It needn’t be said that the New England Patriots are Super Bowl contenders. That is an annual given at this point, with the six Lombardi Trophies they’ve collected over two absurdly prosperous decades with Bill Belichick as their coach and Tom Brady as their quarterback. Super Bowl favorites? Ho-hum. Nothing new there.
But as the Patriots readied for a Thursday night meeting in Foxborough, Mass., with their old nemesis, the New York Giants, the issue worth considering is whether this New England team might be capable of the one achievement that has eluded Belichick and Brady during the dynastic run: perfection. The Patriots came oh-so-close to securing the first 19-0 season in NFL history in 2007, taking an 18-0 record into the Super Bowl before that memorable upset by the Eli Manning-led Giants.
These Patriots have begun 5-0, avoiding the sort of early-season hardships that arose even in some of their Super Bowl seasons. So the possibility of a run at an unblemished season certainly exists, given Belichick’s ability to make certain that his teams improve as a season progresses and his propensity to keep his foot on the gas pedal even if a playoff spot and seeding are already secured late in a regular season.
Is this Patriots team good enough? It’s an intriguing question. If it does happen, it would not be a reprise of 2007. Those Patriots were a historically great offensive team, with Brady throwing 50 touchdowns passes and Randy Moss catching 23 of them.
These Patriots are different. Brady remains highly productive at age 42. But he’s not the Brady of 2007, and he’s probably not quite even the Brady of his league MVP season two years ago at 40. There are questions about the supporting cast around him on offense, with tight end Rob Gronkowski retired and wide receiver Antonio Brown gone after just one game with the team. There are questions about the offensive line and the running game.
No, this is a defense-first Patriots team, in some ways a throwback to the early days of the dynasty before it became clear that Brady was an all-time great on his way to being the all-time great.
“We obviously have a great strength in our defense,” Brady said after Sunday’s 33-7 triumph over the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field. “They turn the ball over. They just make it so hard to complete every pass. We realized that in training camp. It’s just amazing to watch those guys play right now. So we’ve just got to keep it going and, hopefully, we can pick it up on offense.”
This is not just a good or a very good Patriots defense. This could be a great Patriots defense. New England is ranked first in the NFL in total defense, scoring defense and pass defense; the Patriots are third against the run. They have surrendered 34 points, the fifth-lowest total by any team through five games of a season since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger.
The Patriots have 11 interceptions and 24 sacks in five games. They’re yet to allow a passing touchdown.
“It’s a really good group that communicates well and plays with great effort and good awareness,” Belichick said after the win over the Redskins. “We’re very fortunate that we have a lot of good players.”
The onus, then, will be on the offense to do its part. The Patriots struggled on offense in a first half against the Redskins in which Brady was sacked three times. That came after the offense was similarly sluggish a week earlier during a victory at Buffalo in which Brady had a passer rating of 45.9. But things clicked during a 21-point second half against the Redskins in which the Patriots recommitted to the running game, slowing down the pass rush and benefiting Brady.
The addition of Brown on the eve of the regular season seemed to give Brady an abundance of pass-catchers and the type of playmaker at wide receiver Brady hadn’t had since Moss. But Brown lasted only one game in a Patriots uniform and was released amid an NFL investigation into allegations by two women of rape, sexual assault and intimidation. He remains unsigned as a free agent.
Brady still has receiving options, with Julian Edelman and Josh Gordon at wideout and James White coming out of the backfield. But the offense is not what it might have been.
Some of this is nitpicking. The Patriots, while being ranked only 11th in the league in total offense, are third in scoring offense. But when the topic is a prospective run at 19-0, the bar is high.
“I mean, there’s a standard,” Edelman said in the postgame locker room at FedEx Field. “People expect you to go out and work hard, practice hard, play hard. And if you do those things, good things happen. That’s something we try to emphasize here.”
There also is the matter of the kicking game. Veteran Mike Nugent missed an extra point on Sunday after being signed to replace Stephen Gostkowski, sidelined by a season-ending hip injury. Belichick said after the Redskins game that he had no immediate plans to reevaluate the choice of Nugent.
“We just need to do things better,” he said.