OJ's Glove

"There are many teams in this league who can pull away and leave them for dead, and NE won't be able to respond." "Just blow them out, no problem." LOL The problem is NE's defense is constructed so that it's very difficult for anyone to "Pull away and leave them for dead." Sounds easy to say, but it isn't.That's the whole point of building the entire roster so that if your offense isn't a pinball machine, your defense can be damned good to complement that. Also, NE's offense isn't bad at all. It's just not a quick-strike run-up-the-score offense. The rookie QB is very good when necessary but not great like a veteran yet. But the running game and passing weapons are just fine. Implying that it will be easy to beat them in a playoff game if you get a big lead, assumes some team can actually do that. i don't buy it. ----

The Pats are constructed to be flexible. They don't have an incredibly dynamic passing offense, but it's good enough and there are plenty of games where Jones has thrown a lot. They took Tampa and Dallas down to the wire where one play would have flipped the outcome.

You know how many times people have said "they look beatable" in the last 17 years? Of course they can look "beatable", because not every game is a blowout masterpiece. Being great means still winning when you have one of those grind-it-out games where the opponent is giving you problems. "Looking beatable" doesn't matter. It's getting somebody to actually beat them when it matters.

Yawn.

I guess you missed all those other infractions where teams and players get fined for things like tampering, salary cap violations, PEDs, pumping in crowd noise, etcetera. It's ALL "cheating". The Raiders for 40 years openly bragged about trying to cheat. It was part of their ethic as a franchise. What do people think of them now and their three Super bowls? Well, everyone watches NFL Films about the old days and has a good laugh and a backslap about how cute and funny that all was. "Cheating is encouraged" and "if you aint cheatin', you aint tryin'!" Right John Madden? Right George Atkinson? Right Phil Villapiano? Just ask them. The double-standard is embarrassing. Everybody thinks Goodell and his gang of idiots are royal screw-ups and can't find their asses with both hands, but they were supposedly right on the money and in the right when they went after the Patriots? Come on. Goodell fouls everything he touches when it comes to discipline matters. Why would they go after their best team? Because Roger thinks his office and his authority are more important than any one team. Rivals in other places like Hempstead and Indy wanted them taken down a peg and pressured the League office to be harsh. You guys can't be this dumb to not realize stuff like this. "Spygate" was a minor infraction that was blown up because Belichick ignored a League memo to stop doing it, because he knew other teams did it and thought it was no big deal (which Jimmy Johnson and others also admitted) , and he figured he could justify it based of how the actual rule was worded. BB and Goodell's underling snakes in the League office hate each other (always have), the Patriots were a dominant team, Goodell felt like someone was thumbing their nose at his authority. That's all that was necessary. Despite the constant rule-bending that all teams do at one time or another, this nonsense never happened under Rozelle or Tagliabue, because they were actually good at their job and knew how to treat petty squabbles between rival teams as the whiny nonsense situations they were, rather than letting them blow up into national stories. "Deflategate" was ginned up, and when the evidence wasn't there to even show an infraction had even happened, Roger punished them anyway because AGAIN he was getting pressure from other owners to make sure they were found guilty. Mostly because they had the nerve to continue to win at historic proportions and stopping them from taping had had no effect at all on that (almost as if it didn't matter! Aw shucks!). NOBODY tries to do this to the Cleveland Browns or some 8-8 team. The paranoia around the League about the Patriots is palpable, ridiculous and embarrassing. Taking away the tapes and draft picks didn't work. So they tried to take away Brady and that didn't work. Deflategate was a legal victory but a massive PR nightmare and black eye over nothing. Maybe they've learned their lesson, but I doubt it. Park Avenue is too ignorant, vindictive and stupid. . Correct.

Well, which team recovers a fumble is usually luck. Being good at forcing fumbles, or being a ballcarrier with bad ball-security habits who fumbles more? Not so much.

Unfortunately that hasn't happened since 1993. I know it's a common refrain on this board that NE fans aren't real fans who will stop watching when the team starts losing, or that the team was nothing before Belichick and Brady. This is mostly a myth. Most of their problems came from a cash-poor owner, front-office turmoil and suburban sub-standard facilities. The team's only real down-period in historical memory was between 88 and 93, when the Bills were coming into their own as a great team. But that was an anomaly. In the 12 years between 76 (when Fairbanks' drafting started showing results) and 88 when Raymond Berry's Super Bowl team was running out of gas, they had only one losing season. In the last 41 seasons they've been below .500 in only 8 of them. Every team's history has up and down periods, but all of you guys waiting for Gillette Stadium to be empty when Belichick and Brady leave are in for a rude awakening. The Red Sox aren't getting the town back, and Boston has simply joined almost every other city in America where football is more popular than baseball. The only other one I can think of where they love baseball more is St. Louis, and they've now lost two football teams and will likely never get another one. If it makes you feel better to keep telling yourselves how lukewarm Pats fans are while you guys are sooooo hardcore, then knock yourself out.

You're not wrong. But it's preseason. What if they're decimated by injury like they were in '15? That's what stopped them in Denver, and crippled them in some other years they didn't win, too.

Right. It's a tall order to repeat, even if you have the best roster. And stay away from the Falcons, too. The last time a Super Bowl loser won it all the following year was the '72 Dolphins. Right, but it's much easier for a lucky underdog in the NFL rather than the NBA. One game and you're out.

Even if the "in the know" has the Pats at 30% to win 52 (which is absurdly high), that means they think it's 70% someone else wins it. Always take the field.

Always take the field.

In your place, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it too. To be fair, we knew Brissett had a thumb injury, but we didn't know it was so bad it needed surgery right after, and he couldn't really throw in that game so Belichick severely limited the playbook. You can't expect Pats fans to consider that an important win. Saying you beat a third string QB with an injured throwing hand is just the fact of the matter. /shrug/

Never claimed I was a Bills fan. I went to SU, though. I live in MA and heard it on the radio today. The radio guys were complaining that they had nothing to biitch about. Doesn't matter to them - usually they'll just make something up.

Good luck with that, I guess. Since 2001, the 4 major Boston sports teams have made at least the final 4 of their respective playoffs 23 times.

He's a little banged up.