It should be a fun second half of the year.
The Patriots have a soft schedule upcoming and might be able to run off a handful of wins. It would be awesome if the Bills-Bucs game has double implications and a Bucs win would give the Patriots a real chance for the division.
Mac is rounding into form. It’s strange because I felt his stats overrated him before, and now I feel his stats have fallen down but his level of play has gone up. He’s throwing some nice passes downfield. Would be awesome if the Patriots could find an alpha on offense, but I think that ship has sailed, unfortunately.
On defense, the Patriots are solid. That’s the area where I think coaching does matter a lot with Bill…his defenses are almost alwaya greater than the sum of their parts. I don’t think many teams can throw on them if they can’t establish the run. I had them winning 11 games before the season, and while they started really slowly, I think 10-11 isn’t out of the question. Their second half schedule looks much easier than first glance, while teams like Dallas and New Orleans were a lot tougher than expected.
The Bucs will be fine. They're either getting the #1 seed or they’re winning 13/14 games and will hopefully get a first round pretender in that case. #2 seed still has some importance for round 2 HFA. I just thought they needed to win all the games where they had no business losing, and they’ve done that. They were fortunate to escape Dallas and New England and even has some late game scares against Atlanta and Philadelphia. Play a bunch of close games, you’re going to lose some.
Just hope the consequences for rushing back Gronk don’t extend to the postseason. But they should have Gronk, Brown, Davis, Murphy-Bunting, and Sherman coming back. Most teams can’t list that many impact players likely to return.
Despite the loss, I think Brady has positioned himself nicely in the MVP race, especially since he’ll get to play Allen head to head. I can’t see a scenario where Brady throws 50+ TDs, the team wins 14 games, and he doesn’t win it. And I’d love to see him get to 56. Even though it’s a long shot, it’s the first time he’ll get the benefit of warm weather down the stretch.
Should be a great 2021 season...can’t ask for much more as a fan.