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COMMENTARY
Now that the field is set, there’s really only one conclusion that makes a decent synopsis of what we should expect during the NFL playoffs this month, particularly from the director chair perch of 1 Patriot Place, once again at the intersection of the road to the Super Bowl.
Everybody else is so, so screwed.
There are two ways to look at the six teams vying for the AFC Championship. One, is to suggest that maybe the Pittsburgh Steelers can institute a scare with their dynamic offense. The other, perhaps more realistic thesis, is to simply beckon the Patriots’ impending and swift stiff arm in anticipation of seeing what NFC team awaits them in Houston.
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Nobody else is beating the New England Patriots.
In what turned out to be a complete 180 from their last trip to Miami, the Patriots smothered the sixth-seeded Dolphins, 35-14, in their regular-season finale Sunday afternoon, securing home-field advantage throughout the postseason. That’s a matter they failed to do entirely one year ago in the final game of the 2015 season, when Bill Belichick drew up consecutive game plans against the New York Jets and Dolphins that looked like they came from the back of a cereal box, thwarting any shot of playing the AFC title game at Foxborough — in lieu of Denver — in the process.
Not this time.
“I think we’ve proven we can deal with a lot of things over the course of the year,” Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said after playing (virtually) the entire game Sunday, throwing for 276 yards and three touchdowns. “Fourteen-and-two is a good place to be, it’s pretty sweet.”
Whereas last year led to back-to-back losses in the final two weeks of the season, 2016 delivered a pair of thorough beatdowns of AFC East opponents, with the Patriots beating the Jets and Dolphins by a combined score of 76-17. Even still, Sunday figured to be a bigger day for backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and company, particularly with a fragile turf surface at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium that played like it had just been shipped in from the clearance gardening rack at Grossman’s Bargain Outlet.
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Instead, Brady played, and Patriots fans held their breath with every snap. Brady and the Patriots though held the hammer.
If you weren’t leaning toward any certainty that they’re going to roll through the conference playoffs, Sunday probably shifted your view.
It might have been the easy play to utilize Garoppolo and keep Brady out of harm’s way, only a fortnight before the Patriots’ first postseason game in the divisional round at Gillette Stadium. If the Patriots lost, or at the least, showed they didn’t care if they won or lost (rewind the calendar to January 3, 2016, for a fine example of this), they would have waited to see how the Oakland Raiders would fare in Denver, which ended up being not good, a 24-6 loss to the Broncos that leaves the Derek Carr-less unit as a wild card.
The Kansas City Chiefs, 37-27 winners over the San Diego Chargers, take the No. 2 seed instead, giving themselves a first-round bye awaiting an opponent from the muddled remains that are the Steelers, Houston Texans, Raiders, and Dolphins.
One of the Texans, Raiders, or Dolphins will be joining us on Route One in two weeks time.
None of them have any chance.
“Gotta keep grinding,” Belichick said. “Just keep getting better. There’s a lot of things we can still improve on. We’ll work on some of those this week, then we’ll find out who we play, and then we’ll start getting ready for whoever that team is. This team, we’ve got a good opportunity to work on some things, get better at some things we need to get better at. So we’ll try to use that time productively and do it. We have a good opportunity to work on some things.”
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Just once, it’d be great to get Belichick in a completely honest mode. Maybe slip him some truth serum and ask him what he truly feels about his competition this year in the AFC. The Belichick at the podium would go on some yarn about how tremendously talented every team is and how well-coached (even the Chiefs) each franchise has become. “He’s a good football player,” he’d say. “He’s a tough coach,” he’d say.
The Belichick slapping down fives for a friendly wager at the billiards table would probably answer any inquisition about the upcoming competition with a knowing smirk with only a dash of cockiness.
It’s easy to be cocky when you’re seemingly covering for some personality subtraction. Belichick has no reason whatsoever to be cocky.
He’s got the best team. He knows it.
Everybody else does too now.
“This is a very physically and mentally tough team,” he said on Sunday. ”No question.”
He might has well have been talking about assumptions that the rest of the NFL is having about his team. No question.
It should be a fun weekend of wild card football, or the JV playoffs, before the Patriots arrive to the party and kick in the door. It will all soon be over after that.
But, yeah, maybe Pittsburgh.
You just keep telling yourself that.