Brady and Belichick are mortals, not gods

[Salva135]

I don't like to think of the last 8 years as a "waste" as much as it is an "underachievement." The Pats have had major championship equity at least 3-4 times since their last Super Bowl ('06, '07, '11, '12) and came out with none. We can examine all of the Clay Matthews-esque missed draft picks that may have put them over the top, but they came close enough to win it all on their own merits enough times. Injuries certainly played a major part, but so did some horrible luck and some serious under-performance by our marquee players, including Tom. So I tend to blame the players more than the management here.

I just don't think BB and the FO made any huge errors that could have been foreseen that truly held this team back from more multiple Lombardis. They had their chances, they blew it, and sadly, Brady and BB's legacy will be as notable for their playoff failures as it was for their playoff successes. It is what it is.

 

[PATSNUTme]

So, you mean my shire that I worship is made up of false prophets?

OOPs, I posted this it in the WEEI forum. I'll move it to the Patriots football forum when I can find it.

 

[Salva135]

Let's face it, we're all kind of bitter deep down that this team, given the right bounces and a few other personnel moves, could have plausibly had 5-6 Lombardis, including a perfect season with the Best Team of All Time label that would have made Brady the indisputable GOAT and squashed all of the SpyGate crap, with bragging rights for life. Instead, the opposite has happened.

 

[PP2]

I wouldn't go that far, but there's your red zone offense and more. I do think we didn't have as good a receiver corp between Welker and the TEs. Ouchostinko was a horrible waste of time and effort, Faulk was missed (no disrespect to Woodhead, but he wasn't Faulk) and I'm not sure if Lloyd was the best fit.

Of course the proof is to be seen, if we get Sanders, but i think he and Donald Jones might work because they play roles we've had success with using Brady's skills at quick decision making and accuracy.

Sanders is fast and has that shuttle, cone quickness, he's not a jag as far as what we look for.

It's not just his red zone prowess or passcatching, but his tremendous blocking which changes the complexion of our running game. I'd say he literally adds another 2-3 YPC to the run game.

 

[RayClay]

Let's face it, we're all kind of bitter deep down that this team, given the right bounces and a few other personnel moves, could have plausibly had 5-6 Lombardis, including a perfect season with the Best Team of All Time label that would have made Brady the indisputable GOAT and squashed all of the SpyGate crap, with bragging rights for life. Instead, the opposite has happened.

Not me. I've been following the team since 1961 and I am thrilled every year that we have a real chance to win it all.

I guess it's how you look at it.

 

[RayClay]

It's not just his red zone prowess or passcatching, but his tremendous blocking which changes the complexion of our running game. I'd say he literally adds another 2-3 YPC to the run game.

Yeah, it's hard to estimate the value we lose when he's out, but you have to make that adjustment some how.

Unlike some, I don't feel entitled to a super bowl victory every year, but teams that win it all usually have to overcome a lot to do it.

 

[Bostonlove]

Wait if Brady and Bill aren't gods who have I been praying to?

 

[Lifer]

This attempt at a linear analysis is absurd. The only thing one could say accurately about this hypothetical is that without Brady, the Pats are likely to be less successful. To say "without Brady and BB, the Pats would be XYZ" is meaningless unless we know who is replacing them. If the Pats replaced Brady with Rodgers, they'd still be pretty good... with Curtis Painter, not so much.

That said, the Cassel year is a unique situation just like any other, and provides us with little predictive utility.

Oh come on, no kidding, if they replace him with Aaron Rodgers...that is exactly the point. Unless you are the Colts and are lucky enough to have Manning go down (and we saw the impact that had on the Colts) and you fall into Andrew Luck, or you sign Steve Young from the USFL, you dont just have a smooth transition. I think you people are in denial just how much this run has been about Tom Brady, and to a lesser degree, the Bill Belichick. "Without Brady they are likely to be less successful". Ya think?

