BradyManny
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2006
- Messages
- 11,103
- Reaction score
- 1,520
Reminder: There's no one way to win a title
Not trying to rationalize losing Revis, just reminding everyone of a fact that gets too lost these days.
When one play here or there makes the difference between winning a title or going home empty - as we've seen over and over - it is a mistake to overemphasize that outcome when evaluating Belichick's success as a GM. "Defense wins championships" or "we didn't win a title in a decade because we didn't have a secondary" or whatever the cliche du jour is are all over-simplifications.
Should whether or not Malcolm Butler makes that play define how we evaluate Belichick's decision making the previous offseason? Should Wes Welker's drop form our opinion on how Belichick fared as a GM back in 2011?
How the SB46 & SB49 team fared are so eerily close, and very simply, without any change to how the teams were built, swapping one play changes how we remember those two teams. One team had an all-world secondary, and one team had one of the worst secondaries it's ever fielded. Yet: it did not determine whether we won the Super Bowl in either case. We were equally prepared to win the Super Bowl in both cases, because the team as a whole was similarly strong relative to its competition.
As we stand in early March, our secondary in 2015 is not going to be what it was in 2014. So, we get better in other areas, and we still compete for a title.
Not trying to rationalize losing Revis, just reminding everyone of a fact that gets too lost these days.
When one play here or there makes the difference between winning a title or going home empty - as we've seen over and over - it is a mistake to overemphasize that outcome when evaluating Belichick's success as a GM. "Defense wins championships" or "we didn't win a title in a decade because we didn't have a secondary" or whatever the cliche du jour is are all over-simplifications.
Should whether or not Malcolm Butler makes that play define how we evaluate Belichick's decision making the previous offseason? Should Wes Welker's drop form our opinion on how Belichick fared as a GM back in 2011?
How the SB46 & SB49 team fared are so eerily close, and very simply, without any change to how the teams were built, swapping one play changes how we remember those two teams. One team had an all-world secondary, and one team had one of the worst secondaries it's ever fielded. Yet: it did not determine whether we won the Super Bowl in either case. We were equally prepared to win the Super Bowl in both cases, because the team as a whole was similarly strong relative to its competition.
As we stand in early March, our secondary in 2015 is not going to be what it was in 2014. So, we get better in other areas, and we still compete for a title.
