heard, the Sullivan's mismanagement was no secret among the pro sports teams in Boston

The thing that IMHO showed the Sullivan's true colors was the way they got complete control of the team. It's not like they put up all the money at first. Most people don't remember that there were many stockholders to put up money to get the team started. All of them ended up getting screwed when Billy Sullivan pulled a power play and forced them to sell. It was after the point where it looked like the team was settling in and start to increase in value. NONE of those stockholder got true value for their investment.

How bad was the Sullivan regime? By the mid-80's the NFL was literally a cash cow. Even then the TV money was (at the time) making every team in the league millions.....and those idiots STILL managed to lose the team.

patfanken said:

Pretty much spot on with your post EXCEPT for the last paragraph. What you said about the Sullivan's is all myth. NE at the time was the 6th largest TV market in the country. We were getting a team, if not in 1960 very soon thereafter. The Sullivan's chronic mismanagement of the team was legendary right from the start. We DID have the occasional decent team and some surprisingly good coaches (Saban, Holavak and Fairbanks off the top of my head), but those idiots soon drove the best of them away.

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With the whole Grey/Hannah fiasco being the icing on the cake.

patfanken said:

The thing that IMHO showed the Sullivan's true colors was the way they got complete control of the team. It's not like they put up all the money at first. Most people don't remember that there were many stockholders to put up money to get the team started. All of them ended up getting screwed when Billy Sullivan pulled a power play and forced them to sell. It was after the point where it looked like the team was settling in and start to increase in value. NONE of those stockholder got true value for their investment.

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For example:

Washington Post said:

With the help of his son, Charles, a Wall Street attorney, Sullivan engineered an unorthodox corporate takeover of the team that would effectively eliminate his rivals from the Patriot's front office.

The battle, however, would continue in the courts. And 10 years later the Sullivans would lose judgments of more than $10 million to stockholders who said they had been swindled.

In the takeover, the Sullivans used the team as collateral to borrow the funds to buy out the other owners. Court records show the Sullivans borrowed more than $5 million and paid about $102 per share for the voting stock.

In order to use the team as collateral, the Sullivans also had to acquire the 139,800 shares of nonvoting stock. To do this, they formed a corporation -- New England Patriots Football Club Inc. -- and proposed a merger with the owners of the nonvoting stock. In the merger, which was approved by a slim majority of stockholders, the Sullivans paid $15 for each nonvoting share.

Several holders of nonvoting stock who'd opposed the merger filed lawsuits claiming the Sullivans had undervalued their shares and that there was no legitimate purpose for the takeover other than collateralizing personal bank loans to the Sullivans.

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and later in the same article

Washington Post said:

In May, the state Supreme Judicial Court handed down decisions in two of the suits filed against the Sullivans and ruled that they had acted illegally when they took control.

The court said the nonvoting stock the Sullivans had bought was worth $80. The court ordered the Sullivans to pay the difference, plus interest. Awards in the two cases totaled $3.1 million. Later, a federal court would rule that plaintiffs in a third suit were entitled to another $7 million.

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NFL APPROVES SALE OF NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS TO REEBOK'S CHAIRMAN

That article also had this bit of foreshadowing:

Washington Post said:

Standing in the way of Paul Fireman's $67 million offer for the team that William H. (Billy) Sullivan Jr. built is another young Boston businessman with plenty of money, a television station and maybe a bankrtupcy court on his side.

The competitor is Robert Kraft, president of WNEV television, the Boston CBS affiliate, and the head of Rand-Whitney Group Inc., a packaging and forest products firm.

Last year, Kraft acquired an option to buy land that controls parking around Sullivan Stadium, the team's home turf in Foxboro, Mass. The company that operates the stadium has filed for protection from its creditors in bankruptcy court. And court records show he's made an offer to buy the 61,000-seat facility for $22 million -- a price that a federal bankruptcy court may be unable to ignore.

