The Streak That Made the Patriots a Dynasty

The 2003 Patriots did not have much individual talent, but became the foundation of a dynasty by winning as a team.

Welcome back to my Sports Passion Project everybody, where I have a simple question for you.

What are the New England Patriots?

With the benefit of hindsight, to ask this question is completely out of line, but the date is September 28, 2003, and right now, the questioning about the New England Patriots, and whether we are a real team or not, is loud. The loudest it will ever get.

We’ve just lost to a Washington squad that will finish the 2003 season 5-11, and lost to them in ugly fashion. A garbage time touchdown made the 20-17 final score look a little bit nicer, but look at the Win Probability graph:

This is a Washington team that is not good. Their starting QB against us was Patrick Ramsey. Their starting RB was a human named Trung Canidate. I am the biggest fan of the 2003 NFL in the world. Any member of my audience can confirm this, and I have never heard of Trung Canidate.

That ought to provide you with a lot of information as to how his NFL career went.

There are two All-Pros on defence, LaVar Arrington and Champ Bailey, and one WR that did not deserve to make the Pro Bowl, but made it anyway, in Laveranues Coles. Those are the only three good players Washington has. Their starting QB, RB, TE, WR2, all offensive linemen, all defensive linemen, kickers, punters, backups, and everybody else are people that most NFL fans have never heard of, and this team just killed us.

Look at that WP graph up there. The Washington offence with Patrick Ramsey and Trung Canidate was not good enough to run away from us, but all that Washington red means at no point were we competitive in this game. They came into this matchup as four point home favourites, and spent almost the entire second half easily covering that, before our TD right at the end that narrowed the score from 20-10 to 20-17.

This is what the New England Patriots are now. A team that needs garbage time points to prevent ourselves from being blown out by five win Washington.

We do have a recent Super Bowl championship under our belt, from 2001, but that 2001 championship was not exactly a run that proved dominance over the NFL. The 2001 team was a very good roster, hampered by poor QB play out of first year starter Tom Brady, but we took advantage of an AFC with only one great team (Pittsburgh).

Despite our QB issues, we were able to sneak the 2001 AFC's only non-Pittsburgh first round bye, and with a little help from the tuck rule against Oakland, and two special teams TDs in Pittsburgh, that allowed us to win despite being outplayed on both offence and defence, we were able to ride it all the way to the Super Bowl.

In this Super Bowl, we pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NFL history. The 2001 Rams are not quite what they were in 1999, but I rate that 2001 Rams team more highly than most, which means I rate this Super Bowl upset more highly than most, but there's a reason we were 14 point underdogs in the Super Bowl. There's a reason we were ten point underdogs in the AFC Championship. There's a reason we were barely favoured at home against an Oakland team that had only 10.08 Expected Wins in 2001, and needed tuck rule shenanigans to beat them.

The 2001 Patriots just weren't all that.

We won the championship, and every champion gets a unique place in the history of the sport. Nobody can take that away from us, but amongst champions, our 2001 championship is amongst the very least noteworthy in league history. The 2001 team gets stashed along with the 1970 Colts, 1980 Raiders, and 1987 Redskins, in the group of teams that were champions, but that everybody can acknowledge were nowhere near the best in the league that season.

Not every championship team is worth remembering, and the only reason the 2001 team gets remembered so much is because of the story I’m about to tell you.

Once again, we did win the championship. That’s final. Nobody can take it away, but we had just 9.66 Expected Wins in 2001. That’s only the eighth best team in the league. The NFL's eighth best team in 2024 had 10.70 Expected Wins (a testament to just how weak 2001 was leaguewide), and were also hampered by their offence at times. They're actually a solid comparison with the 2001 Patriots. That team is the Denver Broncos, with first year starting QB Bo Nix. The 2024 Broncos were a good team, but not historically notable, and not a glowing comparison for a Super Bowl champion.

Moving into 2002, we were eager to prove that 2001 was no fluke, but we did the opposite. We were up and down all year, winning five of six at one point but also losing four in a row at another, and stumbled our way into a week 16 win-and-in playoff game for the AFC East championship against the New York Jets.

Instead of proving we were not a fluke, we allowed this win-and-in playoff game to be the highlight of Chad Pennington's NFL career (read more here if you care for more specifics on this game). It was an ugly two touchdown loss in the most important game of the season, and we finish 2002 as losers in our own division.