 

[Lifer]

I don't like to think of the last 8 years as a "waste" as much as it is an "underachievement." The Pats have had major championship equity at least 3-4 times since their last Super Bowl ('06, '07, '11, '12) and came out with none. We can examine all of the Clay Matthews-esque missed draft picks that may have put them over the top, but they came close enough to win it all on their own merits enough times. Injuries certainly played a major part, but so did some horrible luck and some serious under-performance by our marquee players, including Tom. So I tend to blame the players more than the management here.

I just don't think BB and the FO made any huge errors that could have been foreseen that truly held this team back from more multiple Lombardis. They had their chances, they blew it, and sadly, Brady and BB's legacy will be as notable for their playoff failures as it was for their playoff successes. It is what it is.

Thats ridiculous. Nobody thinks "Well the Steelers should have had 6 in the 70's" or "Those Niners had a shot at 8 and blew it". Sure, the Larry Bird Celtics could have had 5 but is that what you first think? If anyone looks back at this run without first thinking of how great its been then either youre 22 and were too young to appreciate it or just will never enjoy sports.

 

[Steve102]

 

[tonyto3690]

People are spoiled by the fact we had 3 in 4 years. NEWS FLASH: a lot of things have to go right for that to happen.

Even when you're the better team, it doesn't mean you're going to win (06, 07, 10, 12).

The fact the team has been serious competitors for so long speaks to the greatness of the two. Just because they didn't win a championship means they were underachieving. Expecting them to win 2 championships every 3 years for 15 years is just ridiculous.

The past 13 years have been an awesome run of dominance. IIRC we have more 12+ win seasons in that span of time than the Raiders and several other teams have 8+ win seasons. We have more wins in the past 5 years than teams like the Jaguars have had in a decade.

 

[jmt57]

Some food for thought:

From 1989 to 2000, there was a 12-year span where every single champion was either first or second in wins during the regular season. Only three of the last six NFL champions have ranked in the top ten in wins, and four of the last six champions have been either 9-7 or 10-6; it could easily have been one more had the 9-7 Cardinals hung on to beat Pittsburgh.

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | 10,000 Seasons Revisited

If baseball can play three seven-game series and find that the last team standing was the worst of the eight over a 162-game sample [2011 St. Louis Cardinals], and hockey can play four seven-game series and find that the last team standing was ranked 13th out of those 16 over an 82-game sample [2011-12 Los Angeles Kings], how ridiculous is it to think that a team that was one of the worst out of a dozen teams in a 16-game sample can be the best out of those same dozen teams in a four-game sample?​

The 16-game sample problem is compounded by the fact that a team is not actually the same team over all four months, or in the fifth month of the postseason. I'm not talking about the idea of end-season momentum, whether it's good or bad for a team to go into the playoffs having lost X games in a row or whatever. Instead, I'm talking about the effects of concrete changes like health, playing time, and scheme. It's legitimate to say that the Ravens were a better team in the playoffs than they were for most of the regular season because their defense was healthier. It's legitimate to say that the Patriots and 49ers were not as good as they were during the regular season because they were stuck playing without Rob Gronkowski or with a subpar Justin Smith. (People tend to see comments like this as an excuse, but they are meant to be an explanation.) Baltimore shuffled around its offensive line. San Francisco introduced the pistol after hardly using it at all during the regular season.​

Ten Thousand Seasons | Pro Football Reference

Let's get to the question of the day, which is: how often does the best team in the NFL win the Super Bowl?

The answer is roughly 24% of the time.

I simulated 10,000 seasons. The table below shows that the best team won the Super Bowl 2,399 times, the second-best team won it 1,448 times, and so...​

 

[Ivan]

I just don't think BB and the FO made any huge errors that could have been foreseen that truly held this team back from more multiple Lombardis. They had their chances, they blew it, and sadly, Brady and BB's legacy will be as notable for their playoff failures as it was for their playoff successes. It is what it is.

Brady has the best play-off record of all time and Belichick and Brady have either the best record as a pair or top 2-3. If that means they are going to be known for their play-off failures as much as their success then the same goes for every coach and QB.

