So what we have is the same team who got blown out at home by Baltimore just a year older and minus Wes Welker. Awesome stuff.
Cue the 'He's a troll" posts, sorry don't see any reason to drink any kool-aid.
People are so quick to dismiss or hype a team based on a couple of games, it's bizarre. Did the 2001 Pats really have more talent on their roster than the Rams? Of course not. Or the 2007 Giants over the Pats? No. Teams get hot and teams get cold -- momentum is everything -- and the Pats last year basically had crap momentum by the end of the year.
But the Pats' roster last year had enough talent to get it done. They were light on the pass rush, no doubt, but they have impact talent all up and down the roster and one of the top three quarterbacks in the game, who on any given week is arguably the best quarterback in the game. You could do a lot worse than bring back the core of last year's team, particularly given the number of young players on defense who are likely to get better.
The Colts team that looked so dominant last year -- it's hard to argue that they had so much more talent than the Pats. Their impact players are Manning, Freeney, Clark, Wayne, and after that it's really just a bunch of solid guys like Jeff Saturday, Mathis, Brackett, Melvin Bullitt -- exactly the kinds of guys we're re-signing now. But the Colts had great chemistry and cohesion, much like the Pats teams of 5-6 years ago. They played like a team that had been together forever and it showed.
The Pats' current core of Brady, Moss, Welker, Wilfork and Mayo matches up with anyone talent-wise, but they were just out of sync all year. Brady was coming off an injury and there was huge turnover on defense. They uncharacteristically came up small in some big situations and that seemed to be in their heads all year. And then the Welker injury really took the wind out of their sails at the end. When guys don't believe they're going to win in the NFL, they won't.
There was just a lot of stuff going on that didn't have a lot to do with the talent level. I think they're smart to just bring everyone back, weed out the malcontents, bring in a few young guys and try again to get the team chemistry where it was a few years ago.