Far from defending our Super Bowl championship, we couldn’t even make the playoffs.

We gained no ground in the race to convince the public that our 2001 Super Bowl was no fluke, and in fact lost a bunch. Tom Brady improved in an xEPA sense in year two, but only to 17th in the league in xEPA/Play, and regressed in his real results, as Troy Brown’s tenure as an elite NFL WR came to an abrupt end. With regression on offence, and a defence that could only carry us to the eighth most Expected Wins in 2001 to begin with, New England has been passed. It's really that simple.

The Patriot defence will always be good with Bill Belichick in town. Nobody is questioning that, but as of September 28, 2003, it is the common opinion that we have the fourth best offence, led by the fourth best QB, in the AFC East. Even in a season that occurs before the league tilts massively towards offence in 2004 (more on this later), it’s difficult to win a division this way.

It became obvious that Tom Brady couldn't match up with the league's best QB (Chad Pennington) in the final game of the 2002 season. Chad has already broken his wrist and will never be the same, but as of September 28, 2003, nobody knows that he never truly will come back, and smart money is on the fact that he’ll be better than Tom Brady.

That’s the easy pick, but it's also been forgotten how good Jay Fiedler is for the Miami Dolphins at this point in history. You may laugh at the mention of the name Jay Fiedler, and that anybody could ever think him to be better than Tom Brady, but he finished 11th in the NFL in EPA/Play in 2000, 6th in 2001, and seventh last year. If you ask the average NFL fan on September 28, 2003 whether they would rather have Tom Brady or Jay Fiedler, you'd be hard pressed to find an unbiased source that prefers Tom.

Perhaps forgotten even more than the greatness of Jay Fiedler is what Drew Bledsoe is doing at this same point in history. Drew had a turn back the clock season for the 2002 Bills, leaving his heart and soul laying on the field in an effort to drag a horrendous early 2000s Bills defence to a playoff berth, in the same way he used to do for us, before we replaced him with Tom, which on September 28, 2003, feels like a mistake.

As such, here the Patriots are, with an aging squad on offence, except for a young QB who’s still trying to find his feet, in a division with three of the 2002 season’s top ten QBs in it. Needless to say, our offence is not going to win this division for us. Our defence is at least looking loaded with some inspired offseason additions to 2002’s disappointing unit, the most notable of which being Rodney Harrison, but the formula is not entirely different than the one from 2001.

That formula won a championship in 2001, but there’s one gigantic problem with trying to repeat it.

This is the 2003 AFC.

There is a reason that I have written a million articles about this one season in this one conference. You cannot get further from an AFC with only one great team than this. The 2001 formula will not work again.

Instead of one great Pittsburgh Steelers team at the top, led by Kordell Stewart, and no other real opposition, this season there are great teams in Indianapolis, Nashville, and Kansas City led by Peyton Manning, Steve McNair, and Trent Green. There is also the Baltimore Ravens, who bring a defence that I consider to be even better than their Super Bowl winner in 2000, and much more. Links below will take you to read all of these stories in the detail that they deserve, but for now, you just need to know that this conference has morphed in the last two years from a walk in the park to a swim in a lake infested with piranhas. For our Patriots to come out on top of this fray, we're going to have to bring our A-game.

His Year: Steve McNair 2003

We Need to Pump Up Trent Green Pt. 4: It Takes Two

2003 Ravens: The Defence That Time Forgot

In week one, we do not bring our A-game, dropping a division game 31-0 in Buffalo against the Bills.

This is the ugliest loss of the entire Bill Belichick era in New England, including 2023, and it couldn't have come at a worse time, as this just seems to both confirm and dogpile on top of all the problems our Patriots have been having over the last year and a half since the 2001 Super Bowl to reach this point. The defence appears to have not gotten better. The offence seems even worse than advertised.

This is rock bottom. The best thing about rock bottom is that there's nowhere to go but up, but the nice thing about being a competent franchise is that you’re never supposed to reach rock bottom.

I cannot overstate how ugly this was, but because we’re the Patriots, and nothing makes sense, we rebound immediately from absolute rock bottom, to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles (right in the middle of their streak of four consecutive final four appearances) in week two, by a convincing 31-10 score, but the excitement is tempered in week three by playing a one possession game against a Jets team with no Chad Pennington, and that brings up back to where we began.