 

[lillloyd]

Not me. I've been following the team since 1961 and I am thrilled every year that we have a real chance to win it all.

I guess it's how you look at it.

Amen to this. I wasn't happy about it at the time, but in hindsight I'm kinda grateful that I grew up *after* the Steelers 70s dynasty--it was 25 years before they won a SB when I was fan. A long wait for sure, but it helped me realize that a team can have a great year without winning the Super Bowl. I think a lot of my younger Steelers fan brethren are so used to Super Bowls and perennial contention that they can't appreciate anything but a championship, which is a shame.

As other posters have pointed out, there's too much luck and randomness involved in the NFL postseason to reasonably expect that you can win the whole thing every year. In every dynasty run there is both good luck and bad luck that more or less balances over time; for example the Pats' '01 team was a tremendous story, but I seriously doubt that even people on this board would argue (?) that they were the dominant teams of '03 and '04. In many respects that '01 team "shouldn't" have won, and benefited from a good amount of good fortune along the way. I'm sure the posters here would argue that '08 was the flip side of that. So the Pats have experienced both along the way, which is about what you'd expect over a 12 year period.

But to argue that the team "should have" won several more Super Bowls ignores the fact that most dynasties have bad luck along the way at times, and leave some championships "on the table" as it were. And ironically it almost devalues what the Pats *have* accomplished as a multiple SB winner (in the FA era no less--all the more impressive!): to win even a single championship, you have to put yourself in position to win as a legitimate contender repeatedly over time--typically, for many years--to offset the inherent capriciousness of "Lady Luck" in the NFL.

 

[lillloyd]

Some food for thought:

From 1989 to 2000, there was a 12-year span where every single champion was either first or second in wins during the regular season. Only three of the last six NFL champions have ranked in the top ten in wins, and four of the last six champions have been either 9-7 or 10-6; it could easily have been one more had the 9-7 Cardinals hung on to beat Pittsburgh.

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | 10,000 Seasons Revisited

If baseball can play three seven-game series and find that the last team standing was the worst of the eight over a 162-game sample [2011 St. Louis Cardinals], and hockey can play four seven-game series and find that the last team standing was ranked 13th out of those 16 over an 82-game sample [2011-12 Los Angeles Kings], how ridiculous is it to think that a team that was one of the worst out of a dozen teams in a 16-game sample can be the best out of those same dozen teams in a four-game sample?​

The 16-game sample problem is compounded by the fact that a team is not actually the same team over all four months, or in the fifth month of the postseason. I'm not talking about the idea of end-season momentum, whether it's good or bad for a team to go into the playoffs having lost X games in a row or whatever. Instead, I'm talking about the effects of concrete changes like health, playing time, and scheme. It's legitimate to say that the Ravens were a better team in the playoffs than they were for most of the regular season because their defense was healthier. It's legitimate to say that the Patriots and 49ers were not as good as they were during the regular season because they were stuck playing without Rob Gronkowski or with a subpar Justin Smith. (People tend to see comments like this as an excuse, but they are meant to be an explanation.) Baltimore shuffled around its offensive line. San Francisco introduced the pistol after hardly using it at all during the regular season.​

Ten Thousand Seasons | Pro Football Reference

Let's get to the question of the day, which is: how often does the best team in the NFL win the Super Bowl?

The answer is roughly 24% of the time.

I simulated 10,000 seasons. The table below shows that the best team won the Super Bowl 2,399 times, the second-best team won it 1,448 times, and so...​

My $.02 is that the dream of "Parity Pete" Rozelle has been fully realized, and that player movement has made the line between even the really good teams and the mediocre or bad ones razor thin. Being the #1 seed in 1978 or even 1992 is a different universe than being the #1 seed in 2012.

A team getting hot at the right time in the 70s would still probably get stomped by that era's superteams, which could stockpile and KEEP their talent. But nowadays, getting hot is often enough to allow a team to cross that line from being a pretty good team to a "great" one.

To put it more succinctly: there aren't any GREAT teams anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. The '03 - '04 Pats are probably the closest thing we will see to a powerhouse dynasty in the modern era.

