Harder than one thinks
Repeating as champs a mighty task for Pats
The coronation already has begun, even though the likelihood of back-to-back Super Bowl championships is always slim and a repeat lies at the end of a hard road to glory. Everyone seems to understand this but people who live in New England.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave or consorting with Russians you know by now that as surely as night follows day, the Patriots are about to become only the ninth team in NFL history to win backto-back Super Bowls and only the second to do it for a second time. It’s right there on your season tickets: “We guarantee a return to the Super Bowl.”
Ask anybody. Ask the guy next door. Ask the gal at the bank. Ask a CEO or a DUI. They’ll all tell you the same thing. The Patriots are the lock of the century to repeat as NFL champions. Many such folks even go a step further. To hear them tell it, 19-0 is the Patriots’ destiny this season.
Fortunately for the Patriots’ playoff chances, among the few people not sharing quite that rosy a preseason world view are the Patriots themselves. Wide receiver Julian Edelman, who knows a thing or two about the difficulty of making it in the NFL, recently labeled talk of going undefeated “stupid.” He was understating the obvious.
Yet the consensus in these parts seems anything short of a berth in Super Bowl LII would be a disaster and anything less than an eighth AFC title in the Brady-Belichick Era a natural disaster.
On some levels one can understand the fans’ confidence. First, they are buoyed by the fact most of them don’t have a clue how difficult it is to win a single pro football game, let alone 19 in a row. They look at the schedule and check off 13 or 14 wins as if they’re etched in stone.
Maybe they concede winning in Denver or beating the Raiders in Mexico City might be slightly daunting, but they doubt it. They look at going to New Orleans and don’t see potential flood waters rising because, hey, “we stole Brandin Cooks from those guys.” A team that gave them fits in the playoffs (which was the portion of the Houston Texans that plays defense) is on the schedule but the game is in Foxboro, and the Texans will always be the Texans so they chuckle and think, “Easy money.”
Sure the Panthers have Cam Newton, but Pats fans figure with the game in Foxboro he’ll get chewed up like a fig newton by a revamped defense that has a $65 million cornerback in Stephon Gilmore to team with bargain-basement corner Malcolm Butler. OK, nobody knows where the pass rush is coming from for a defense about to face first-class arms like Newton, Drew Brees, Jameis Winston, Matt Ryan, Derek Carr, Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers, but Bill Belichick will figure something out, right?
The Patriots schedule is ranked 12th among the 32 teams even though nobody yet knows who is going to be healthy at the time anyone plays anyone and, yes, back-to-back road trips to face the Broncos and Raiders could be tough, some will admit. But when things get tough who’s tougher than the Patriots?
And let us never forget the Pats play in the AFC East, which is the same as saying they get a bye into the playoffs. So, yes, in FanLand, it’s on to Minnesota and Super Bowl LII.
But in Belichickville they look at things a little differently. Thank goodness.
In the catacombs of Gillette Stadium, Belichick, Tom Brady and most everyone else understands there is a reason only eight teams have repeated as Super Bowl champions. The reason is it ain’t easy to get there the first time and even harder the second. You need will, skill and luck. The Patriots have the first two but luck deals the cards out however it wants.
It also requires a minimal presence of on-field EMTs and limited demand for in-season surgical procedures. When you have a superstar tight end with three back operations already on his résumé, alongside those 68 career touchdown catches, you fret if you are wise. This is especially true when you realize Rob Gronkowski hasn’t played a full season since 2011 and his new backup, Dwayne Allen, hasn’t since 2012.
Running back Dion Lewis has regularly been in the same boat. Or rather the same ambulance. He hasn’t stayed intact for even half a season since 2012. With a revamped running game that will be without the pounding and reliable presence of LeGarrette Blount and his 18 rushing touchdowns, do we know for sure there’s someone to take up that load?
Mike Gillislee and Rex Burkhead have been imported to do so and much is expected from last year’s Super Bowl hero, James White, but who knows if they will all mesh? Truth is we don’t. Not on July 25 we don’t. Yet 19-0 is a given to some and the need for additional space for a new drape in 2018 is assured.
The pass rush, one assumes, will come from somewhere but it best be better than last year’s 34 sacks because the roster of opposing quarterbacks they faced a year ago should have been playing in the Ivy League. This year they’re facing a half dozen of the game’s best passers and if they are free to stand in the pocket they figure to deliver hellfire. Or at least significant problems.
In the end, that’s what this season and every season is filled with. It’s filled with problems. The team that has the fewest and solves them best wins. Everyone else goes home.
Now in two of the past three years and five of the past 16, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick solved them best and won the Super Bowl. At times they made it look easy, at least to the paying customers. That is their dilemma as a new season approaches and their first significant problem.
Everybody thinks it’s going to be easy. As long as the men in uniform remember it won’t be, they’ll have a chance to make history again. But the minute too many of them start thinking like fans or talk show hosts, they’re the ones who will be history.
If you doubt this, go find the teams that had the same opportunity the Patriots now have to repeat as Super Bowl champions and ask them how easy it was.