Patriots Poised To Take AFC East Title

Each preseason PossessionPoints forecasts how each team will do in the upcoming season based on our stat from the prior season and adjustments we make to it for all teams. This year since we converted PossessionPoints.com to a free site we are making the preview available team by team on this site. In each writeup we look at our forecast and then an optimistic and pessimistic scenario. 

Patriots

Summary:

Another year, another season we think the Patriots are the team to beat in the AFC East. Tom Brady’s knee injury is now becoming a distant memory and there is no need to question his durability.  Could the Patriots make another run at an unbeaten season? While unlikely, is not impossible. We have pointed out in the past that the Patriots’ coaching staff is a real strength, and they have a true talent when it comes to rebuilding the roster and assistant coaching staff to maintain a high level of play. There never seems to be a question about chemistry or how player X will blend with this team. But this year may be a real test of that with the addition of Chad Ochocinco and Albert Haynesworth. This season, on the adjustment front, we went very conservative with the Patriots. The defense matured nicely last season and if Haynesworth is even close to the player he was with the Titans the defense will definitely improve. So we adjusted the offense and the defense up by 5%. With these adjustments for the Patriots, the computer produced a projected 14-2 record and well positioned to make another run at the Super Bowl. 

Schedule projection: 14-2

Room for improvement:

Not really, their offense would be the top PossessionPoints offense in the NFL with these adjustments. The defense has more room so if we adjust them to a 15% improvement the projected record goes to 15-1 and a Super Bowl ring for the Patriots. The only loss on the schedule would be at Philadelphia in week 12. The Patriots are already a very high performing team, so improvements are hard to come by. It seems to us that there is much more downside to this projection than upside.  

How they could falter:

No need to throw out an injury jinx like we did a couple of seasons ago. Everyone knows a key injury can send a season from promise to panic in an instant. So should the Patriots weaken by say 15% on defense and 15% on offense, what does the W/L picture look like? It falls to very un-Patriot like 5-11 with the front end of the season being the real struggle. Our numbers would have them start the season at 2-8. Could the Patriots decay into a finger pointing mess like the Redskins last season? Highly doubtful however, this is the first time that when we applied a reasonable negative adjustment to the Patriots numbers that their record fell below 0.500.  Based on last year’s team performance, the Patriots have the fifteenth most difficult schedule by the classic W/L method and the thirteenth toughest by our RPM method. Either way, it is a pretty average schedule so it doesn’t seem like the downside scenario is the biggest fear.  

Biggest Question Marks:

Chemistry? Can the Patriots blend this season like they have in the past? Will Haynesworth behave like he did in Tennessee or Washington?  

Sure, we could have talked about their average running backs and wide receivers but history shows Belichick is a master at getting top performance from even average players. Se we chose chemistry as the biggest question since that is a quality our stat does not measure, but we know it is a big part of team performance. The Pats schedule is not a killer this season so we lean to the scenario where they have a Super Season as opposed to being a Super Flop for the first time in a long time.