 

[lillloyd]

I'm a stats\history guy, so I go by stats and history.

Let's compare the best three dynasty's to ever play in this league.

Pat's 2001-Present
Steelers 1972-1979
49'ers 1981-1994

Steelers:

List of Pittsburgh Steelers seasons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

49'ers:

List of San Francisco 49ers seasons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pat's:

List of New England Patriots seasons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Steelers Winning record(including playoffs) from 1972-1979 was 102-31 with 4 SuperBowl wins in four tries.


Pat's Winning record (including playoffs) from 2001-Present is 163-53 with 3 SuperBowl wins and 5 trips to the big game total.


49'ers Winning record (including playoffs) from 1981-1994 178 -63-1 with 45 Superbowl wins in 5 tries. Take into account the last SuperBowl winning team was lead by different coaches and players.


You could argue out the Steelers, since there run didn't stand the test of time like the Pats and the 49'ers have. I like to include them because of the history of the run and how good they were in that short time frame. Never the less we aren't going to see another run like the Steelers had again and that would be my argument.

The 49'er are the best dynasty ever at the moment, they have the wins the stats the rings.

So the best two teams ever are the Pat's of today and the 49'ers of yesterday.

So the question of:

Well sure we could we could also win a Superbowl with R.Leaf, doesn't mean its gonna happen...lol

The Pat's in the whole history of the game are in the top 2 of all time, BB and Tommy have nothing to prove that they haven't already. I'm so proud of this team and its coaches, injury,drama whatever they always pull together and they might not always win or have 5 rings but they are always in the game and they play lights out!

In 1996 when I walked into a card shop, (you know those things we used to drive to to buy a pack of card or trade them in) the guy working asked me what team I liked I said the Pat's and he just laughed....I'll never forget that moment. When the Pat's won the SuperBowl in 2001 I remembered that after the game,(I was loaded too) and I just laughed....it brought a smile to my face.

People forget how bad things used to be, they forget the bad years and it seems a ton of fans just think its easy to win or something....ITS NOT! We are watching history!!! I for one am amazed how some fans can be so complacent...and i'm not talking about the OP he just asked a question.

Wait a second, you're eliminating Pitt based on the fact that they won more SBs than the Pats too quickly?! C'mon man!

In all seriousness, in some ways I think it's pointless to compare across eras, and furthermore that it unnecessarily diminishes the amazing accomplishments the teams being compared. The 70s were about super teams--massive talent stockpiles that could be retained due to a complete lack of player movement. Pittsburgh deserves its own category for its utter dominance over an 8 year span, something that's simply not possible in the modern era.

You could argue that NE did something even more impressive, winning 3 SBs in a 4 year span, in an era where there aren't "super teams", and stringing together SB wins is much harder to do... But again it almost devalues the teams' respective accomplishments to compare them.; the NFL was so different that they might as well have been playing completely different games.

 

[Joker]

Wait a second, you're eliminating Pitt based on the fact that they won more SBs than the Pats too quickly?! C'mon man!

In all seriousness, in some ways I think it's pointless to compare across eras, and furthermore that it unnecessarily diminishes the amazing accomplishments the teams being compared. The 70s were about super teams--massive talent stockpiles that could be retained due to a complete lack of player movement. Pittsburgh deserves its own category for its utter dominance over an 8 year span, something that's simply not possible in the modern era.

You could argue that NE did something even more impressive, winning 3 SBs in a 4 year span, in an era where there aren't "super teams", and stringing together SB wins is much harder to do... But again it almost devalues the teams' respective accomplishments to compare them.; the NFL was so different that they might as well have been playing completely different games.

Yes, what the Patriots did WAS impressive...let's not forget it took a miracle drive for a FG in the first one, a comeback and another comeback in a shootout in the second one and a puking choke by the opposing QB in the third one for the Pats to claim victory. I was a young man when the Steelers and Bradshaw had their run. THAT was a ridiculous team. They had no weakness on ANY unit.

