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Better balance must be Patriots’ priority

Tony Massarotti

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 07, 2012|By Tony Massarotti

The defensive breakdown that led to Mario Manningham key catch in the fourth… (Rob Carr/Getty Images )

In the aftermath of something like this, the truth sits somewhere in the rubble, buried in piles of questions and missed opportunities. Sifting through the debris can take quite some time, and in the NFL, there is rarely any rest for the weary.

So what do you think: In the modern NFL, are the Patriots really that close to a championship? Or was this postseason some indication that they are as flawed – or more so – than the other teams who consider themselves to be at the top of the league hierarchy?

Where the Patriots go from here remains to be seen, but let’s start with the positives. In 2009, the Patriots were bounced in the wild-card round of the playoffs. In 2010, they were bounced in the divisional round. This year, they made it all the way to the Super Bowl before succumbing to the Giants by a 21-17 score last night at Lucas Oil Stadium in a wonderfully competitive and entertaining game that ended in pure heartbreak.

The point is that the Patriots are getting better, for sure, though they are not yet where Bill Belichick and Tom Brady expect them to be.

What last night reaffirmed for us, if anything, is that the Patriots still have some work to do, particularly if they expect to maximize the final years of Brady’s (and Belichick’s?) career. Last month, Brady himself told us the clock is ticking. With or without a healthy Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots need a viable receiving threat outside the numbers and they need help on defense, at least if they expect to win Super Bowls.

This year, more than any other in recent memory, the NFL affirmed for us that regular season play and postseason play are two entirely different things. Balance still wins. The NFL seems to have become a jazzed-up version of the Arena League during the regular season, no fewer than six quarterbacks this season passing for greater than 4,600 yards. The list includes Drew Brees, Brady, Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers and Eli Manning, the last of whom had easily the best defense among the group.

So guess who won the championship?

Eli.

Of course, New England fans are likely to point out that the Giants’ defense during the regular season was marginally better than the Patriots’, but that’s missing the point. In their final six games this year, the Giants played the Jets, Cowboys, Falcons, Packers, Niners and Patriots. All of those clubs ranked in the top half of the league in scoring, the Packers, Patriots and Falcons finishing a respective, first, third and seventh. New York held that group to an average of 14 points per game, the large majority of that play coming during a postseason in which NFL officials generally swallowed the whistles and actually started letting people play football again.