The Patriots Don’t Have The Week Off This Year
The Patriots have to play in the wildcard round for the first time since 2009! Thank you Fitzmagic, you are the hero we never deserved.
It made me realize there are multiple members of the Patriots who are multi-year, multiple super bowl winning veterans who have never played in a wildcard round. Ever. I looked up their roster and the two biggest names that stood out to me are Devin McCourty (drafted in 2010) and Dont’a Hightower (drafted in 2012). I’m sure a few other folks have also been on the team for some time without seeing a wildcard game. It should also be noted that Gronk never played a wildcard game in his entire career. This is just another absolutely astounding statistic displaying the sheer dominance this franchise has had for so long.
I’m also kind of interested in the team for the first time in a while. This is a flawed Patriots team the likes of which I feel like we haven’t seen since 2011, when the roles were reversed and the offense was stellar but the defense was hot garbage. I still have them as my SB pick, because we live in hellworld and can’t have nice things. But getting outside the meme side of things the main reason I still feel the Pats will win it all even when there are clearly better teams in the playoffs (Ravens, 49ers, Saints) is because there is no team I trust more to take the playoffs one week at a time like those annoying Patriots. Football isn’t like the other 3 big sports, the playoffs aren’t a “best of” series. Every week is one game elimination. Being the better team overall in football doesn’t matter. What matters is being the better team for 3 hours. That’s why I love football. It naturally gives life to chaos simply through structure. The Patriots have achieved their irritating immortality by being the one franchise that seems to actually understand this. There is no better coach and franchise that is better at taking every game one at a time, one moment at a time, never getting ahead of itself.
If I had to win a single football game, I know what NFL coach I would want in the driver seat. I’d want Belichick in there. With the playoffs being just that, I still completely trust Belichick to be able to come up with the gameplans that would be the formula to beat every team in the NFL, and it only comes down to if the players execute. The Ravens would blow New England to smithereens most weeks, but Belichick only needs to figure out a way to stifle that franchise for a single game, and it won’t matter if the Ravens are the better team overall. So yeah, I’m still 100% on the hellworld result. God I can’t wait till the day we all die and the sun explodes because that seems like it’s more likely than this stupid team going away.
That said, I’ve often wondered what the history of this franchise would look like if they had spent the last 20 years with more consistent competition. If they had to spend a few more of these past seasons actually playing in the wildcard round once in a while. The brief period in which the Pats had actual divisional competition (The early Rex Ryan Jets), the Pats stumbled around in the playoffs a bit more. The AFC East has been a joke for so long and the AFC in general an extremely top-heavy conference that the Patriots never really seemed like they had to truly struggle and claw for one of those coveted bye weeks. They never had enough other teams clawing close with similar records, ready to steal a win and a seeding spot. The NFC is interesting as hell because besides it still being roughly the same few teams for the past decade showing up, they were always so close to each other in record, constantly slugging it out. The Pats always had what felt like an easy road every year. The AFC and AFCE specifically just never got their shit together to make the Patriots really earn it. Maybe the Brady era would be over by now if the Pats got punched a little more often.
So despite all the rightful praise the Pats should get for being so consistently smart and excellent for the past decade, there will always be that part of me that wonders if they were also major beneficiaries of some weak competition. In any case, I hope Ryan Tannehill rises like the phoenix he is and strikes the Patriots down in one glorious act of revenge next weekend. If he does, you better believe the money saga is getting a new chapter.
that gronk fact is my new favorite bit of trivia
Two franchises did not appear in the wild card round in the 2010s.
Patriots*
Browns
* The 2009 season, but the WC game was 2010 Jan 10.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that if you look up “strength of schedule” for the last, oh, decade or so, the Patriots – CONFOUNDINGLY – end up having an insanely easy shhhhedule almost every year.
The Google results don’t lie, and you’ll find tons of articles like this one:
https://www.12up.com/posts/the-patriots-have-the-easiest-schedule-in-the-nfl-for-the-3rd-straight-year-01dbzzmh9vh0
Also, I’m calling him Tommy Toast now, and no amount of success, this year or next, is going to change my mind. It’s also driving my neighbor (diehard Pats fan) ABSOLUTELY LIVID. X’D
Upon further review, I sound like I’m disagreeing with you. You stated they benefited from weak competition, and this is a “You’re right, they did, and here is a consistent way to back up that point.”
