2003 Patriots and their many close calls- what to make?

[CSKreager]

They have bandied about on this site as a weak SB champ.

With two exceptions- week 2 at Philly, week 17 vs. Buffalo in a revenge game- they weren't exactly blowing out teams.

Their next most lopsided win: 27-13 over the Jaguars.

It's baffling how they skated by a lot of teams considering they had the same 14-2 regular season and playoff wins next year, but were MUCH more decisive.

The 2003 AFC-CG even with the 4 Manning INT's was only 24-14.

They needed OT to beat 2nd year Houston. They only beat Cleveland 9-3! Didn't even score an offensive TD vs. Dallas. 2 wins against a ghastly Jets by a combined 12 points.

What do you make of this team? A gutty team that mastered the art of winning ugly and coming through when they had to when it was close or a team that played with fire all year and was fortunate they simply didn't get burned?

ColdHardFootballFacts summed up that team thusly:

They rarely gave the game away, wilted under pressure or took a punch without giving back harder than they received.

The weekly knife fights sharpened the Patriots into a deadly killing machine. Few teams stepped into a dark alley with those old-school Patriots and lived to tell the tale.

Now, I don't think they were the weakest SB champ- the 1990 Giants are my choice there- but they have gotten a lot of heat for not winning more decisively despite having great defense and Belichick, at least compared with their other SB teams (the 2001 team was a very sneaky kickass team IMO).

Their defense was great, but offensively.... very hit-or-miss, Brady was MUCH more impressive in the 2001/2004 seasons (Really, other than some late heroics, the regular season Indy game, and SB 38, Brady didn't exactly dominate offensively vs. the Titans/Colts in the playoffs for one thing).

So what do you think- a team that could have been much worse than their record or a steel-hardened old-school throwback champ in an era of offensive fireworks

[Citizen]

"Deadly killing machine," lol. I can't take CHFF very seriously with their ridiculous Patriots obsession. I swear Kerry Byrne would have Tom Brady's baby if it were biologically possible.

Anyway, back to your topic.

[BD Sullivan]

"Deadly killing machine," lol. I can't take CHFF very seriously with their ridiculous Patriots obsession. I swear Kerry Byrne would have Tom Brady's baby if it were biologically possible.

From Byrne's bio:

"He's also food and drinks writer for The Boston Herald"

[7DnBrnc53]

So what do you think- a team that could have been much worse than their record or a steel-hardened old-school throwback champ in an era of offensive fireworks.

I am going to say the former.

On Bleacher Report (I know that it is a weak site, and I rarely go on there), someone wrote an article called The Truth about Spygate: Punishing Success and Promoting Parity:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1993 ... ing-parity

Actually, it is a good article, but in the beginning (after a Vince Lombardi quote), the author (Scott Sheaffer, a Patriot fan) said that excellence isn't against the rules. Well, what excellence is he talking about? in my opinion, their three-time champion teams from the early-00's were fluky.

In 01, they played one of the easiest schedules in the league. They needed the Tuck Rule to bail them out against Oakland, and the officials also looked the other way in SB 36 by not calling some borderline penalties against their overly aggressive defense.

Then, in 03, that was a team that was a few plays away from being 8-8. They had a good D, but it wasn't very athletic. And, they had an offense that didn't put up a lot of points on the board. Heck, in the 03 AFC Title Game, Brady threw four passes that should have been INT's (one of them was knocked out of the Indy DB's hands by, you guessed it, Troy Brown).

[JohnTurney]

I alwats felt that team was a defensive team...the offense was very good, but not what it was 4-5 years later

[rhickok1109]

I think many of you know I'm a Packer fan living in New England, so I've watched a lot of Patriots' football through the years. (I actually covered them in 1960, when they were the Boston Patriots in the AFL; I watched an awful lot of really bad football that season.) Although I have no rooting interest in the Patriots, I do know a fair amount about the team.

I think Belichick is a genius at playing whatever hand he is dealt against whatever competition he is facing ATM, and the 2003 season was a good example. The Patriots had a ton of injuries on offense that year, especially to their wide receivers, but their defense was very good. They gave up just 14.9 points a game to lead the NFL and they had three 1st-team All-Pros on defense (Harrison, Law, and Seymour). They held opposing QBs to a 56.2 rating and had 29 interceptions while giving up only 11 TD passes and only 4.9 yards per passing attempt. They were +17 in turnovers.