 

[RayClay]

Amen to this. I wasn't happy about it at the time, but in hindsight I'm kinda grateful that I grew up *after* the Steelers 70s dynasty--it was 25 years before they won a SB when I was fan. A long wait for sure, but it helped me realize that a team can have a great year without winning the Super Bowl. I think a lot of my younger Steelers fan brethren are so used to Super Bowls and perennial contention that they can't appreciate anything but a championship, which is a shame.

As other posters have pointed out, there's too much luck and randomness involved in the NFL postseason to reasonably expect that you can win the whole thing every year. In every dynasty run there is both good luck and bad luck that more or less balances over time; for example the Pats' '01 team was a tremendous story, but I seriously doubt that even people on this board would argue (?) that they were the dominant teams of '03 and '04. In many respects that '01 team "shouldn't" have won, and benefited from a good amount of good fortune along the way. I'm sure the posters here would argue that '08 was the flip side of that. So the Pats have experienced both along the way, which is about what you'd expect over a 12 year period.

But to argue that the team "should have" won several more Super Bowls ignores the fact that most dynasties have bad luck along the way at times, and leave some championships "on the table" as it were. And ironically it almost devalues what the Pats *have* accomplished as a multiple SB winner (in the FA era no less--all the more impressive!): to win even a single championship, you have to put yourself in position to win as a legitimate contender repeatedly over time--typically, for many years--to offset the inherent capriciousness of "Lady Luck" in the NFL.

Great post. Think of teams like the Lions or Browns and we can be thankful to have organizations where we can even expect to compete with a few off season moves.

The Patriots have a funny history. Contrary to the beliefs of some, they weren't always losers. From 1961-1964 they went 10-3-1 and 9-4-1 twice around a losing season and of course had the Fairbanks, Berry and Parcells eras. But they didn't have the solid organization due to money, legal and stadium issues mostly, so when they collapsed it was really hard to be confident they'd turn it around.

My own belief is that our young and developing defense will gel in a few years and carry the team. As great as Tom is, I think the force that made us great champions had more to do with the defensive corps Parcells drafted maturing together, along with the great, cheap pickup of Vrabel.

Either way, Kraft has learned from Belichick, he loves football and he's stable with money. We're lucky, as are Steelers fans, in that regard.

 

[RayClay]

Yes, what the Patriots did WAS impressive...let's not forget it took a miracle drive for a FG in the first one, a comeback and another comeback in a shootout in the second one and a puking choke by the opposing QB in the third one for the Pats to claim victory. I was a young man when the Steelers and Bradshaw had their run. THAT was a ridiculous team. They had no weakness on ANY unit.

It was a different world before the salary cap. You could build a team like a brick house.

 

[Lifer]

Great post. Think of teams like the Lions or Browns and we can be thankful to have organizations where we can even expect to compete with a few off season moves.

The Patriots have a funny history. Contrary to the beliefs of some, they weren't always losers. From 1961-1964 they went 10-3-1 and 9-4-1 twice around a losing season and of course had the Fairbanks, Berry and Parcells eras. But they didn't have the solid organization due to money, legal and stadium issues mostly, so when they collapsed it was really hard to be confident they'd turn it around.

My own belief is that our young and developing defense will gel in a few years and carry the team. As great as Tom is, I think the force that made us great champions had more to do with the defensive corps Parcells drafted maturing together, along with the great, cheap pickup of Vrabel.

Either way, Kraft has learned from Belichick, he loves football and he's stable with money. We're lucky, as are Steelers fans, in that regard.

Wait a second, the credit for 2001 goes to Parcells and not Belichick and Brady? Law, Milloy, Bruschi, and McGinest, and to a lesser extent that hear, Ted Johnson, were indeed huge factors. But they were there during the Pete Caroll years and it took Belichick coming back and getting the best out of them. And if Bledsoe doesnt get hurt they go 8-8 that year, they werent going anywhere offensively when he went down. Im sorry, im not giving credit for 2001 to five guys Parcells brought in half a decade earlier.