Pats will trick us

[PatsFanInVa]

Well back in 2001, the Pats got beat by an offensive juggernaut (the Rams) and had a rematch in the Super Bowl. I kind of like that outcome.

Since the name of the game in this thread (and lots of the ones like it) seem to be "compare the past to predict the future," I'll bite.

2001 was a scrappy Pats team proving they weren't intimidated by/could play with a juggernaut Rams team in the regular season, and having the attitude that there was a great deal more work to do - but that the L was a still an L, so shut up about moral victories.

Then they did the work, and won the SB.

Dare I say it... it was closer to the Giants' 2007 story. Just add a "re-" to the now-famous Proehl quote ("tonight, a dynasty is born,") and you have what was on every Pats fan's mind.

Look, the sky isn't falling, but it's not quite "nothing to see here, carry on," either. It's a wakeup call.

Through 04, well, we know what happened. Cinderella. Meltdown/"One and done" threat. Bounce-back through amazing free agency and good drafting.

05-06 were the return-to-mortal years. 07 repeated the free-agency home-run of Corey Dillon via Moss and Welker, with a dash of FU, NFL added. We all know what happened that year, just threw up a little in my mouth.

08, no Brady, no harm, no foul, right?

The reason this is reminding us all of 05-06 was that last year "didn't count" psychologically. It was like "oh yeah an 11-5 team not making it, well sorta figures at this point. the universe hates us, what else is new, waaaaah."

Now we're mentally back in 07 thinking "unfinished business," and with the usual Pats fans great expectations. Think about Carson Palmer's recovery - Brady's is going way better. Think about the Bungles that year, and compare to the Pats this year. No comparison. As for all this bullcrap about being an "average" team, the previous poster is right. We're just used to expecting the exceptional, and we're spoiled.

But the point remains that we are not on a par with the best out there right now... and we just ASSUMED we WOULD be, based on the 07 team being mostly "in place," and Brady still being in uniform. "Pats will trick us" is a silly way to put it... there's nothing to trick us with. We'll get excited if we play well, because the demon of going into a tailspin -- which DOES happen in the NFL -- would therefore be behind us.

We'll know how this team responds to playoff ball with -- one hopes -- the actual playoff games. In the land where a team has recently gone undefeated, a losing streak is 1 loss, and is back-to-back losses is a disaster . Well, knock wood we don't see the latter this year. But don't be so damned spoiled. We're playing like a second-tier team. We might or might not play like a first-tier team. We need to see it to believe it, fair enough. That puts us in the fashionable district of the NFL, not the "Baltic Avenue" district of junkies, hookers, Redskins, and Lions.

We DO need to cut out the spoiled baby crap, and understand there are Washingtons out there, and Tampa Bays, and Detroits, and plenty of Miamis and New Yorks muddling through the middle hoping every year for a rare playoff berth. Not being in the elite club of 3 teams at the top is not the same thing as being "average". It's not the end of the world, or of the season. Ask the 07 Giants or the 01 Pats.

All in all though, my gut tells me we're not like those teams either at the moment. The very events you say will "trick us" -- that is, convincing wins against lower-quality opponents -- would mimic both those earlier championship runs. But that's the low-probability road of winning a ring. They high probability road is to display championship caliber football in big games. In the Colts game a couple of weeks ago, eh. Assi assi. Three and a half quarters doesn't do it, frankly, but it's better than one and a half. In Monday's game, the Pats went out and got embarassed.

A team that performs that way ain't gonna win squat. I think this team will show it's better than Monday's performance, but all indications are that they're not better than the Colts game showed them to be, and that concerns me.

Lovely thing about the future, though - it's unwritten.

PFnV

 

[Kdo5]

I don't know what season you're talking about because Manning exposed their secondary in '05. They've been below average since '05.

I agree with the OP, the Pats will probably win out and fool everyone on this board that the Pats are on a roll only to lose to the Colts (again).

Or the Bengals. Then we'll all be *****ing like we are now.