Yeah, we’re on the same team here. I still have utmost respect for what that team has accomplished but anyone who thinks they haven’t benefited from weak scheduling and less competition in that time frame is a little too blind
One thing to keep in mind: top-heavy conferences skew SoS by existing, and SoS is based on previous years. It’s actually a really weird stat. Think of it this way: You have a team that, if it were weighted against all NFL teams, might be 8-8. But if they play a #1 seed schedule, suddenly, they’re 6-10. Then, the next year (because they were 6-10), they play a weak schedule– now they get 2 extra wins, and get to be 10-6 instead. Are they really a 10-6 team? Nah. And sometimes, it’ll coincide with playing a weak conference or a strong conference. But that’s where top-heavy conferences like the AFC come into play. When you have a few actually perennially great teams (Colts/Steelers/Ravens/Broncos/Patriots for much of the 2000s-mid-2010s, more fluctuation since then), they tilt the balance of SoS, especially since they’re spread over the 4 divisions. The Colts mollywhomped the AFC South, deflating the SoS of anyone who played the AFC South. The Patriots did the same in the AFC East. And while it’s true– none of those teams were particularly great, the Bills, Titans, Texans, and Dolphins were *mostly* 8-8 weight teams through much of that time, and the Jets were even actually good for a while. But they have 4-5 games/year that are basically a loss, with only a couple that are basically a win, pushing more 6-10s than 8-8s. You can contrast this with the NFC, where while there has been a *lot* more parity (12/16 have been to the Super Bowl over the last 20 years vs. 7/16 in the AFC), but where you’ve had dominant divisions– the NFC South had 2-3 good/great teams for much of that stretch, and even a few years where all 4 teams were strong, but then others where it was “FREE DIVISION”. The same kind of rotation’s happened for the other divisions– heck, there was a time when 3/4th of the NFC North were good. That kind of intradivision competition did a lot to shift SoS perceptions of good teams in those years.
The Pats certainly dominated their division, but other than maybe the AFC North, which division would they have done worse in? The thing with the Pats is, their SoS, at the start of the year, is always stronger than their hindsight SoS. The same thing was happening in the NFC in the 1980s– you had the NFC West, with basically just the 49ers, the NFC Central, with basically just DA bears, and while the NFC East featured many great iterations, they were rarely great in the same year. Then we have the CBA in the 1990s, the division shift, and things kinda-sorta-evened-out-ish-but-not-really. The 70s had a similar trend, though– the Steelers, Raiders, and Dolphins dominating their divisions, with inflated SoS because the great teams just crushed the records of everyone else, and imposed 2-3 extra losses/year in a 14 game season. But the NFC’s SoS was more even, because their divisions were far less dynastic.
So… yeah, to an extent, the Patriots succeeded because of a relatively weak AFC East, but at the same time, the Patriots success is what *caused* the relatively weak AFC East. And because the NFL does not tolerate losing for long, the AFC East lacked the stability necessary to try and find a plan or a scheme that could dethrone the Patriots. Seriously: the Patriots beating everyone else caused everyone else to weaken themselves, allowing the Patriots to dominate. The same thing happened to the AFC Central vs. the Steelers in the 70s, to the AFC West vs. the late 80s/early 90s Broncos, to the ’90s East vs. the Cowboys… GREAT teams don’t only beat their opponents, the mentality of the NFL mandates that GREAT teams cause their opponents to keep themselves down by looking for golden bullets instead of better fundamentals and teamwork.
The “easy AFC East” thing is wildly overstated. The Patriots’ record against the AFC East is actually their *fourth* best winning percentage, behind the NFC East, AFC South, NFC South, and tied with the NFC West (it’s also a very close to a tie with the AFC North). I don’t know how this will format, but here’s a table:
Division W – L – T Win Percentage
NFC East 22 – 6 78.6%
AFC South 41 – 12 77.4%
NFC South 17 – 5 77.3%
NFC West 15 – 5 75.0%
AFC East 96 – 32 75.0%
AFC North 38 – 13 74.5%
NFC North 17 – 6 73.9%
AFC West 33 – 18 64.7%
That’s since 2000 (I found numbers as of last year and manually added this year’s results, I should figure out how to use PFR sometime), the numbers would be a bit different if you started with the most recent realignment, but in general there’s not really any evidence that the AFC East is particularly weak against the Patriots, it just seems that way because they play them far more often than everyone else, so it’s more total L’s. Really, the interesting thing here is how tightly everyone clusters around 75%, except the AFC West. That’s clearly the Patriots’ weak spot.
I just want Ryan Tannehill to Thanos the patriots.
“I am…inevitable.”
If the Titans win, they might just get a comic with something similar
The Patriots are the ones with six rings/Infinity Stones.
Really, it would be Brady saying “I am. . . inevitable.”
