This is kind of my point.
The newfound reticence of the doomies tends to serve as a strong trailing indicator of progress made on the defensive side of the ball.
It's pretty clear that even with the struggles GB has had this year, if our defense was still in, say, its week 3 form, Rodgers would have embarrassed them. The lack of failure of the defense and the resultant lack of wailing by the doomists is worth calling attention to.
it's also clear, at least to me, that BB made good use of the weak matchup against Buffalo to build a new sense of confidence into the defense that it took into the next game. That's good coaching.
Good teams generally get better as the season goes on, and the Patriots are a good team. This is not news.
BB himself has made it clear that, at least in his mind, the changes with training camp have led to a need to approach the early season as a second type of preseason, where the team gets better and ramps up over the course of the first 4 games or so. We, as fans, see the general pattern, year after year. As long as Brady is Brady, or close to it, and BB is coaching at BB level or close to it, the question is pretty much always going to be whether or not there are teams in the playoffs that are able to take advantage of the defensive personnel flaws that have been covered up over the course of the regular season. Knowing that, people here will continue to point to problems, or potential future problems, with the defense as the season progresses, but with more of an 'If they do this in the playoffs...." approach than they currently use.