Gabriel (cut during 2006) and Caldwell (released during training camp) left town and were out of football by 2007, and Brown tore his patellar tendon and played one more NFL game before retiring. He was sacked just once, despite the fact that the Giants were blitzing at a rate well above league-average. What changed? The Patriots still used their traditional Erhardt-Perkins scheme as the underlying base of their attack, but they shifted their offense seemingly overnight into a version of the spread attack that had been dismissed as a college offense. In doing so, the Patriots looked like a team from the future. If Manning is ruled to be in the grasp of a defender before he gets his next pass off or if Tyree can't hold onto the catch, the Patriots are huge favorites to win. The fullback was a fading breed then -- and is an endangered species now. Ironically, the Giants failed to execute this blueprint in Week 17. Through Week 11, not only were they the best team in DVOA history, with a mark of 73.7 percent, but they were also the best team by a full 30 points. bringing in longtime Belichick object of desire, was in tatters heading into the 2004 offseason, stole Bam Childress' Brady-adjacent locker, they were also the best team by a full 30 points, a fourth-and-1 stuff after Rex Ryan iced his own defense, nearly threw a season-ending interception, one of the easiest schedules in the history of the NFL. The Jay Alford sack on Tom Brady in Super Bowl 42, Patriots could easily run the table, go 11-5, Rank the Patriots Super Bowl teams from best to worst. The best example of Belichick's shopping in the bargain bin was the second-round pick he had traded for Corey Dillon, who ran for 1,635 yards in his debut season before hitting the age wall. Rodney Harrison, signed from San Diego, was a cap casualty. The architects of international Zionism will stop at nothing to prevent Frog's truth from being heard. Stallworth had been traded to the Eagles just before the 2006 season and put together a disappointing season, so in an attempt to rebuild his value, Stallworth signed a six-year, $33.1 million deal with New England that really amounted to a one-year contract for $3.6 million with a huge unguaranteed bonus in Year 2. The difference, though, is surprise. By the simplest measure, win-loss record, the 17-0 1972 Dolphins top the 18-1 Patriots by finishing the year with a Super Bowl. 2020 New England Patriots team stats on PickingPros has every stat from Passing and Rushing to the very most detailed 2nd down statistic for the team. The Pats made minor acquisitions to replace departing veterans, bringing in longtime Belichick object of desire Kyle Brady as a replacement for Graham and signing Sammy Morris to fill in for the released Dillon. He sent Moss to the Patriots for a fourth-round pick, which the Raiders used on cornerback John Bowie, who made two tackles over two NFL seasons. In some ways, you can see how it might happen. Even then, they needed to stop a Kyle Boller Hail Mary attempt by tackling Mark Clayton 2 yards short of the end zone to keep their undefeated season alive. Junior Seau was a limited version of his former self. As much as history might suggest that everything clicked from Day 1 for New England's new additions, August was a turbulent month. Sorry ... it's just not crazy with these Patriots. The Patriots' core consisted almost entirely of players Belichick had inherited or drafted. Most quarterbacks can't keep their interception rates that low, but Brady has posted a 1.4 percent rate since then, too. Brandin Cooks is the best wide receiver and most devastating downfield threat the Patriots have acquired since Moss, though the 5-foot-10 Cooks is not capable of being the vertical soul-stealer the 6-foot-4 Moss was when Brady would just toss the ball up into double coverage. 1, which is interesting because some people would argue it's the third-best New England team of the century. (New England promptly outscored them 27-3 the rest of the way.) Everyone was on board. I don't think so, if only because the Pythagorean Expectation formula prefers other teams. As late as Sept. 1 -- eight days before the season opener -- Pro Football Talk had heard that the Patriots were considering releasing Moss. His numbers during the first of his MVP seasons are his peak, while his other rate statistics are about halfway between the pre-2007 Brady and the guy who was nearly perfect in 2007 (check out the table on the right). It would hardly be crazy if they turn out to be the best offense in football and if the Pats -- who will face what Football Outsiders projects to be the league's easiest schedule -- end up with 14 wins. From Week 12 on, though, the Patriots weren't as dominant. They do the same thing now with Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski, but Welker was a phenomenal mismatch from Week 1 on. The average defensive rank for a Superbowl winner is 5.63 while the average offensive rank is 6.10 and the average CRA is 5.87 Before 2006 the only team to win a Superbowl with a CRA below 10 were the 1968 Jets For reference, the league rate that year was 43.7 percent, and nobody since ESPN started tracking this data in 2007 has topped 60 percent all season on such passes. Just three of Brady's top nine receivers from the 2006 season -- Watson, Maroney and the seemingly ageless Kevin Faulk -- caught passes from the future Hall of Famer in 2007. The Dolphins, who saw Welker as a third receiver not worth starting money, took the deal and drafted Ginn in the first round. