Oh no, the Patriots are building another potential dynasty
If you are a fan of the New England Patriots, this column is not for you.
You are welcome to hang around, of course, but your time might be better spent watching clips of New England Super Bowls. There are, after all, so many to choose from.
For the rest of us, the non-Pats fans who had to suffer through two decades of their AFC dominance, this is more of a lament. A wail. Maybe even a bit of a therapy session.
Because, bloody hell, the Patriots are quite good again. Already. We had barely even been able to enjoy the down years!
And, even more frustrating, the one holdover from all those Super Bowl wins, owner Robert Kraft, deserves considerable credit for getting them to this point, a home playoff win away from a return to the AFC Championship Game. It's always fun to laugh at the poor decisions made by foolish billionaires in their fancy suites, but Kraft might have pulled off the near-impossible by following a dynastic success with another team that appears to be set up to contend for years.
As I say: Damn it.
It once looked, for a brief while, like it might all come crashing down on the Patriots. The hallmark of the Brady-Belichick dynasty was that the pair of them could overcome just about anything, from the loss of key coordinators to the departure of important weapons. Belichick could scheme up a defense and Brady could run an offense that defied his age.
But then they had their awkward divorce, Brady found instant success in Tampa Bay, and Belichick spent a few seasons trying to prove that he, too, still had it. He did not, it would turn out, but you couldn't blame Kraft for giving him some time to attempt a post-Brady bounce. The grumpy ol' hoodie had earned the benefit of the doubt.
When the end did come for Belichick in New England, after a woeful 4-13 season in 2023, Kraft turned the team over to a handpicked successor, former Pats assistant coach Jerod Mayo.
It did not go well. Mayo appeared to be hopelessly out of his depth, and even with the promise of rookie quarterback Drake Maye, the Pats slumped to 4-13 again.
That, right there, is the point at which most NFL owners would have doubled down on their mistake. No one loves to admit to an embarrassing blunder, and so a couple of assistants would be dismissed, the roster would be shuffled and the Owner's Guy would try again for another season. Maybe two. Jerry Jones has been doing some version of that for literal decades in Dallas.
Kraft, unfortunately for the rest of the league, didn't waste any time hoping that his poor hire would learn how to be an NFL head coach on the job. He cut bait and brought in Mike Vrabel, a Pats legend who had been a competent head coach in Tennessee, even if he seemingly lost a power struggle in the organization while there.
Suddenly the Patriots had a good coach and a hot young quarterback - and that's most of the recipe for a successful team already. Even so, 14-3 blew away all expectations for this season.
There are some caveats for the rest of us to cling to. New England played a buttery soft schedule, with those 14 wins including just one against a team that finished the season with a winning record: a three-point victory on the road in Buffalo in Week 5.
The roster, after years of sketchy Belichick-led drafts, is a work in progress. The offensive line is shaky, which could be a problem against the pass-rushers on the Houston Texans on Sunday, and it's a little hard to know what to make of the New England defense when it closed the regular season against Baltimore (lost Lamar Jackson to injury), the New York Jets (Brady Cook at quarterback) and Miami (Quinn Ewers at quarterback). The Pats did hold the Los Angeles Chargers to just three points to open the playoffs, but L.A. was a broken-down mess by the end.
The Pats are deserving favorites Sunday. Even if MVP candidate Maye does end up running for his life against the Texans, he happens to be quite good at that kind of thing. Houston and C.J. Stroud didn't exactly look like world-beaters in their wild-card win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, either.
But in the big picture, none of that really matters. The Patriots, truly, are playing with house money now. Even if they sputter against Houston, they still have the foundational pieces for a sustained stretch of competent seasons. Vrabel knows what he's doing, and Maye, unlike so many young quarterbacks who are only trusted to run a training-wheels offense, can sling it downfield accurately and on time.
These guys are going to be good for a while. Sigh.
Congrats, I guess, to the Pats fans. Hope you managed to survive those couple of lean years.
Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.