Why New England Patriots will return to Super Bowl 53
By Josh Hill
A Super Bowl loss is never an easy thing to get over, but the New England Patriots will be back next year.
Many NFL fans are rejoicing this morning now that someone other than the New England Patriots are Super Bowl champions. Moreover, someone who isn’t a Brady or a Manning is going to be leading a victory parade, which is being seen as an empire toppling moment of catharsis.
At the end of Return of the Jedi, it only appeared as though the Emperor had been defeated, when in actuality it was a brief reprieve from the fight. The Empire was never actually gone and instead came back better and more powerful in The Force Awakens.
What this Patriots team lacks is a new leader, something that Kylo Ren has been for Star Wars. But New England’s Darth Vader isn’t dead yet; Tom Brady hasn’t taken the sharp dive older quarterbacks tend to take and that’s one of the handful of reasons the team will be back in the Super Bowl next year.
Bill Belichick isn’t one to take a loss lightly, even if he has himself to blame. Offensively, the Patriots played one of their best games ever. Brady threw for over 500 yards and the team scored 33-points. Punter Ryan Allen didn’t step onto the field once, except for a few botched field goal holds that ended up costing New England. When a team doesn’t punt and end the game closer to 1,000 yards on offense than the other way around, typically that team wins.
Almost certainly it means that team is good.
Where New England failed was defensively controlling the game. Not once did Matt Patricia’s unit have momentum, even when Tom Brady’s offense got New England a late lead. There will be new defensive leadership in 2018 with rumors that Greg Schiano will be taking over, and Belichick’s fingerprints will almost certainly be all over the schemes after this debacle.
With an improved defensive mindset — and perhaps some new pieces — the Patriots will shore up their problems in the offseason and come back in 2018 looking to wash out the poor rating it was given this year. Belichick is nothing if not petty, so there will no doubt be motivation to bury Patricia and show him from afar that he’ll never be as good as the G.O.A.T., and that’s bad news for the rest of the NFL.
Let’s not forget that Julian Edelman is coming back next year which gives Brady another weapon. Brandin Cooks will have had a full season under his belt to help him in his second offseason with the Patriots, and having Rob Gronkowski never hurts.
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New England blew it in Super Bowl 52, that can’t be argued. The problems that plagued them in their loss, however, will ironically serve as a roadmap for the team getting better and back to the Super Bowl next year.