 

[patsfan-1982]

i still dont think they will win all of there game's i think 11-5 or 10-6

they will win the AFC east be the #4 seed there first game will be denver or pit so ya i can see them lossing in the first round but i can all so see them going deep in the playoff's

if tom brady start's spreding the ball around because if the saints who had 2 corner's that have not played in over a year can find a way to stop moss and welker im sure denver who has 3 HOF.... DB's on there roster will find a way to stop them or pit who has one of the best D's in the NFL

but i have to say any team that go's through with the pats want through would not win more then 5 game's

vrabel and seymour the team's top passrusher's and run stoper's both traded in the off season and they replace them with green and burgess

and they got lucky with undrafted FA guyton TBC and Brandon McGowan the D could have been worst

and i have to say brady look's like he is turning in to drew bledsoe blitz him up the middle and he will force the ball and he is locking on to welker and moss like bledsoe did with coates and like bledsoe he is a good a nuff QB to put up good number's but when faceing a good team with a passrush it's not going to be good a nuff to win

 

[HEY BRO! WHAT UP?]

Or the Bengals. Then we'll all be *****ing like we are now.

I'd be shocked if they lost to the Bengals. Their offense isn't explosive and Palmer is pretty average.

 

[Kdo5]

I'd be shocked if they lost to the Bengals. Their offense isn't explosive and Palmer is pretty average.

Which is why it would be all the more shocking.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

i still dont think they will win all of there game's i think 11-5 or 10-6

they will win the AFC east be the #4 seed there first game will be denver or pit so ya i can see them lossing in the first round but i can all so see them going deep in the playoff's

if tom brady start's spreding the ball around because if the saints who had 2 corner's that have not played in over a year can find a way to stop moss and welker im sure denver who has 3 HOF.... DB's on there roster will find a way to stop them or pit who has one of the best D's in the NFL

but i have to say any team that go's through with the pats want through would not win more then 5 game's

vrabel and seymour the team's top passrusher's and run stoper's both traded in the off season and they replace them with green and burgess

and they got lucky with undrafted FA guyton TBC and Brandon McGowan the D could have been worst

and i have to say brady look's like he is turning in to drew bledsoe blitz him up the middle and he will force the ball and he is locking on to welker and moss like bledsoe did with coates and like bledsoe he is a good a nuff QB to put up good number's but when faceing a good team with a passrush it's not going to be good a nuff to win

Okay I have to mention I'm the local english-language cop/d1ckhead and there's no gentle way to put it... please don't take too much offense... but...

You use apostrophes for possessives (such as "Brady's Arm") or contractions (such as "Brady's Back" [in the sense of "Brady's back this year," not "Brady spent too much time Monday night on Brady's Back," although the latter would be perfectly fine as well.])

You don't use an apostrophe to form a plural, such as "The name of the team is the Patriots" or "the top pass-rushers were not effective."

"Their" is the possessive pronounce. "There" refers to a place. (The Pats weren't on their game. The Pats were invited to New Orleans, and should not have gone there.)

"Then" refers to a time. "Than" is a comparative term. (The Patriots are better than the Redskins, but worse than they should be.)

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to pick on one guy, you just rolled a whole lot of my worst grammatical nightmares into one post. This stuff just drives me crazy and I have to eventually say something.

This has been a public service announcement and yes I do wear glasses and am going bald.

PFnV

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Oh yeah about your post itself, I think we'll see how deep we go in the playoffs when they get there. I think the Pats understand they have a long way to go to compete with the best, and we don't yet know if they can answer that bell.

But I also think the Pats have done 1 thing consistently, and that's refuse to get enamored of players just because fans are enamored of them. Yeah we lost two good but declining players. In Seymour's case he was just getting too expensive, and yes there is still a salary cap. I think that was behind the Vrabel move too, though his cap number wasn't as high.

Like Stephen Wright says, you can't have everything. Where would you put it?

Sorry to lose your point in my grammatical meltdown.

PFnV

 

[upstater1]

Since the name of the game in this thread (and lots of the ones like it) seem to be "compare the past to predict the future," I'll bite.

2001 was a scrappy Pats team proving they weren't intimidated by/could play with a juggernaut Rams team in the regular season, and having the attitude that there was a great deal more work to do - but that the L was a still an L, so shut up about moral victories.

Then they did the work, and won the SB.

Dare I say it... it was closer to the Giants' 2007 story. Just add a "re-" to the now-famous Proehl quote ("tonight, a dynasty is born,") and you have what was on every Pats fan's mind.

Look, the sky isn't falling, but it's not quite "nothing to see here, carry on," either. It's a wakeup call.

Through 04, well, we know what happened. Cinderella. Meltdown/"One and done" threat. Bounce-back through amazing free agency and good drafting.

