sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-patriotsdominance&prov=ap&type=lgnsPatriots started season with routs ended with squeaker By HOWARD ULMAN, AP Sports Writer
December 31, 2007
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) -- Winning was just too easy for the Patriots.
They routed their first eight opponents. They were unbeaten, almost unchallenged and on their way to becoming the first team to go 16-0 in the regular season.
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Critics said they were running up the score. The Patriots said they were simply playing all 60 minutes.
"What do you want us to do, kick a field goal?" coach Bill Belichick snapped when asked why he went for a first down on fourth-and-2 with a 45-0 lead over Washington in the Patriots' eighth game, a 52-7 win.
But those questions faded once New England's streak of eight wins by at least 17 points ended the next week. In the last eight games, the margin of victory was four points or less four times.
With poised Tom Brady and pressure-tested veterans, the Patriots remained unflappable -- a warmup for their first playoff game Jan. 12 against Pittsburgh, Jacksonville or Tennessee.
"We always believe that we are going to win," tight end Benjamin Watson said once the unbeaten season was over. "Until we prove otherwise, this is how we think."
The Patriots were challenged right to the end of the regular season. Trailing the New York Giants by 12 late in the third quarter last Saturday night, they went ahead in the fourth and won 38-35 -- the most points they allowed all season.
It was the 28th comeback win from a fourth-quarter deficit or tie in Brady's eight seasons.
"I've never been used to all of those" blowouts, linebacker Tedy Bruschi said after the game. "This is what I'm used to."
So what changed? Why was the second half of the season much more competitive?
It wasn't fatigue. The Patriots had a bye after their ninth game, a 24-20 win at Indianapolis.
They didn't take opponents for granted, not with Belichick pounding into them his one-game-at-a-time approach no matter what the other team's record was.
More likely, teams figured out how to play against them and got fired up to be the one to end their quest for the first perfect regular-season record since Miami went 14-0 in 1972. The Dolphins won the Super Bowl to finish at 17-0, the only undefeated mark, including playoffs, in NFL history.
"We always got everyone's best shot," defensive end Richard Seymour said.
In the first half of the season, the Patriots outscored opponents by 25.5 points per game. In the second half, the average margin was 13.9. Overall, it was 19.7, fourth best in history behind the Chicago Bears in 1942 (26.5) and 1941 (22.6) and the Buffalo All-Americans in 1920 (20.5), according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
The second half began in Indianapolis, where the Patriots took their last loss more than nine months earlier. They had squandered an 18-point lead in the AFC championship game and lost 38-34 on Joseph Addai's touchdown with a minute left.
This time, the Colts gave up the lead in the much-hyped matchup of unbeaten teams. Trailing by 10, the Patriots scored two touchdowns in the last eight minutes and won by four points.
"Look at our situation last year," linebacker Rosevelt Colvin said afterward. "We were not playing 60 minutes and we turned an opportunity into a failure."
Perfect though their record was, they were still imperfect on the field.
"Up front, we can stop the run better," Seymour said after Addai rushed for 112 yards in the 24-20 win. "One of the things that we could have done better was tackling."
After a week off, the Patriots crushed Buffalo 56-10 to improve to 10-0. Then came the toughest two-game stretch of the season: fourth-quarter comeback wins over Philadelphia 31-28 and at Baltimore 27-24.
"You're going to always get a team's best," linebacker Adalius Thomas said after the Eagles game. "There's no more of, `You're going to blow people out.' It's not always going to be that way."
The Eagles stayed competitive by pressuring Brady, a tactic other teams would adopt.
He had perhaps his worst game of the season the next week at Baltimore. He completed less than half his passes for the only time this season, threw one interception and was sacked three times.
"We have to execute better, run better routes, throw better passes, make better catches, block better," Brady said.
In their next game, the Patriots led Pittsburgh just 17-13 at halftime, then rolled to a 34-13 win. Then they beat the New York Jets by 10 points and Miami by 21. The runaway Patriots seemed to be back.
Only the Giants stood in the way of 16-0.
But the Patriots trailed at halftime for just the second time this season. And the Giants still had a chance when they tried an onside kick with 1:04 left and a three-point deficit. But Mike Vrabel recovered to preserve the perfect record.
"We have been behind before," Belichick said. "These guys, as a football team, have made plays when we needed to make them."
For an entire season.