The shame of it is that they have been so good and so consistent that anything short of a Super Bowl win is considered a failure, yet it takes Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees to equal Brady's 3 rings, and while Joe Montana is lauded for being unbeaten in 4 Super Bowls he gets a pass for losing 2 NFC Championship games, in other words failing to get there is more impressive than winning your conference and losing the Super Bowl in the final seconds. Imo the Belichick Patriots are the most successful franchise under one coach of the Super Bowl era, and i have yet to see a fact based argument that demonstrates that another franchise surpasses them.
Unfortunately for the Patriots the standard they have set makes them appear to fail when they in fact surpass expectations, as was the case with the 2010 team, who most people argued were not a super bowl caliber team throughout the season, and who barely lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl, that they found a way to get there was incredibly impressive, yet it gets chalked up as a failure when in fact they got the most out of that team and missed out on a Lombardi by a hair. And we could end up seeing the same kind off scenario once again this year, where they take a team that in no way looked like it was capable of winning a Super Bowl, lose key players left and right, and yet find a way to get everything out of it but fall short in the end. They may end up winning the AFC Championship if they have stron g play-offs, they can beat Denver and KC and anyone else in the AFC, but winning the Super Bowl is going to be a tall order with their interior DL in the state it is in. They can play their asses off and milk this team for all it's worth but it still may not be enough, and if Brady falls to 3-3 it is going to be used against him when in fact it should be used to show just how great he is to get a team as flawed as this one is all the way to the final game. I'm not saying the patriots can't win the Super Bowl but I am saying that using their success as a sign of their failure ios a really convoluted way to look at things. Football is not about stats it is about context, and in the context of this season simply getting there is an incredible achievment. And as much as i want another ring on their fingers I will view even getting to the AFC Championship as proof of their greatness not of their failures. Congratulations to the Patriots for once again creating a really good team under adverse circumstances. The NFL is structured for parity, and even the best teams fall back to earth as their free agents move on and picking at the end of rounds instead of the top of them catches up with them, as teams like the Steelers, Ravens, and Packers have found out, yet despite that structure belichick and the Patriots overcome it year after and end up in the hunt every season. It is amazing and as fans we should be celebrating that and praising them for their successes instead of constantly ripping them and focusing solely on the negative; there is an entire offseason to look at what they need to do, and there is nothing constructive about ripping on what they can do nothing about.
Last point. There is no way any team can be as successful as the Patriots have been and win as much as they do without being one of the best drafting team's in football, and they manage to do that while picking at the end of the rounds year in year out. They have their misses and I understand knocking some of their choices, but the idea that Belichick can't draft is flat out preposterous, and those who routinely make these claims while cherrypicking their data and ignoring the failure rates of the rest of the league are being deliberately ignorant of how the process actually works. This is an incredible run of success, and it didn't happen by accident it happened by Belichick and his staff working tirelessly all year every year to put the best roster possible on the field. Are they perfect, no, are they great yes, and we should all realize that by now.