05-06 were the return-to-mortal years. 07 repeated the free-agency home-run of Corey Dillon via Moss and Welker, with a dash of FU, NFL added. We all know what happened that year, just threw up a little in my mouth.

08, no Brady, no harm, no foul, right?

The reason this is reminding us all of 05-06 was that last year "didn't count" psychologically. It was like "oh yeah an 11-5 team not making it, well sorta figures at this point. the universe hates us, what else is new, waaaaah."

Now we're mentally back in 07 thinking "unfinished business," and with the usual Pats fans great expectations. Think about Carson Palmer's recovery - Brady's is going way better. Think about the Bungles that year, and compare to the Pats this year. No comparison. As for all this bullcrap about being an "average" team, the previous poster is right. We're just used to expecting the exceptional, and we're spoiled.

But the point remains that we are not on a par with the best out there right now... and we just ASSUMED we WOULD be, based on the 07 team being mostly "in place," and Brady still being in uniform. "Pats will trick us" is a silly way to put it... there's nothing to trick us with. We'll get excited if we play well, because the demon of going into a tailspin -- which DOES happen in the NFL -- would therefore be behind us.

We'll know how this team responds to playoff ball with -- one hopes -- the actual playoff games. In the land where a team has recently gone undefeated, a losing streak is 1 loss, and is back-to-back losses is a disaster . Well, knock wood we don't see the latter this year. But don't be so damned spoiled. We're playing like a second-tier team. We might or might not play like a first-tier team. We need to see it to believe it, fair enough. That puts us in the fashionable district of the NFL, not the "Baltic Avenue" district of junkies, hookers, Redskins, and Lions.

We DO need to cut out the spoiled baby crap, and understand there are Washingtons out there, and Tampa Bays, and Detroits, and plenty of Miamis and New Yorks muddling through the middle hoping every year for a rare playoff berth. Not being in the elite club of 3 teams at the top is not the same thing as being "average". It's not the end of the world, or of the season. Ask the 07 Giants or the 01 Pats.

All in all though, my gut tells me we're not like those teams either at the moment. The very events you say will "trick us" -- that is, convincing wins against lower-quality opponents -- would mimic both those earlier championship runs. But that's the low-probability road of winning a ring. They high probability road is to display championship caliber football in big games. In the Colts game a couple of weeks ago, eh. Assi assi. Three and a half quarters doesn't do it, frankly, but it's better than one and a half. In Monday's game, the Pats went out and got embarassed.

A team that performs that way ain't gonna win squat. I think this team will show it's better than Monday's performance, but all indications are that they're not better than the Colts game showed them to be, and that concerns me.

Lovely thing about the future, though - it's unwritten.

PFnV

Use 2006 as a model.

It's a good model.

We were as close as you can possibly be frm beating the best team in the league in the AFC CG.

That's all you can ask for.

Winning the AFCCG is a 50/50 proposition.

In the Super Bowl years, we had close games we pulled out in the end during the playoffs. In 2006, we lost one of those close games.

The difference is miniscule.

I can't understand how many write off the Patriots in this thread. With 2006 in mind, it would seem crazy to write the Patriots off in the playoffs.

 

[Sicilian]

I've been coordinating a construction project at work here for the past three months. I'm working primarily with two lead architects.

One will come to me all the time with his hair on fire, claiming nothing was done right and how we'll never meet deadlines because we just don't have the resources.

The other usually comes and says, "Here's the problem, but here's what we can do to fix it, or at least keep the damage to the minimum."

Which do you think has a future and does the best job?

Congratulations, you've determined we don't have the best team in football. Unfortunately, there are no personnel options to try to fix it. So you can either be the panic stricken type who just says, "that's it, we're doomed!" Or you can actually try to understand that there are solutions that don't involve adding a player.

If you had come in and suggested ANY potential thing the pats could do to play better with the people they have, I would respect your opinion. But I'm done listening to people who just want to bash. You're the most unproductive people in our society, and you're more concerned with being right about doomsday than trying to imagine any way to correct it.

Rant over.

 

[patsfan-1982]

yes I do wear glasses and am going bald.

PFnV

i was going to ask are you a english teacher or some thing but that say's it all lol

ya i can't spell very good that's what happen's when you drop out of school lol

 

[Colts Troll]

I wonder if the Colts board was like this when they got crushed by the Jags in Week 14 of the 2006-2007 season....and then went on to win the Superbowl.

