Didn't read the article, but....ONLY these teams have a shorter Lombardi drought than the Patriots:
Chiefs
Rams
Buccaneers
That is it.....
As for Superbowl droughts:
Chiefs
Niners
Buccaneers
Bengals
Rams
Eagles
It's less a Lombardi drought and more of a playoff winning drought. This team went from a minimum of making the conference title game from 2011 to 2018 to never winning a playoff game in 5 seasons. That's noticeable.
-Browns
-Jaguars
-Cowboys
-49'ers
-Giants
-Chiefs
-Eagles
-Rams
-Bills
-Ravens
-Bucaneers
-Saints
-Packers
-Titans
-Texans
-Seahawks
All of those teams have won a playoff game since the last time the Patriots won a playoff game. That's 16 teams. Half the league has won a playoff game in the last 5 season. And it's very probable that some more teams are added to that list this season (and we can pretty much say with certainty the Pats aren't making this years playoffs).
There's a difference between a quibbling over a Super Bowl drought which is the high end achievment that we have been spoiled on and saying that a dynasty that from 2001-2018 only had 4 seasons where they didn't win a playoff game all of a sudden goes through what will be a five year drought on that when half the league is doing what they have been unable to.
This isn't the dynasty Patriots anymore.
Thing is, during the Patriots Dynasty there was one player who bought into it totally, and set the example for the entire team: TB12.
That was the magic that produced the dynasty, QB and HC, each of them the GOAT in their respective roles, totally dedicated to discipline, consistency, working harder than anybody else, doing all the right things and doing them right, being unselfish, not taking penalties or turnovers. That was the Patriot Way. It worked, everybody else saw it work and bought into it and did the same things and it fed off itself. It made everyone better.
When TB left there was a giant hole and that ethos no longer resonated the way it had. They weren’t winning. The positive reinforcement isn’t there. Guys aren’t buying into the collective standard. They grumble about their coaches. The QB looks outside the building for coaching. The vibe isn’t there.
A big part is also bad injury luck. Bourne bought into it. He was having a good year. And now he’s on the IR. **** happens.
The bolded is the long and short of it. It's a lot easier to go to extreme lengths to listen to any leader when everytime you do, you get positive results. In sports if you listen to your coach and it always leads to wins, you start to just trust everything he says. At work if you start crushing it everytime you apply what your boss tells you, you start to just take for granted that he knows what he is doing.
When that doesn't happen, all of a sudden you start to look at the guy giving in orders and think "I did what you said and we aren't winning, why the hell am I going to run a million miles an hour for you and kill myself just because you said to?"
Brady bought into it because he was basically the low man on the depth chart that had to know his roll when he came on and, even when he got the job, could have easily been replaced by Bledsoe when he returned. Then he became a Super Bowl champion and MVP on a defensively driven team that beat the GSOT. So he got that positive result and bought in, and his talent propelled that to even more success and it became a self fulfilling thing. You had the most important guy seeing good outcomes and it locked him down for it and now nobody could really question both Belichick and Tom Brady. Even if you are someone like Revis, you come in from the outside, see all the success they had and say "screw it, if I kill myself for these guys, I have a good shot at being a champion at the end".
Bottomline, results matter and once the results dry up long enough, people lose willingness to buy in.
Same reason none of the Belichick coaches ever really made it. They came onto teams trying to pretend to be Bill, you already had skeptical players, they didn't produce results but acted like they deserved the same level renown and it ends in the teams checking out and becoming a disaster. Bill didn't come on the team being a hardass. He was a pretty personable guy early on who gave positive reinforcement to his players. He still does to an extent. At a point he hit a level where he became beyond reproach and having Brady and a well oiled unit kept that going for awhile. But the machine got old and that doesn't work with the new model that isn't getting all the losses and critcism.