And Tannehill saying “And I am Ryan Tannehill” before snapping the Patriots out. You’d do it just like the climax of Infinity War, with the Patriots seemingly on the verge of victory but then getting dusted.
It’d be funny if they pull that off and win the title later afterward. I mean it won’t happen but still imagine if it does.
I remember the Pats getting clowned by Matt Patricia’s Lions last year. Now they blow a game against another long time member of their coaching staff who is now a head coach for another team. Kind of makes you wonder if they were too afraid to video tape a show about “advance scouts” against those teams after Mangini ratted them out after warning Belichick not to do it against him. Suck it Pats fans
The last time Miami beat New England in Massachusetts was the Wildcats cat game in 2008. Now we fell to the #8th pick. Fucking dammit Ftiz.
We are 5th. We would still be 5th even if we had lost to New England. Had Detroit and/or Washingron won, a loss would have taken us to 4th, but as it stands, we played spoiler to the Pats with absolutely zero consequences
That last “play” was fucking hilarious. We’ve gone from the Miracle in Miami to the Fiasco in Foxboro in one season.
I would laugh like an absolute loon if Tannys was the one to strike them down.
Especially as Patriots fan, this comic is absolutely hilarious. Though, given they’ve never won the Super Bowl without a Bye Week, it’s about time it happens so they can get rid of that stupid statistic 😀
The thing about this is that I’m not allowing even that mad about it. We’re in the playoffs, and we’re 1st in the afc East. Of course we were going to get exposed, it’s Miami, they always pull this bullshit. Everyone saying the Dolphins were gonna lose needs to take another look – the Dolphins are a professional team, and they’re not gonna take it when it comes to someone they wanted to beat. The only funny thing about this is that they fucked up their tank but who were they gonna take, anyway? On another note, Brady could be done, and after that awful pick six, I won’t be mad if he retires soon. The defense needs to stop thinking they’re great just because they’re the Patriots, you can’t let ego control you. What can we do? I’m still gonna root for them this weekend, and hope they win, but won’t be surprised if we lose. All the other pats “fans” that are gonna root for them to lose just to have the season over can go fuck themselves, though. I don’t expect to win Super Bowls – I expect to play well if we say we’re good.
Do you, as a Pats fan sit there and watch the 49ers and think “Jimmy should be here taking this over” at all?
I do, absolutely.
If they had never extended Brady to 2019 (he was originally scheduled to expire at the end of 2017), which was the thing that actually guaranteed JG would be gone by the end of 2017 they could have let Brady go at the end of 2017 and switched to JG for 2018.
That means that the Patriots traded SB53 for whatever JG would have done with the 2018 team and the rest of his career.
When you see it that way you realize what a bad choice they made.
I figure it was Brady whining to Kraft a lot that got him the extension that guaranteed JG would be history.
Also a Pat’s fan, and also 100%, unequivocally, yes. JimmyG should be leading the Patriots into this postseason, not Brady. I’ve been rooting for Brady to retire ever since his Deflategate suspension. Love what he has done for my team overall, but I’m ready to pass the torch, and they completely blew it with Jimmy.
… we’ve won SBs since. I think I’d rather take the (mostly) undisputed GOAT QB of all time than roll the dice on what was then a good but unproven QB. I love Jimmy G, but 6 SBs for a QB is unprecedented. I wouldn’t give that up.
For my opinion on Jimmy G, yea, it’s sad to see Jimmy gone. All that potential and he’s using it wisely with the 49ers. For the most part, though, I only think about the patriots and what we have in Tom, and I’m glad we won the super bowl out of that, but with the future and how Jimmy was supposed to take the mantle, it’s disappointing to say the least. Tom can’t keep playing forever.
More Money Comics! GO TITANS/TANNEHILL!!!
The Patriots’ win percentage outside the division over the last 20 years is virtually identical to their win percentage within the division.
Which means that whatever division they were in would be a dumpster fire.
Strength of schedule calculated at the beginning of the season is just hot air, teams fluctuate too much from year to year. And 538 agrees with me: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-way-everybody-measures-nfl-schedule-strength-its-wrong/
Only one division had more wins this season than the AFCE – the NFCW. Only one other division had the same number of wins, the NFCN.
The real dumpster fire is the NFCE, whose teams only averaged 6 wins.
The Patriots have never made it to the Super Bowl without a bye, and this year will be no different (and I say that as a Pats fan). Brady is finally showing his age. While his arm hasn’t turned into a noodle yet like Manning’s did, his accuracy has become absurdly bad. And he knows it, so he is throwing balls away like never before rather than try to put it in a tight spot and risk interception.Their o-line is subpar, their receivers can’t get open… even if they do get by Tennessee, I can’t see them beating both the Chiefs and the Ravens on the road.
