USA TODAY International Edition
PERFECT PATRIOTS?
Team stocked for another run at historical season
FOXBOROUGH, MASS. It’s been 10 years, but Heath Evans remembers how Junior Seau and Tedy Bruschi used to play Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust after
each victory.
Dan Koppen remembers the first time Randy Moss stepped onto the practice field and how the offense erupted after he hauled in a deep pass for a score.
Rodney Harrison remembers how coach Bill Belichick never once said the word “perfection.”
For the 2007 New England Patriots, though, that’s what was nearly achieved.
That team is the only one in NFL history to complete a 16-0 regular season — and the Patriots did it in dominant fashion and despite immense external pressure and scrutiny — yet they famously fell short of 19-0 by losing Super Bowl LII to the New York Giants.
“You had that core group that was dead set on not only winning but trying to destroy everyone by putting in the work,” Evans, a fullback on that 2007 team — it’s average regular-season margin of victory was 19.7 points — told USA TODAY Sports.
“It wasn’t malicious or arrogance,” Evans, now an NFL Network analyst, continued. “It was people who understood the beauty of our game and how few and far between these opportunities ever come around in history.”
It might be a long shot, but the 2017 Patriots might also have a chance to make history.
As the team kicks off the NFL’s regular season Thursday night against the Kansas City Chiefs, not only are they widely expected to repeat as Super Bowl champions, but many — including USA TODAY Sports’ Nate Davis — are forecasting a perfect season.
New England is coming off of a thrilling overtime victory against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI. The Patriots posted the league’s best regular-season record in 2016 at 14-2 and allowed the fewest points of any team while scoring the third most. That, by the way, was with quarterback Tom Brady suspended for four games. (The Patriots were 14-1 last year, including playoff games, when he played.)
Yet New England retooled in the offseason anyway and appears to have potentially gotten better. The Patriots signed Pro Bowl cornerback Stephon Gilmore in free agency. They traded for New Orleans Saint Brandin Cooks, perhaps the most dynamic receiver paired with Brady since the Moss days. They even snagged speedster Phillip Dorsett last weekend, sending third-string quarterback Jacoby Brissett to the Indianapolis Colts in exchange, adding a new deep threat and a dynamic return element.
Belichick must get them to assimilate into New England’s culture as soon as possible — while overcoming the season-ending knee injury to receiver Julian Edelman and recalibrating the running game after opting to not re-sign LeGarrette Blount.
“Belichick is a master of getting guys that have a tremendous amount of talent and are very good football players but just need to be part of something special,” Harrison, a former Patriots safety and current NBC football analyst, told USA TODAY Sports. “Not to be the center of focus, but to be a part of something. And when you have Brady and those other leaders ... (Belichick) trusts the locker room so much that if we had a Randy Moss come in and if he tried to disrupt our flow, he would get his ass kicked.
“Randy Moss wasn’t coming in there to change the dynamic that we had in the locker room. Randy Moss was coming in there because he got tired of the (expletive) of all the other places that he had been at. He grew up and saw it as another opportunity to change his persona, to play football. And he was perfect, because he worked his ass off.”
Perhaps that, above all else, answers the question of how the 2007 Patriots coped with adversity — remaining undefeated, sustaining an already-burgeoning legacy, battling tough opponents, handling fame and fortune and (most notably) answering questions about that year’s Spygate scandal. They ignored the noise.
Each member of the 2007 Patriots interviewed for this story vowed that players and coaches never addressed the chase of an undefeated season as it unfolded. But it’s human nature. As the victories piled up, they knew what was attainable, they just tried to block it out.
“When you get to that point, and no one has ever done it, there’s extra weight added on,” Koppen, New England’s Pro Bowl center in 2007, told USA TODAY Sports. “That being said, you’ve got 53 mentally and physically tough guys that went through a long NFL season; that’s not the deciding factor in the last game. That pressure is small potatoes.”
It didn’t hurt to have a veteran locker room that knew how to cut the tension.
“That type of entitlement — or expectations without putting in the work — Bill will cut you so fast, it would make your head spin,” Evans said. “I think that’s the key ingredient that comes out of that place, success-wise. It’s the system of discipline, the system of humility, the system of players willing to do what they’re told and willing to fit in where they could get in.”
And this year’s team is different from the 2007 squad. Brady and kicker Stephen Gostkowski are the lone holdovers. But with Belichick and Brady entering their 18th season together, their chances at perfection might never be as good as they are now.
“How old is Bill now, 65?” Koppen wondered while accurately pegging the coach’s age. “He can change. He’s willing to change just as much as a young guy — maybe even more so — which probably makes it better for him. He’s able to adapt to different teams, different individuals, different personalities.
“And in the end, that usually works out better for the team.”