Ten Years After

Ten Years. A literal lifetime on Planet Sports. In another ten years will I be hearing that these guys couldn’t even make the playoffs if they were playing today?

 

Another 4^th of July weekend. Food, drink and an evening viewing of “Jaws,” a family tradition. (The Blu-ray is amazing after all those years of VHS and standard DVD.) We were going to cook out but a hurricane got in the way. We stayed indoors instead and had chili with all the fixins. Chips, guac, salsa, green and red peppers, olives, Monterey jack cheese and Sam Adams Noble Pils. Even better, the NFL network was celebrating the decade of the decade of the 00s so early afternoon I flipped back and forth from “The Walking Dead” marathon to the 2001, 2003 and 2004 Patriots. Good times. Tedy Bruschi making big plays, Troy Brown catching passes, returning punts and playing cornerback, Deion Branch on the skinny post in stride for the score, Mike Vrabel catching TD passes, Ty Law owning Peyton Manning, Willie McGinest suing Ty Law for the deed to Peyton Manning, the genesis of The Peyton Manning Face, Corey “Clock Killin’” Dillon. Tom Brady. Bill Belichick.

It’s the 10-year anniversary of the last Patriots’ Super Bowl win. Bleacher Report had posted a comparison of the 2014 and 2004 Patriots on the Fourth that served as something of a companion piece to my early afternoon of pigskin nostalgia.

I’d read it in the morning, before watching the 2003-04 highlight reels and when I hit the comparison at linebacker it rocked me. I’ve been feeling pretty good about Jerod Mayo, Dont’a Hightower and Jamie Collins power trio, despite the lack of depth at linebacker. Then I saw those names from 2004. Bruschi, McGinest, Vrabel, Colvin and Phifer. Maybe no one of them was Butkus or LT or Ray Lewis but together they were special. Granted, the America’s Game features are like a greatest hits album (no need to mention any of the songs by Ringo) but it’s also a fact that Bruschi, McGinest and Vrabel came up big in the biggest games with interceptions, forced fumbles, sacks, stops and yes, the occasional touchdown.

Bleacher Report’s James Christensen gave the 2004 squad the edge at linebacker. No argument there. He also gave 2004 the nod at running back (Dillon and Faulk) and defensive line (Seymour, Warren and Wilfork). The 2014 squad gets the edge at QB (Tom just keeps getting better), TE (assuming Gronk is healthy), defensive backs (thanks to Darrelle Revis). He called wide receivers, offensive line and specialists a push.

Christensen left me feeling pretty good about my optimism for the 2014 season. In six of nine categories he calls the 2014 Patriots as good as or better than their dynastic antecedents. Those 2003-04 Patriots won 21 games in a row, authored back-to-back 14-2-0 seasons and oh yeah, won back-to-back Super Bowls.

Ten years. New England has been in the playoffs nine of those ten years made it to the big game twice, falling just short in both. The 2007 team was a juggernaut but nobody would compare that team to the 2003-04 teams that played well in all three phases of the game and could win with offense, defense of special teams.

On paper, no pads, the 2014 Patriots look like contenders; they look like a team that can reasonably compared to the Super Bowl champions of 2003-04.

I can hardly wait.

How much longer till training camp?