Maybe it wasn’t all Tom Brady, after all. Or at least that’s how you might be updating your viewpoint on the still-standing Patriots dynasty, 12 weeks into Brady and Bill Belichick’s second season apart. And that would be an update, because just six weeks ago, there was valid and mounting evidence to the contrary.
The Patriots were 2–4 then, a point at which they stood 9–13 in their first 22 games A.T. (After Tom). Meanwhile, the Brady-led-and-changed Buccaneers were 20–6 (including playoffs).
Since then, everything has changed—or at least that’s how it’s looked to all of us on the outside. With Sunday’s 36–17 win over the banged-up Titans, who came into Gillette Stadium with the AFC’s best record, New England has won six straight, with five of the six coming by margins of at least 18 points. In Week 5, they struggled to get by lowly Houston. In Weeks 7 and 10, they outgained opponents by more than 200 yards and won by 41 and 38 points.
So it’d seem that some sort of switch got flipped, and Belichick turned the dynasty back on after the Cowboys’ offense burned through Foxboro on Oct. 17. It’s a nice idea, too. It’s just not the truth, according to the guys who pulled it off.
“We had a mindset of, ,” 12th-year safety Devin McCourty told me from the locker room postgame. “And I think that’s what everybody locked in on. I don’t think anybody was sitting there like, ‘You know what? We’re gonna look at this schedule, and we’re gonna reel off six straight.’ No one was saying that. Everyone was just, ‘Let’s stick to what we’ve been doing. We got a good football team.’
“I think you heard a couple people say that we weren’t finishing games, that we weren’t executing in key situations. But we also knew we weren’t far off. It’s not like we had this team that couldn’t win. And I think everybody bought into that.”
That steady mindset paid off in a very big way.
The Patriots will enter Week 13 just a half game back of the Ravens in the race for the top seed in the AFC, and a half game ahead of the Bills, the East’s new reigning champions, with a trip to Buffalo on tap for Monday night. They play the Bills again three weeks after that, with a game in Indianapolis and the team’s bye in between—and it’s a stretch that a lot of people would look at and consider season-defining for this new/old group of Patriots.
But the truth is, over the last three months, the Patriots have already done a pretty good of defining themselves to anyone who’s paying attention.
And what we’re seeing? It looks pretty familiar.
