The Super Bowl is this Sunday, but the New England Patriots won't be playing in it. That's because, for the second year in a row, they were stopped just one game short of the nation's biggest sporting event. Last year they were beaten by the Baltimore Ravens, who overcame a 13-7 halftime deficit to score 21 unanswered points in the second half and sail off to Super Bowl glory.
This year it was an old foe, Peyton Manning, teaming up with the traitorous Wes Welker to dash New England's championship dreams on a balmy afternoon in Denver. Manning picked apart the Patriots defense for 400 passing yards and two touchdowns. Welker wasn't much of a factor offensively, with just four catches for 38 yards, but delivered a huge blow by knocking cornerback AqibTalib out of the game on a vicious pick play early in the second quarter. The Broncos capitalized, scoring 23 of their 26 points with New England's stalwart cornerback on the sidelines.
But even if Talib had remained in the game, there was nothing he could do about the sluggish Patriots offense, which managed just three points through the first three quarters. By the time they finally woke up, it was too late to make the game even mildly interesting. The shootout that many anticipated never materialized.
Alas, it just wasn't New England's year. There were too many injuries and too much inconsistency - even Tom Brady wasn't Tom Brady this year. The Patriots lacked the health and good fortune needed to win it all.
That New England made it so far was entirely unexpected, if not downright miraculous. It's tough to say the Patriots overachieved when they have the NFL's smartest coach and an all-time quarterback, but that's exactly what they did this year. They went 12-4 - same as the season before - despite the injuries, Brady's struggles, and losing Welker and tight end Aaron Hernandez. New England was one win away from tying Seattle and Denver for the best record in football, and they were in every game to the end. The average margin of defeat in their four regular season losses was just 4.5 points, and they never lost by more than one touchdown. As crazy as it sounds, the Pats were only a handful of breaks away from a perfect season.
But they were far from perfect against Denver, and so another Patriots season has ended in disappointment. Nearly a decade has passed since the franchise's most recent championship. New England has been to two Super Bowls since then but lost them both, each time to the New York Giants in excruciating fashion. Three times they've lost the conference championship game.
Since winning three Super Bowls from 2002 through 2005, the Patriots dynasty has been defined by regular season success (at least ten wins every season and only one where they failed to reach the playoffs) but an inability to go all the way. They're the football equivalents of the '90s Atlanta Braves or '00s New York Yankees: constantly on the cusp of a championship, but rarely the champions.
There's always next year, I guess, but time is running out. Brady is going to turn 37 this summer, and maybe this down season was the beginning of his inevitable decline. Who knows if tight end Rob Gronkowski will be the same when he returns from his torn ACL and MCL. 11 Patriots are going to be unrestricted free agents, and New England can't keep them all.
Their championship window hasn't closed yet, but it just got a little smaller.
Tyler Maher is a junior who is majoring in economics. He can be reached at Tyler.Maher@tufts.edu
