A DIVISION PROBLEM? BILL WILL INVENT ONE
Belichick will keep Pats playing scared
FOXBORO — The hardest thing for the Patriots at this juncture of the season is that not much left for them is hard until the playoffs. Rejecting that notion despite the cinematic evidence in front of them each week as they study tape of the Dolphins, Bills and Jets, who are five of their six remaining opponents, will be a slight of mind difficult to do, but essential to their long-term success.
Few coaches are better at turning a molehill into a mountain than Bill Belichick. It is difficult to forget when Belichick stood before the media in 2007 and talked glowingly of a Cleveland Browns team that had not existed in the terms he described for more than 50 years. By the time he was done even Rick Pitino would have thought Otto Graham, Bill Willis and Jim Brown were coming through that door on Sunday.
For the record, they did not. The undefeated Patriots remained undefeated, leading by 20-0 at halftime of an eventual 34-17 victory. But the point Belichick was trying to make, as he will do many times in the next six weeks, is that former NFL commissioner Bert Bell was right.
It was Bell who coined the phrase, “on any given Sunday,” which is the notion that the NFL is so competitive there is far less difference between the top and bottom of the league than records imply. In other words, the more you believe it can’t happen the closer you are to defeat.
Yet other than a Dec.17 “showdown” with the Steelers in Pittsburgh that could be to establish who holds home field throughout the playoffs (assuming one or both don’t run into “any given Sunday” before that Sunday), the Patriots face a feast of AFC LEast opponents the rest of the way. If familiarity breeds contempt, the Pats could be disgusted by most of their remaining schedule.
Today they host the hapless, quarterback-starved Miami Dolphins, who have lost 15 of the past 20 meetings with the Patriots. That’s a lot of evidence of Miami’s general ineptitude but Belichick will show his team video of Jay Cutler’s biggest moments (which will have to be a miniseries) and Ndamukong Suh’s greatest hits (which will include enough flags to resemble a May Day celebration in Moscow). He’ll turn Matt Moore into Dan Marino (very) Lite.
Most of all, he’ll remind them divisional opponents are always tougher than the rest because they know your team so well and take the past personally. What is important though is not that Belichick will do that, because we know he will, but that his players take it to heart even though ample evidence indicates while the NFC is a legitimate fiveteam race the AFC is a 14team dog-and-pony show. How do you convince winners of eight of the last nine games and possessors not only of the Rev. Tom Brady, forgiver of all sins, but also a defense allowing only 12.5 points per game over what is now a six-game winning streak that there is a threat there beyond the Steelers?
It will be up to veterans like safety Devin McCourty to convince those around him to beware the AFC LEast, because there are a lot of key faces, like cornerback Stephon Gilmore and running back Rex Burkhead to name only two, who have already enjoyed more success in half a season than in their whole careers. It is easy in such circumstances to think you’ve already accomplished something, even though you haven’t.
“I think the key thing is understanding that every week is different, especially for us,” McCourty explained this week. “We put a lot in the game planning and offensively how we’re going to score, defensively how we’re going to keep teams out of the end zone. So there’s rarely any crossover or continuation from last week that we can just say here we go again.
“We’ve got to kind of start from scratch and understand exactly our game plan for that week and how we want to play. I think that in itself kind of creates that mentality of getting better and understanding a new game plan, because you have to work at it . . . Everyone has to lock in and focus for us to have a good game (today), because we don’t have enough time to go out there Wednesday at practice and say this is new, we need time. If you have a bad practice Wednesday then you’re trying to catch up. So I think that kind of creates that sense of urgency to each week come back and as Bill says “reload the gas tank” and get ready to go. So now we’re filling it back up and hopefully emptying it by the end of the week.”
Fans and media tend to look at these Patriots now and believe there is no way they can lose any game, but, perhaps, the Steelers (and few even consider that a possibility). It’s human nature to be convinced that last week, last year and last decade will mean something today when the Dolphins arrive in Foxboro. It well may, but only if the Patriots aren’t thinking it will.
“I think it’s obviously a different level of confidence because you’re playing well,” McCourty explained. “The energy is going well but I think the most important part of the mentality is no matter how it’s going, we’re going to keep working and working at this thing together. I think that’s the biggest thing with this team — understanding that we’re all in this together.
“We knew it was kind of going to be a work in progress from the beginning of the season and I thought we kind of focused and believed in that. It wasn’t just smoke. It wasn’t just talk. It was something we truly believed in and the hard work that we continue to do is showing up on Sundays . ... We’ve got to do that to have a chance to play well (today) and I think we know that now and guys are doing that. I think we understand that’s what it takes for us to go out there and win on Sundays.
“No matter how the season has (gone), when you have all these division games at the end it kind of leaves the division still up for grabs because the games just mean more. You win and you put another team in the division down a game if you beat them. I think it’s going to be pressure across the board. All of these games will be key to end the season . . . . So it’ll be tough.”
At the moment the closest AFC LEast team to the 8-2 Patriots trails them by three games with six to play. The truth is it would take a monumental collapse similar to the ’64 Phillies to lose the division to those slappies, but nobody in Foxboro is talking that way and hopefully none are thinking that either.
But if they are, Bill Belichick will have a highlight video ready that will make Tyrod Taylor look like Jim Kelly, Josh McCown resemble Joe Namath and the Dolphins defense resemble the Killer B’s instead of the dead ducks they are. On any given Sunday those guys don’t have a chance as long as the Patriots somehow believe they do.