The New England Patriots suffered their first loss of the 2015 season Sunday night, losing to the Denver Broncos in overtime. Quarterback Tom Brady and company started the season 10-0, and the Patriots have looked all season like a team that could repeat as Super Bowl champions. So this loss to the Brock Osweiler led Broncos is a really tough pill to swallow right?
No. I have rooted for New England for basically my entire life and I can say that Patriots fans should be more than OK with the New England Patriots first loss of the 2015 season. Would a 16-0 regular season followed by a Super Bowl win be ideal? Of course, but as I wrote previously, achieving perfection in an NFL season is extremely difficult to do. The 2014 season was much more satisfying for Patriots fans than was the 2007 season. Sure New England finished the 2007 regular season 16-0 and made it to the Super Bowl, but they failed to defeat the New York Giants for the Lombardi Trophy. Last season the Patriots got off to a 2-2 start and were left for dead by just about everyone. But Bill Belichick’s team then went on a tear and took down the Seattle Seahawks as they won their fourth Super Bowl title. I bet just about every other Patriots fan would easily take 2014 over 2007. Patriots fans have been spoiled in the Brady/Belichick era and anything less than a Super Bowl is a lost season.
Maybe that doesn’t explain why fans should be more than OK with the loss, but it does provide reasoning as to why it is not the end of the world. The best thing this loss will do for the Patriots is, in the words of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, allow them to R-E-L-A-X. Brady and Belichick are cool customers and they don’t get rattled much, if at all, but that 2007 season brought more and more pressure with each game the Patriots won. Even with this loss New England is still the number one seed in the AFC as of now, and they can relax and focus on the only thing that really matters, which is a seventh trip to the Super Bowl for Brady and Belichick and a ninth trip for the organization.
The biggest takeaway from Sunday night’s game for Patriots fans is that tight end Rob Gronkowski will probably not miss more than a week or two. The best tight end in the NFL was carted off the field towards the end of the fourth quarter and that made New England fans more than a little nervous. Gronk has had injury problems in the past, including a torn ACL, and his importance to the Patriots, particularly with all of the injuries they have suffered at the receiver position, cannot be overstated. The Patriots and their fans will happily take a healthy Gronk for the end of the season, and more importantly the playoffs, over a win Sunday night.
It would be nice if the Patriots still had a shot at perfection, because it would be great to see them achieve 19-0 and there would still be two teams with a shot at making Mercury Morris shut up. But there is a reason 19-0 has never been done, and the Patriots won’t do it this season and that’s OK. It’s incredibly difficult, and Patriots fans know their team has a more important goal to achieve.
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