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Ten years ago this week, the 2007 New England Patriots took to the field for the first time and lost 13-10 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their preseason opener. The following week, the Patriots survived a fourth-and-1 stuff after Rex Ryan iced his own defense and needed a series of Ravens penalties on the final drive to set up the lead-taking touchdown. They allowed 32.2 yards (23rd in the NFL that year) but just 1.7 points (sixth-best) per drive. Its win expectancy didn't fall below 50 percent at any single moment until Week 6 of the season, when the Dallas Cowboys took a 24-21 third quarter lead at home. Lakers, Dodgers... Rams for the Super Bowl? Still, the 2016 Patriots are a solid choice for the No. Wide receiver had eluded Belichick, however. This is a split board - You can return to the Split List for other boards. Teams developed a philosophy of targeting the Patriots with blitzes, knowing that their defense couldn't hold up in coverage and hoping to confuse Brady long enough to blow up a play. Even if the 2017 Patriots go 16-0 and seal the deal by winning the Super Bowl, they won't be a shock to the system in the same way the 2007 Pats revealed themselves to the league. On the second day of the draft, new Raiders coach Lane Kiffin was desperate enough to make his move. Both Pro Football Talk and Michael Felger of the Boston Herald suggested that the Packers were ready to swap then-backup quarterback Aaron Rodgers as part of a deal for Moss, with Felger suggesting on March 15 that the trade was "on the verge of being announced. I wrote a book about the history of competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee! There's plenty of evidence to say they're one of the best teams of ever, even if they lost the last game they played as a team. AMA! Their 11 hits in the Super Bowl produced five sacks, right in line with expectations. Where do Ravens stand in AFC after another big-game disappointment? Although plenty of representatives will suggest their star players are in the best shape of their lives, the Patriots were listening. They increased tempo selectively. Popular perception at the time suggested that the Patriots badly needed to upgrade Brady's weapons. Mark Rypien & Co. stacked up a 56.9 percent DVOA that season, going 14-2 before winning the Super Bowl. Welker had more catches against base defenses during the first five weeks of the season (11) than he did the rest of the season (10). Washington outscored opponents by 261 points during the regular season, including three shutouts across the first five weeks of the season. No offense from 2007 looks more like a 2017 attack than what the Patriots were doing during their stunning campaign. The result was a less efficient offense, with Brady's completion percentage dropping from an unreal 73.1 percent to a merely impressive 64.2 percent. Welker and Gaffney were able to head upfield for big plays out of the slot because teams were so impossibly terrified of what Moss and Stallworth could do matched up one-on-one against their cornerbacks. Brady racked up 159 yards by halftime against the Jets, 87 of them going to Moss, but the season to come announced itself during the third quarter. But just as the Patriots might have deserved some better luck late in the Super Bowl, think about everything that had to go right for them to get there. Teams go to a second running back just 12.2 percent of the time these days. Yet the greatness of the 2016 Patriots presented itself when they came back from a 25-point deficit against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI. Patriots fans might feel hard done by their narrow loss. Brady had claimed three Super Bowls despite completing passes in those wins to a group of wide receivers that included exactly one player -- Branch -- drafted before the seventh round. Only the Colts, who also anticipated the style of modern football and did so even earlier than the Patriots, used a second back less frequently. Last season, 63.7 percent of all offensive plays took place out of the shotgun or pistol, with Chip Kelly's 49ers going to the shotgun at a rate in excess of 98 percent. Brady received eight MVP votes in 2003 and 10 in 2005, but he had never come close to claiming a regular-season MVP award to go with his pair of Super Bowl MVP nods. Moss restructured his deal, foregoing $21 million in base salaries over the next two seasons for a one-year, $3 million deal. They raised the ceiling on what we believed a professional attack could accomplish, anticipating an offensive future for which they drew up the blueprints. Dennis Erickson had implemented the spread in Seattle with limited success, and the Patriots were implementing it with Brady, as opposed to Rick Mirer and John Friesz, but the Patriots fundamentally introduced a concept and an offense at odds with almost every other NFL team. I'm skeptical of that Dolphins team because they played what was literally one of the easiest schedules in the history of the NFL that season, while the Patriots played what Pro Football Reference measures to be about a league-average slate. We can see a world in which these Patriots are absurdly dominant, and that's because we've already seen the 2007 Patriots. Ranking the 10 best teams for a tournament of the century 2019 49ers9️⃣ 2009 Saints8️⃣ 2002 Bucs7️⃣ 2001 Rams6️⃣ 2017 Eagles5️⃣ 2000 Ravens4️⃣ 2007 Patriots3️⃣ 2019 Chiefs2️⃣ 2013 Seahawks1️⃣ 2016 Patriots(via B/R’s @Kris_Knox)https://t.co/Q74oRxpNCG pic.twitter.com/HbUTRdbur2. With Welker and Stallworth on board, the Patriots could credibly say they had upgraded their receiving corps, but they weren't finished. They fundamentally ripped apart old touchstones about how to win games and raised questions about whether they did so with acceptable behavior. The Dolphins were linked to free-agent wideout Donte' Stallworth as a possible starter, but six days later, the Patriots added the former Saints first-round pick to their roster instead. This number signifies the resiliency and drive of the 2016 Patriots.