Exactly. Try to chill out a little bit, guys. If the Colts have taught me anything, it's that the regular season DOES NOT MATTER, except to secure a playoff birth. I've seen too many one and dones to take the regular season too seriously. A lot of times the Super Bowl winner is the team that comes out of nowhere to make a Super Bowl run.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

i was going to ask are you a english teacher or some thing but that say's it all lol

ya i can't spell very good that's what happen's when you drop out of school lol

That SAYS it all goddammit that SAYS it all...

like I said it's not you personally it all just piled up, and yeah I'm a writer/editor for a living so I do this full-time with red pens. I just can't stop sometimes.

By the way, posting way early in the morning to get on my stuffy high horse, I called a personal pronoun a personal pronounce, for God knows what reason. Not enough coffee is my guess.

Okay back to football

 

[patsfan-1982]

That SAYS it all goddammit that SAYS it all...

like I said it's not you personally it all just piled up, and yeah I'm a writer/editor for a living so I do this full-time with red pens. I just can't stop sometimes.

By the way, posting way early in the morning to get on my stuffy high horse, I called a personal pronoun a personal pronounce, for God knows what reason. Not enough coffee is my guess.

Okay back to football

lol funny are you a sports writer or book/movie writer

 

[RayClay]

A team that gets hot could take it, there's no 3/4 pole championship, just like there's no September superbowl (Jets Denver).

When crunch time comes, I think we have the tslent and coaching to be that team.

The defense has much more athleticism than some past teams. They're awful green, but that's why you have coaches. A couple players could emerge as leaders through coaching. They have to accept they'll make mistakes, but keep learning and make the big athletic play once in a while.

On offense, the coaching staff needs to get their heads out of their asses and work for sixty minutes instead of looking for predictable lays that aren't there. They've got as much veteran talent as they could want, they just need to forget how wonderful they are and go back to working the defenses to make them cover the whole field so Moss is open instead of having three guys pounding him every play.

If he's covered, take what the damn defense gives you, and go back to 10 yard chunks down the field.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

You might well be right on a lot of your points, and I'd be ready to get into a lot of it with you if we were 5--6. But we're 7--4. So, IMHO, most of that can wait until the off season.

I'm not putting the Pats in the SB by any means, but I do know that the Pats are the one team in the Conference that nobody wants to play in January. So, here's what I'm thinking about.

1) I'm not thinking about running the table, just about beating Miami and effectively locking up the Division.

2) Next, since it looks like a Fourth Seed is most likely anyway, I'm concerned about staying healthy at key positions and seeing if they can make some adjustments on both sides of the ball.

3) Next, I'd like to see some momentum going into the playoffs. We close the season against two decent teams, including on the road against a Texans team that had big aspirations in September and should have a chip on its shoulder; winning those games convincingly would be a good sign.

4) After that, who knows? One and done? Maybe. Playing on the last Sunday of January for the Conference? A little ice and snow, a little luck and who knows.

 

[SeymourTrophies]

As badly as they played last night, there is definitely a good chance they go deep into the playoffs, even reaching the Super Bowl. Who in the AFC do they have no chance of beating in the playoffs? They have already outplayed the Colts in Indy and am not worried about a potential rematch. Cinci? Pittsburgh? Denver? They are all flawed teams. San Diego would be a tough game, but certainly winnable. One rematch I would not look forward to though in terms of being able to win would be New Orleans in the Super Bowl...but then, again as we saw in 2007, anything can happen in 1 game.

If it's not New Orleans, it'll be Minnesota which would be even uglier. With New Orleans, we could at least run the ball on them. We wouldn't be able to do that against the Vikes.

Even though I don't believe in the 'we win because we're smarter. We don't need to be more talented' ideology, it helps a lot in the playoffs. We should have been crushed by San Diego in 06, but we kept it together with our porous defensive backfield (Sanders, Hawkins, Hobbs!?!) and bad linebacking corps. We're certainly more talented all around than we were then, and, apart from Minn and NO, the opposition isn't better.

This isn't 2007. That's all we found out on Monday.

 

[maverick4]

I don't know if they'll 'trick' the fans, but this season seems a lot more like 02, 05, or 06 than it does 01.