“With the playoffs being just that, I still completely trust Belichick to be able to come up with the gameplans that would be the formula to beat every team in the NFL, and it only comes down to if the players execute.”
THIS is why Belichick is good and I don’t understand why more coaches don’t take the “one team at a time” approach.
Belichick changes the game plan every week. You don’t see the Pats come out and run the same offense every week, they run an offense tailored for the opponent.
Maybe that’s too hard for most people but it makes perfect sense: plan for the opponent you are facing.
Anyway, that team is 100% Belichick, the year Brady’s knee exploded and they still went 11-5 with Matt fucking Cassel shows it.
Brady seemed kinda bad yesterday. Been that way for weeks. We’re approaching Montana with the Chiefs level right now.
Montana was over 60% completion rate both years with the Chiefs and made the playoffs both years, including making the AFC Championship Game in 1993 with the offense scoring over 27 points in both wins.
I was meaning more of a “it doesn’t feel right kind of vibe”. With Young behind him, the 49ers felt it was time to move on. It seems like the Patriots would be ok letting Brady walk. And with the way he has played recently, they might not be wrong. I, for one, loved Montana with the Chiefs. It just wasn’t the same though. And Breesus is right, Montana played with a lot better talent in SF. That actually makes his work in KC more impressive.
I just want to point out that the 49ers with Montana were pre-salary cap and he played with a top 3 defense almost every year. Perhaps the chiefs just weren’t as good as a team laced with HoF players.
Btw that’s was makes Belichicks front office decisions so impressive. He’s managed to have a top 5 defense 10 times in 20 years and only twice out of the top 10. In the salary cap era. With one of the fastest paced offenses ever.
What is Tom drinking – T2 Snake Oil?
It’s apparently tradition for Miami to dunk on the Patriots at least once a year.
Hopefully next Saturday we find out Tannehill is still a Dolphin at heart.
Maybe Gronk will come out of retirement this week to gain the experience of playing in a wild card game
In fairness to Brady, I think his decline has been exacerbated by the supporting cast. Brady’s nursing his elbow. Edelman is pretty banged up. Sanu isn’t catching on as advertised. N’Keal Harry spent most of the year hurt and is just getting into a rhythm. Gordon did who-knows-what to get blackballed, and did exactly what we expected once in Seattle. AB never should have been signed, and his aura has taunted the team since.
And that’s just the WRs. NE started the season losing their starting center, an O-linesman, a fullback, and a placekicker. The replacement kicker sucked and his replacement had an appendectomy. The backup fullback got hurt. The D looked strong but it’s notable that Jason McCourty’s absence has hurt. It’s hard to cry for football injuries; every team loses good first-stringers. But that’s a lot of depth to lose on the offense. Between the weak O-line and trust in the receiver corps, Brady’s either desperate or running scared half the time.
Once the kicking game was toast, I figured it would be a short playoff run. The Pats are known for their “next man up” attitude, but eventually you run out of men to go up next, and if there were anyone worth being on a roster, they’d already be there.
As someone who still can’t quite come to terms with liking the team, I admit the early playoff exit would be easier to stomach if it weren’t accompanied by the rest of the known world celebrating the end of the dynasty. But hatred is earned, and sometimes deserved (I’m still pissed about the latest Spygate stupidity, and just when I’d forgiven them for signing AB).
It’d be easier to fear the Patriots if they hadn’t already gotten dunked on by the teams they have to beat to get to the Super Bowl. If Belicheat was gonna beat the Ravens the exactly-one-time he needs to do it, he should have done it during their first meeting and secured the first seed.
Like straight up, they have lost to every other division winner. I would not be surprised at all if the Pats have an embarrassing exit against the Titans this week.
Not every other division winner. we did beat the Eagles
I meant the other AFC division winners. The Pats have played and lost to the Ravens, Chiefs, and Texans.
Saying “we beat the Eagles!” sure is damning with faint praise lol
I know we’ve seen this before, but I honestly feel like we’re 1-2 years away from the Pats being third in the division. If Josh Allen takes the next step, the Bills can be a 12-win team. And the Dolphins seem to have a rock-solid future plan and just the coach to put it into motion. I could see both putting up double digit wins in two seasons, with the Patriots on the outside looking in at 8-8 or 9-7.
Now watch them get 25 regular season wins and 2 Lombardis in the next two years.
What if….
The Ravens had kept Priest Holmes and Dilfer, instead of going for Elvis Grbac and having nothing for a backup when Jamal Lewis went down?
The Patriots never get their breakthrough year, for starters.