PATRIOT LEAGUE
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — This is how high the Patriots have raised the bar for themselves: They are approaching Tiger Woods status, where basic excellence is not good enough.
Woods can win six tournaments in a year and it will not be deemed a true success unless at least one of those wins comes in a major championship.
The Patriots can win 12 games every regular season until Bill Belichick is doing standup comedy on “The Tonight Show,” but unless they get to the Super Bowl and win the title, the season is considered a failure.
So, for the No. 1seeded Patriots, Saturday’s AFC Divisional playoff game against the Ravens at Gillette Stadium represented two things:
lOpportunity, with the prospect of the AFC Championship at home against the winner of Sunday’s ColtsBroncos game hanging in the balance.
lAnd legacy, which has been litteredwith toomuch postseason disappointment for the better part of the last decade.
Like Woods has been for years now, the Patriots are playing for their legacy more than anything else.
Much the way Woods piled up 14 major championships in the first 11 years of his professional career, the Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years from 200104, going 90 in postseason games in that historic span.
They were just 67 in the playoffs since then, heading into Saturday’s game, having made it to twomore Super Bowls but losing both times to the Giants.
So the Patriots were staring at considerable pressure on Saturday — a lot more pressure than the Ravens were facing while playing with house money.
A loss to the Ravens would represent arguably the Patriots’ worst loss since their last Super Bowl setback, to the Giants in the 2011 season, for two reasons: This Patriots team is considered more complete and defensively adept than any they’ve fielded in years, and it is as healthy as it’s been in years.
So expectations of this team, which has won six consecutive AFC East titles and 10 in the last 12 years, are astronomically high — fair or unfair.
There was a distinct feel in the days leading up to the game that the Ravens represent the toughest test for the Patriots in their quest to get to the Super Bowl based on the fact Baltimore has ended New England’s season twice in the last five years in the playoffs.
The Ravens, too, traditionally are a tough out, a difficult, mentally tough team for opponents to put away. Their quarterback, Joe Flacco, not only entered the game 21 against Tom Brady and the Patriots in New England, but he came to the game with the most playoff road wins in NFL history with seven.
The feeling among many NewEngland followerswas that if the Patriots could get past the Ravens on Saturday, they might not have as much trouble against the Broncos or Colts in the AFC Championship.
Critics of the Patriots and their mediocre postseasons point to the weak AFC East schedule they play, with neither the Jets, Bills nor Dolphins providing a lot of push back in the division race each year, leading to a bloated regularseason record.
Even the Patriots’ postseason wins in recent years have not exactly come against league powers.
Last season, they beat a defensively deficient Colts team 4322. In 2013, they beat a mediocre Texans team 4128, a month after beating them 4214 in the regular season. And in 2012, they beat a Broncos team that went 88 in the regular season and was quarterbacked by Tim Tebow, 4510, before being eliminated by the Ravens.
Ahead of Saturday’s game, the Patriots’ last playoff win against a playofftested team came three seasons ago against the Ravens, a 2320 victory in the AFC Championship at Gillette Stadium. In that game, Baltimore receiver Lee Evans dropped a lategame TD pass then kicker Billy Cundiff missed a 32yard fieldgoal attempt as the clock ran out that would have sent the game to overtime.
A concern for the Patriots entering Saturdaywas their lack of competition in the last month, a span that included games against the Dolphins, Jets and Bills followed by last week’s idle bye. The Ravenswere coming off a wildcard road win in Pittsburgh.