With all due apologies to the once-great Al Davis, the 2009 Patriots seem to have stolen his most famous catch-phrase:
“Just Win, Baby!”
Davis and his Raiders are a joke today. But in his prime he was one of the great coaches and then one of the great front-office men in the history of the game. His 1976 team, which won the Super Bowl and was led by coach John Madden and quarterback Ken Stabler, was good, but not dominant, from wire to wire. That team suffered just one loss all year, a thorough 48-17 beating at the hands of your Patriots, but won a controversial playoff rematch with New England and then humiliated the perennial bridesmaid Vikings in Super Bowl XI.
Then came Oakland’s 1980 and 1983 championship teams — quarterbacked by former Patriots No. 1 pick Jim Plunkett — teams that had no business winning it all. None. These teams did little right statistically, except the most important thing: score more points than their opponents week after week and beat superior teams in Super Bowls XV (Eagles) and XVIII (Redskins).
“Just Win, Baby!”
Those last two Raiders champions are rarities in NFL history — teams that won when the key indicators of success said that they shouldn’t. It looks like the model that the Patriots intend to follow here in 2009.
Put most bluntly, the 2009 Patriots have done little well on paper but win games. They’re 3-1 when almost everything says they shouldn’t be.
In fact, here are seven reasons the “Just Win, Baby” Patriots should NOT be 3-1:
1. They can’t stop the run. The Patriots surrender an awful 4.5 yards per rush attempt (21st), worse than hopeless dredge-suckers such as Kansas City (4.1), St. Louis (4.1) and Washington (4.3).
2. They have no playmakers on defense. The Patriots have forced just eight sacks and one interception on 131 opponent dropbacks this year. That’s a big play on pass defense just 6.9 percent of the time, easily in the bottom half of the league.
The lack of playmakers is so bad that the Patriots will soon take the fossilized remains of Junior Seau and put them in the defensive lineup. It’s so bad that the average football fan in other towns couldn’t name two New England starting defenders if you put a gun to their head. Maybe, if you really did put a gun to their head, they’d scream out Jerod Mayo and Vince Wilfork in a panic reminiscent of the Russian roulette scene in “The Deer Hunter.” But it’s an anonymous group to most fans.
3. The Patriots don’t force interceptions. The inability to nab interceptions is shocking, because INTs = victories. It’s the simplest math in football. Each INT you grab increases your chances of winning by about 20 percentage points.
The one pick for a Bill Belichick defense (Leigh Bodden) is embarrassing. No team in the NFL has fewer. The team with the league’s best pass defense, New Orleans, has already grabbed 10 picks, including five from Defensive Player of the Year candidate and future Hall of Famer Darren Sharper, who’s returned two for long touchdowns. So, the Patriots are a long way from the top if they want to rock 'n' roll in this area.
4. The Patriots can’t get off the field on third down. Opponents convert 40.9 percent of attempts (23rd). Even the winless Bucs (40.4 percent) and the 0-16-in-waiting Rams (40.4 percent) are better than New England on third down.
5. The Patriots hang with some bad company on pass defense. They’ve surrendered a Defensive Passer Rating of 90.8, a gruesome number that puts them 21st in the league, right behind the 1-3 Dolphins (89.9) and just ahead of the 0-4 Chiefs (92.5).
However, the Patriots have improved greatly in this indicator in their last two games and they are on an upward trend that could put them in the top 10 in a couple of weeks.
6. The Patriots can’t run the ball. Despite some promising moments from Fred Taylor and Sammy Morris, not to mention the consistently clutch play of Kevin Faulk, the Patriots average just 3.65 yards per rush attempt — 24 teams are better, including USDA-certified Grade A losers like Tampa (4.31)
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