Love them or hate them. There’s really not much in between for football fans in terms of the New England Patriots, but there is no denying that the defending Super Bowl champions are a well-oiled machine.
The Patriots have made more noise than anyone else this offseason as a result of the “Deflategate” investigation that concluded New England quarterback Tom Brady likely arranged to have footballs “doctored” prior to the Patriots’ 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship.
The scandal has resulted in a $1 million fine for the team, a loss of draft picks including a first-rounder next year and a 4-game suspension for Brady. The steepness of the penalties for the alleged “cheating” by New England was likely levied because the Patriots have been found guilty in the past.
In a previous scandal known as “Spygate”, the NFL learned that New England was taping opposing teams’ sideline play-signals. Despite the seemingly harsh penalties enforced against the reigning champs, conventional wisdom still suggests that the Patriots will be just fine.
In today’s National Football League, winning 11 division titles in 12 years as the Patriots have seems incomprehensible. Whether the explanation is head coach Bill Belichick selling his soul to the devil, New England being God’s team, the Patriots just being really good at getting away with cheating or some other outside force we can’t understand, things seem to always have a way of falling into place for the Patriots.
Winning four Super Bowls certainly requires being good, but the Patriots have had their share of luck along the way. From the “tuck rule” in the 2001 AFC Divisional game that led to their first championship to the Seattle Seahawks electing to not give the ball to the league’s best short yardage back from the 1-yard-line in Super Bowl XLIX, fate has done its fair share of smiling on the team from Foxboro. David Tyree’s helmet-aided reception in Super Bowl XLII is the obvious exception.
The lone year of the previous dozen where the Patriots failed to make the playoffs was 2008 when Brady suffered a season-ending injury in Week 1 and still, the club managed to win 11 games with Matt Cassel as its starter, only to lose the tiebreaker to the Miami Dolphins for the AFC East crown.
If the Patriots can win 11 games with a guy, who threw just 33 collegiate passes making 15 starts, they can survive four starts from 24-year-old Jimmy Garoppolo should Brady’s suspension be upheld.
That’s right. A guy who spent his college career wearing a headset and a neon school crossing guard vest over his jersey while watching Matt Leinart win two national championships and a Heisman Trophy, won 11 games for the New England Patriots. Having a guy who threw nearly 1,700 passes at Eastern Illinois might not be a death sentence.
The hysteria surrounding Deflategate has certainly died down since the investigation was completed and penalties were enforced earlier this month, but the saga likely won’t die until well past the midway point of the 2015 season.
There have been an infinitesimal number of hot takes on the issue and losing a future Hall of Fame quarterback for a quarter of the season certainly seems like an enormous blow, but until proven otherwise, it’s hard to think that somehow, just somehow, the Patriots are going to be just fine.
