FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts — The New England Patriots are in a tenuous position. Just ask the Seattle Seahawks, Cincinnati Bengals, San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos.
A little more than midway through the season, the list of teams anointed at some point as the best in the NFL is long. It is also a list of teams that failed to hold the momentum and impressive play that led them to be placed in that irrelevant and short-lived spot upon a pedestal.
With their surprisingly decisive 43-21 victory over the Broncos (6-2) at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, the New England Patriots (7-2) head into their Week 10 bye looking as though they could be the NFL’s best team right now.
Not only is that reputation a far cry from what people were saying about the Tom Brady-led squad after a blowout Monday night loss in Kansas City in Week 4, it also is a long way from anything that will resemble meaningful hierarchy in either the AFC or the NFL come January and February.
The simple fact is that the AFC East-leading Patriots have the best record in the conference with seven games to play and a clear shot at securing the top seed for the postseason. That would certainly pave a potentially smooth road to the team’s fourth straight AFC title game.
But as the previous supposed “best in football” teams showed, that title can be fleeting. After the bye week, the Patriots travel to Indianapolis, host the Detroit Lions and then go on the road for an extended trip that will see the team play on Sunday night in Green Bay and head right to San Diego for a week of West Coast work before the team’s Sunday afternoon battle.
Once upon a time, the current six-game stretch was seen as a brutal test for the Patriots, one that might be considered a victory with a 3-3 mark or even a palatable 2-4 take. But after blowouts of the Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos in Foxborough, expectations for the short and long term have changed.
But those in the New England locker room head into the bye and the last half of the season knowing nothing has been accomplished.
“We have a long way to go. Seven wins isn’t going to get anything in this league,” coach Bill Belichick said. “We’re going to have to do a lot more than that. I think we can still do better at some things. Hopefully we’ll be able to work on those and improve them.”
That mentality is why the Patriots generally improve as a season goes on and play their best football in November and December.
Having a leader like Brady in lockstep with that approach is part of why Belichick and Brady are the most successful coach/QB tandem in NFL history.
“I thought we did some good things. I thought we left a lot of points out there,” Brady said after the Patriots scored at least 37 points for the fourth time in the last five weeks. “It was a great win, but we’ll be back at work tomorrow trying to figure out how to get better going into the bye week and to try to make some improvements because we’ve got a tough stretch coming up.”
That stretch certainly looks far less difficult these days. In the last five games, Brady has 18 touchdown passes and one interception and New England is averaging more than 40 points a game.
Rob Gronkowski is once again proving to be a dominant tight end. Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner are bringing together a pass defense the way they were expected to when they were signed last spring.
Right now, the Patriots may be the best team in football. But it’s also as meaningless as that, coming three months before a true NFL king will be crowned.
“We’re just taking every week and just playing as hard as we can, and just prepping and practicing as hard as we can,” Gronkowski said. “We’re not measuring ourselves where we are; we’re just measuring ourselves as a team.”
Belichick certainly sounds like a coach focused on making the best of the bye week.
“We could use a month if we had it,” Belichick said. “There are a lot of things we need to work on. … There’s obviously a huge challenge coming up with the Colts, playing in Indy and playing a great football team. They have a good team. But just in general, there are so many things that we need to improve on fundamentally, scheme-wise, in our different units, three, four guys working together on different things. There are a lot of areas that we need to address and will address.”