THIS is how the Pats can win THIS year. And I'll do it as briefly as I can.
1. This is the NFL. EVERY player is a very, very good football player, from you best player to the last guy on the roster. Think about it this way. About 5-10% of every HS football player plays college ball. And then THAT number grows lower when you add guys who get scholarships and lower STILL when you consider those who play division one ball.
Think about this - there are 133 colleges that play division 1 football - Each school can have a maximum of 85 scholarships- That's 11,300 football players. Let's assume that means there are about 5500 hundred juniors and seniors that the NFL is choosing from. Or let's round it off to 6,000 when you add FCS, division 2 and 3 schools. So from that pool of around 6,000 the NFL will select around 250 players when you add all the comp picks (last draft it was 259) That means if you are good enough to be a scholarship football player your chances of getting drafted are less than one HALF of 1%.. And of those lucky 250, less than half will make NFL rosters this season.
So when I say that EVERY NFL player is a very good player, this isn't just MY opinion, it's a statistical fact. Just look at the winnowing out process. Now it is my belief that 90-95% of those player who actually make the NFL can be lumped into one basic category of playing level. Very good players who become NFL starters or valued back ups. These are the players who love the game enough to continue to improve AFTER they enter the league. (think Detrich Wise) Then there are those 5-10% (and I think 10% is high) who are the stars. The next level players who elevate everyone else.
2. So in reality the physical abilities of EVERYONE'S roster is going to be generally pretty equal and THAT is why "on any given Sunday" is not a cliche, and most NFL games are close going into the 4th quarter. Don't you remember all those close games each year with the Jets, Phins, and Bills when it was the AFCLeast and we were at our best?
Most of these off season ratings are the product of assessing all the QUESTIONS each team will have through TC. I get it why WE are being rated lower, its because we have the MOST question marks of any team in the division.......AT THIS POINT. It is fair, BUT this is an assessment long before the season starts. It will be up to the COACHING staff to create answers to those questions over the next 100 days. Some of those question marks WILL get answered before the season and some won't become apparent until the season starts.
3 That leads me to an element you can't quantify at this point and THAT is coaching. In NO other professional team sport does coaching make as big a impact to winning and losing than football. Our success over the first 2 decades of this century occurred BECAUSE the team bought into coaching staff. That kind of buy in is EARNED over the years. It was earned because the guys believed that THEIR game plans and adjustments put them in the best position to execute and win. They believed that the best players don't win, but the best TEAMS.
Like I said in the beginning, EVERYONE is good in this league, so when most games are close going into the 4th quarter it is going to be the team who is MOST disciplined. The team who makes the FEWEST mistakes. And the team that makes that ONE big play or doesn't make that one big mistake, that will usually determine who will in that day. Of all fan bases, WE should know this the best because in the largest part of what I have just described was what we saw every year for the first 20 years of this century. WE were the team that wasn't necessarily the most talented, but we were always the most disciplined, the mentally toughest, and made the fewest mental mistakes. This is why I never got the hew and cry for more "all star" players. You need to build the best TEAM, not necessarily accumulate "all stars".
4. Let's us look at THIS coming season on a par with the 2001 season. Back in 2001 we had MANY more questions about our OL than now. Back then we were going to start a rookie at LT. Our RT (Randle) was out of the league 2 years later. We had 2 JAGs at G, and a young C who was good, but couldn't make a shotgun snap. Compared to THAT our OL looks great. I don't want to start on the D, but more question then than now. At QB, we need Jones to be just like Brady was in 2001. We need him to be the point guard. The distributor, the guy who keeps the chains moving and translate red zone trips into TD rather than FG's. So IF all that happens, we COULD win this division like the article says. This is a division that will likely eat its own. It will be very hard for any team to win 12 games
5. Now here's the thing. We have spent most of this century believing we ALWAYS had a chance to win because most of the time we KNEW that we would go into a game with a better game plan and a more disciplined and mentally tough football team. Clearly we cannot take that for granted now. THIS Is going to be a year when trust is going to have to be RE-EARNED. And that is only going to happen when the players actually SEE the coaching work. It starts in TC. Are the drills making them better. Are the position coaches pointing things out that will make them better. Do the plays and schemes make sense. Are they working in scrimmages and preseason games?
And then there are the final test when they get into the season. Is the coaching good enough that the game plans translate into wins, OR when they don't, do the players see the reasons WHY they lost and believe it wasn't the plan that was wrong, but THEIR execution of it. By in is earned and winning is the easiest way to do it, but it isn't the ONLY way. But in the end, Bill AND his entire staff are going to have to rebuild that trust, especially on offense.
Now I believe they will and as bad as it was last year, with a bad roster, key injuries, bad coaching, bad QB play, and bad discipline, that team STILL managed to win 8 games and going into the 4th quarter of the last game had a chance to win and go to the playoffs. So how bad was it....really. That DISASTER of a season for us would have been a success for Jets fans for most of this century.
6. So that, in short,
is a map to a division winning season. Build a tight knit disciplined team who isn't going to lose games with dumb plays and mistakes and is more likely to win those close games than lose them. AND be lucky with injuries, bounces, bad calls.....and win the TO battles.