So they focused on a ball-control offense, throwing a lot to RB Kevin Faulk and to their tight ends. RBs and TEs accounted for 198 of their 320 receptions. Obviously, the combination worked. In 2004, when the offense was healthy, they changed to a wider open attack. The defense dropped from first to second in points allowed, but the offense improved from 12th to 4th. For comparison, RBs and TEs caught only 128 of the 293 completed passes that season.

I've noted before that there's a kind of double standard about close games. It's possible to go through a series of what-if scenarios and say that a 14-2 team would have been only 4-12 or something like that if they'd lost all their close games. OTOH, many people say that the mark of a great team is that it wins the close games.

[JWL]

I've noted before that there's a kind of double standard about close games. It's possible to go through a series of what-if scenarios and say that a 14-2 team would have been only 4-12 or something like that if they'd lost all their close games. OTOH, many people say that the mark of a great team is that it wins the close games.

Well, look at this past Sunday's Patriots-Jets game. The Patriots are generally considered great. The Jets are generally considered a train wreck. (These franchises were almost mirror images of one another through the 2000 season. I think the Patriots were 14.5 or 15.5 games better than the Jets through 41 seasons but the Jets had a Super Bowl championship and the Patriots did not. Fast forward 15 seasons and the Patriots are considered a flagship franchise with a great history and the Jets are junk. But that's all another story for another day.) The Jets had a 4th quarter lead but you just knew, you just knew, the Jets would be blowing it. Less than a half minute before it happened I correctly predicted (I have a text as proof) a Ryan Fitzpatrick turnover would be coming and the game would effectively end. Sure enough, the next play was a Fitzpatrick turnover and the game effectively ended. Were the Patriots really any better than the Jets on Sunday? Not really. But they won and that's what counts in the end.

I don't know what my point is other than one can do whatever one wants to do as far as handling of close games is concerned. I think the Jets are a mostly clueless horrible franchise and I think the Patriots are the opposite. My thinking is that figuring out how to win even if it is regularly by close margins is the mark of a good team.

[rhickok1109]

I've noted before that there's a kind of double standard about close games. It's possible to go through a series of what-if scenarios and say that a 14-2 team would have been only 4-12 or something like that if they'd lost all their close games. OTOH, many people say that the mark of a great team is that it wins the close games.

Well, look at this past Sunday's Patriots-Jets game. The Patriots are generally considered great. The Jets are generally considered a train wreck. (These franchises were almost mirror images of one another through the 2000 season. I think the Patriots were 14.5 or 15.5 games better than the Jets through 41 seasons but the Jets had a Super Bowl championship and the Patriots did not. Fast forward 15 seasons and the Patriots are considered a flagship franchise with a great history and the Jets are junk. But that's all another story for another day.) The Jets had a 4th quarter lead but you just knew, you just knew, the Jets would be blowing it. Less than a half minute before it happened I correctly predicted (I have a text as proof) a Ryan Fitzpatrick turnover would be coming and the game would effectively end. Sure enough, the next play was a Fitzpatrick turnover and the game effectively ended. Were the Patriots really any better than the Jets on Sunday? Not really. But they won and that's what counts in the end.

I don't know what my point is other than one can do whatever one wants to do as far as handling of close games is concerned. I think the Jets are a mostly clueless horrible franchise and I think the Patriots are the opposite. My thinking is that figuring out how to win even if it is regularly by close margins is the mark of a good team.

I watched the game with my three sons, who are Patriots fans, born and brought up in New England, and they were pretty blase about the Patriots' 83-yard game-winning drive. They pretty much expected it

[Jay Z]

As far as winning the close games goes, I think it works until it doesn't work. The 2010 Packers' six losses were all close - four by three points and two by four. Then they ran the table. Of course, they made sure to win all of those games by at least five points.

In contrast the 2001 Bears won a bunch of close regular season games and laid an egg in the playoffs.

[Steviek]

"Deadly killing machine," lol. I can't take CHFF very seriously with their ridiculous Patriots obsession. I swear Kerry Byrne would have Tom Brady's baby if it were biologically possible.

Hahahahaha. Yeah the pro sports obsession in New England is beyond fanatical, it's disturbingly obsessive bordering on insanity. My company has a downtown Boston office and the running joke is that they always try to work one of their hometown teams into the first three minutes of any conversation.

I recall 30 Rock had a good parody of this on an episode.