Tom Brady compares slog of NFL season to military deployment, says Patriots are looking good, and takes a shot at NFL on ESPN Radio.
BOSTON — The NFL season has not been for the most players, coaches, and fans but for the Patriots, whose performance is on point.
They are the only unbeaten team in the NFL, and they have lost only one game this year by at least 28 points. They have a defense that ranks among the best in the league. They have the best quarterback in the game, Tom Brady, and a few other players who make everyone better.
The one player that has been consistently on the downslide is the rest of their roster.
It is easy to be cynical, but it is also easy to be negative about a team that is playing at a level that is on par with the Patriots. After all, the Patriots have not been doing it by themselves.
Tom Brady was on top of the NFL heap for 12, 16, and 20 years. He has started for all four of those dynasties. Then there is the rest of the roster. They, too, have been with the Patriots since the beginning of Tom Brady’s career.
We can not judge the Patriots on the strength of their defense. We can not judge them on their ability to score on the other team. We can not judge them on the number of runs they are scoring.
Instead, we can only judge them on the strength of their defense.
To do so, we must first have to evaluate the players on the squad.
We can not judge the Patriots based on their play from last season. As the season approached, the team’s record was 11-4. They had already clinched a playoff berth. If you look at the season in a vacuum, it would have been pretty easy to predict the Patriots would be headed for a high-water mark of 12 wins or something close to it.
Instead, the Patriots’ playoff chances