It was at about this point in the season a year ago that the New England Patriots’ determined, seemingly unyielding march toward a fifth Super Bowl title with Bill Belichick as their coach and Tom Brady as their quarterback veered off course.
A 10-0 start in 2015, which prompted talk of an unbeaten campaign to punctuate a Patriots’ revenge tour in the Deflategate aftermath, gave way to a 2-4 downward spiral to close the regular season.
Brady suffered from a lack of help as his supporting cast had been riddled by injuries. His offensive line couldn’t safeguard him. The Patriots played their way out of the top seed in the AFC playoffs and had to go on the road for the conference title game in Denver, where the Broncos’ pass rushers overwhelmed Brady and his blockers en route to a Super Bowl triumph that became a retirement gift to Brady’s chief rival, Peyton Manning.
So now, as the 2016 regular season enters its stretch run with the Patriots again in position to make a championship push, the key questions are: Can they secure the AFC’s No. 1 seed this time? And can they keep their most important players healthy enough to have their would-be imposing offense in top form for the season’s most crucial games?
There were some ominous signs Sunday in the Meadowlands. The Patriots beat the New York Jets, 22-17, to up their record to 9-2, tied with the Oakland Raiders for the conference’s best. But Brady wasn’t himself, dealing with a knee injury and making a number of uncharacteristically inaccurate throws. And his favorite receiver, game-altering tight end Rob Gronkowski, made his return to the lineup a brief stay, exiting the game in the first quarter with a back injury.
“I think everybody’s battling through different things,” Brady said after the game. “You just do the best you can do. It’s a long season. Every week starts fresh again. I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad we won.”
When the Patriots won three of four games while Brady served his Deflategate suspension to open the season, there were reasons to believe that the NFL’s application — or misapplication, depending on your perspective — of underinflated-football justice actually might work in the team’s favor.
The Patriots got a sneak preview of life after Brady by getting meaningful playing time for quarterbacking understudies Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett. They kept winning, with Belichick’s coaching brilliance on full display. And Brady would have to endure only 12 games before the arrival of the postseason.
Brady, indeed, has played at an MVP-caliber level since his return. The Patriots are 6-1 with him and he has thrown 18 touchdown passes with only one interception, compiling a passer rating of 116.7. However, two of the past three games have been far from perfect, with a loss at home to the Seattle Seahawks and Sunday’s struggle against the Jets bookending a victory at San Francisco.
“I don’t think anybody’s fresh as a daisy,” Belichick said Sunday. “Again, coming off the San Francisco trip and all of that, the Seattle game the week before, it’s a grind. You’ve just got to fight through it. Tom’s got great mental toughness. So do a lot of other guys on the team that are dealing with something, too.”
Brady missed practices Wednesday and Thursday last week, another disruption for him in a season that has been full of them.
“There’s a lot of time I wish I would have spent on the practice field that I was spending getting treatment,” he said. “So I’d rather have more time to prepare mentally and on the practice field than kind of do what happened. But that’s the way it goes. You’re not gonna practice every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. You’d love to. But it’s probably not the reality for most guys in the league. … I got a chance to get out there on Friday and run around a little bit and the coaches put me in.”
Asked whether he ever considered sitting out Sunday’s game in hopes of healing fully for the remainder of the season, Brady said succinctly: “Nope.” But he did not exactly dismiss the notion that his knee might have affected his ability to plant and throw properly.
“I’m gonna have to watch the film,” Brady said. “But you’re right. I wasn’t hitting the ones that were there. We just couldn’t make enough plays to stay on the field to put pressure on those guys. We need to do a better job of that. But I can certainly do a better job.”
The good news for the Patriots was that their defense did its part in the Meadowlands, forcing a late fumble by Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to seal the outcome.
“A lot of games in this league come down to the last series, a couple plays,” Belichick said. “You battle it out for 54, 55, 59 minutes and it comes down to one or two plays that are critical. If they’re executed well and if they’re designed well, they have a chance to do it. We’ve had a lot of those come up and we’ve handled those pretty well. We had a lot of things that we can improve on from this game. We’ll talk about those and work on them as we get ready for Los Angeles this week.”
The Patriots play three of their final five regular season games at home, beginning Sunday against the Rams. But the two remaining road games — at Denver on Dec. 18 and at Miami in the Jan. 1 regular season finale — should be demanding. And the equation changes considerably if Gronkowski cannot get — and remain — healthy. He didn’t have a catch Sunday in his abbreviated return to the lineup after missing one game with a chest injury suffered on a hit by Seahawks safety Earl Thomas.
“I don’t think everyone’s feeling great this time of year,” Brady said. “You just do the best you can do. I’ll try to do the same this week.”