Last year it's arguably a different tune if gronk, talib, and chandler are healthy. However every team deals with injuries, including the sb champs ravens who were without their best corner, starting ss had broken ribs, former dpoy was a shell of himself, star dt was barely function and so on. They still smoked us in our own house and I'm pretty sure the niners, packers, falcons and Seahawks all would have beaten us as well.
So what have we done to improve? Our offense has gotten worse, which is okay assuming it gets worse because we invest in improving the defense... Which we have barely done anything besides barely maintain the status quo.
The only way you could possibly believe we will better this season is if you believe MULTIPLE of the following will happen.
1. We get two impact starters with our late first and second round picks
2. A few of Chandler, Wilson, dowling, Ridley, vereen, Hightower, bequette will have a significantly better season.
3. Gronkowski and Hernandez will both be healthy the entire season.
4. Brady will have a 50-1 td-int ratio.
5. Amendola turns into 2007 moss.
6. We manage to trade for a big time star player
7. We hit a couple Danny Woodhead calibre home runs in udfa and fa scrap heap
8. Wilson turns into 2004 Rodney Harrison
9. Talib stays healthy the entire season
For me there are WAY too many "if he stays healthy for the first time in his entire career" and "if we get extremely lucky and hit massive home runs" for my taste. Right now we are a worse team and a lot of things have to go right o just break even, let alone be better.
We have gaping holes on the dl, serious corner depth issues, questionable safety play behind McCourty and are still incapable of covering good pass catching tight ends and running backs. On top of that, our offense which won us most of our games in large part thanks to welker is praying amendola can stay healthy (doubtful) and can even come close to the production welker gave. AND we currently have no other real wideouts on the roster that we need to save cap space for and address somehow.
Im not saying we are going to be bad, but right now I don't see much beyond a first or second round loss in disappointing fashion. Our defense getting lit up in the secondary, no pass rush, and our team unable to run to win when it counts. Sorry it's not being a pessimist to think we can't solve these issues with two top 60 picks and limited cap space and free agents available.