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patfanken said:

Pretty much spot on with your post EXCEPT for the last paragraph. What you said about the Sullivan's is all myth. NE at the time was the 6th largest TV market in the country. We were getting a team, if not in 1960 very soon thereafter. The Sullivan's chronic mismanagement of the team was legendary right from the start. We DID have the occasional decent team and some surprisingly good coaches (Saban, Holavak and Fairbanks off the top of my head), but those idiots soon drove the best of them away.

You can see their bad footprint from the bad field to the bad crowds that they attracted. By the 70's going to a Patriots game was NOT something you did with your family, at least anyone under 21 in you family.

As an aside, back in the 80's I played tag football for the Celtics front office for about 5 years. Jan Volk ran the team and played (another old fogey who couldn't let go ). Based on some of the stories I heard, the Sullivan's mismanagement was no secret among the pro sports teams in Boston

The thing that IMHO showed the Sullivan's true colors was the way they got complete control of the team. It's not like they put up all the money at first. Most people don't remember that there were many stockholders to put up money to get the team started. All of them ended up getting screwed when Billy Sullivan pulled a power play and forced them to sell. It was after the point where it looked like the team was settling in and start to increase in value. NONE of those stockholder got true value for their investment.

How bad was the Sullivan regime? By the mid-80's the NFL was literally a cash cow. Even then the TV money was (at the time) making every team in the league millions.....and those idiots STILL managed to lose the team.

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You are of course, correct. I feel especially bad about the stockholders, who did sue but as you note, never got their return. Don't remember anybody feeling bad about Chuck Sullivan sleeping in the offices of Sullivan Stadium, after the Victory Tour disaster. It was no secret, everybody knew, and the local media did nothing to spare them.

Yet, there was still a football team playing, out there on the field. Not much to be proud of off it, but most New England fans watched them, rooted for them, and came to appreciate their efforts and accomplishments on the field, where it counts, and mostly their behavior off it, and came to see objectively and therefore detest the other pretentious but phony teams, their opposition. So, while youngsters like to divorce themselves from this team's origins, those of us who rooted for the team for thirty-three years will always have affection for those players and coaches, despite being disenfranchised in 1993 and thus prevented from seeing our team succeed since, instead of some nondescript arena-league retread.

patfanken said:

Pretty much spot on with your post EXCEPT for the last paragraph. What you said about the Sullivan's is all myth. NE at the time was the 6th largest TV market in the country. We were getting a team, if not in 1960 very soon thereafter. The Sullivan's chronic mismanagement of the team was legendary right from the start. We DID have the occasional decent team and some surprisingly good coaches (Saban, Holavak and Fairbanks off the top of my head), but those idiots soon drove the best of them away.

You can see their bad footprint from the bad field to the bad crowds that they attracted. By the 70's going to a Patriots game was NOT something you did with your family, at least anyone under 21 in you family.

As an aside, back in the 80's I played tag football for the Celtics front office for about 5 years. Jan Volk ran the team and played (another old fogey who couldn't let go ). Based on some of the stories I heard, the Sullivan's mismanagement was no secret among the pro sports teams in Boston

The thing that IMHO showed the Sullivan's true colors was the way they got complete control of the team. It's not like they put up all the money at first. Most people don't remember that there were many stockholders to put up money to get the team started. All of them ended up getting screwed when Billy Sullivan pulled a power play and forced them to sell. It was after the point where it looked like the team was settling in and start to increase in value. NONE of those stockholder got true value for their investment.

How bad was the Sullivan regime? By the mid-80's the NFL was literally a cash cow. Even then the TV money was (at the time) making every team in the league millions.....and those idiots STILL managed to lose the team.

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Thanks for the memories. The Sullivans were definitely a sad sack bunch compared to the other owners.

Right on about the atmosphere at Sullivan Stadium in the 70's. One of my worst experiences at any event occurred there then.

As much as I dislike the way Kraft handled the "gates" with the team, he's still miles ahead of Sullivan as an owner.

I wonder if Sullivan could have derailed Brady's success if he were still the owner. He probably could have.

Has Bledsoe been traded yet?