Winning the Super Bowl is about two things – staying healthy and getting hot at the right time. And by right time I mean for the three or four playoff games, not in November and December.
The best team in the NFL doesn’t always win the Super Bowl. The hot team that makes the key plays at the key times does. I still don’t see why the Patriots can’t be that team, but clearly they have to get a lot better. And they will be.
The biggest problem is these Patriots will always be compared to the great Patriots teams and players of years past. But this is an entirely different team, even if some of the players are the same. They have to find their own identity.
We don’t know what that is yet. And neither do they. So we’ll see just who they are over the next 12 games and then we’ll see how things go from there.