Can the Patriots offense carry them to the Super Bowl?

January 13, 2012|By Tony Massarotti, Globe columnist, Globe Staff

By Tony Massarotti, Globe columnist

Beyond tomorrow night's meeting with the Denver Broncos, the question remains: Can the Patriots win a Super Bowl with a team that is disproportionately reliant on both a quarterback and a high-flying offense?

And for that matter, can anyone?

So begins the Patriots' latest quest for the Super Bowl championship, a potential fourth title during the marriage of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. What we all want to believe is that those two men alone are enough. But if the Patriots are to win another championship in these next few weeks, they will have to do so in a manner with which they have not yet succeeded.

Or, perhaps, with a complete break from how they have performed thus far.

Statistics are for losers, as Belichick has often told us, so let's forgo any discussion here about the yardage the Patriots have allowed through the air, about turnover differential, about yards per rush or quarterback rating. Let's focus on the one thing that we all agree matters: scoring. In the Belichick era, only once have the Patriots finished the regular season with a defense ranked sixth or better (basically the top 20 percent) and failed to reach at least the AFC title game, that coming in the 2009 campaign that was Brady's first in the wake of knee surgery.

Of course, that was the year of fourth-and-2 at Indianapolis, after which the Patriots effectively became the 2011 New York Jets, their locker room deteriorating to the point of mutiny. That Patriots club finished sixth in the league in scoring offense and fifth in the league in scoring defense, but nonetheless ended up as Route 1 road pizza after the Baltimore Ravens ran them over in January.