September 28, 2003. The Patriots take a second ugly loss already in the young season, to a Washington team that is horrible, and I'm going to ask you again:

What are the New England Patriots?

Are we the championship contender that blew out one of the best teams the league has to offer on the road in Philadelphia? Or are we the team that’s gotten blown out by six win Buffalo, five win Washington, and had to play a one possession game to beat a Jets team that’s going to win just two games in half a season before Chad Pennington gets back?

From what we've seen ever since Tom Brady became the starting QB, there's just no indication that this Patriots team is great. To put it simply, we're the Patriots. The Patriots, while not a laughing stock, have (counting the AFL) been in the league since 1960, and in the 43 seasons from 1960-2002, we've been a great team one time (1976). We’ve been a championship team one time (2001).

We’ve made the playoffs 11 times in 43 years. Taking into account the majority of these seasons featured four or less playoff teams per conference, 11 is not a bad total either, but it’s not exactly greatness year after year. We've had some assorted good stretches though our history, with high points (other than 2001) being Super Bowl appearances in both 1985 and 1996, but greatness has just never been part of the DNA of the Patriots.

Think of the Patriots on September 28, 2003 like the Denver Broncos since they lost John Elway. In the 26 seasons since Elway retired, the Broncos have made the playoffs ten times. They’ve been a great team twice (2012, 2013). They’ve been a championship team once (2015), but for most of the time, they’ve been floundering around in the middle of the pack. Never a laughing stock, but very rarely a championship contender. That’s where the Broncos have been since 1999, and from 1960-2002, that’s where the Patriots have been.

This is where that all changes.

For the 43 years before this, the Patriots have been good. We make the playoffs a lot. We've even won a Super Bowl, but in the grand scheme, we’ve been a forgettable NFL team. That ends today.

Beginning at this point, week five of the 2003 NFL season, the Patriots are the most unforgettable team in NFL history.

In week five, our Patriots host 2003 league MVP Steve McNair and his Tennessee Titans, in a key game to maintain pace in a 2003 AFC that is already looking to be very difficult, and for the first time in Tom's career, in a big game against a big time opponent (Tom got outplayed by every QB he faced on the way to the 2001 Super Bowl), he's going to show what he's really made of.

After both teams trade field goals in their first three possessions, the Titans have a 6-0 lead (our attempt was missed). No problem, as Brady uncorks a 58 yard touchdown pass to Troy Brown for a 7-6 lead. After finally getting a stop, Tom gets us right back to the Titans' 29 yard line on fourth and two. In 2003, this is almost always a conservative 47 yard field goal try, but Bill Belichick is a real man. He decides to go for it, but is punished when Tom takes a crushing sack on fourth down.

Following this, the teams trade three and outs. We do get one drive going, but it ends with another missed field goal attempt. This cycle stops at 2:56 left in the second quarter, when McNair throws a 43 yard pass, which takes the Titans to our one yard line. Two plays later, the Titans have a 13-7 lead. Our next drive ends with yet another crushing sack (a bigger problem for Tom back in 2003 than it will become for most of his career). McNair gets the Titans into field goal range again before the half ends, but thankfully their attempt is missed. At the half, it's 13-7 Titans.

This is not looking good.

We’re only 2-2 currently, and with the Dolphins at 3-1, we really cannot afford a 2-3 start, because the 2003 AFC is so stacked that even 10-6 will not get it done in terms of wild card places.

If we lose this game against the Tennessee Titans, the Patriots are liable to miss the playoffs for the second year in a row, at which point who knows what will happen to us? There are plenty of butterfly effect scenarios here, but the biggest is that there is no guaranteed money left on Tom Brady’s contract after this year. The 2001 Super Bowl ring is shiny, but in the last two off seasons, the 1999 Super Bowl ring has not saved Kurt Warner from being cut by the Rams, and the 2000 Super Bowl ring has not saved Trent Dilfer from being cut by the Ravens.

Franchises allowing themselves to be chained to a mediocre QB because of championship rings is a new phenomenon, that did not exist in 2003. QB play has been holding this team back for two seasons in a row now, and if we’re to miss the playoff again, who knows if Bill Belichick would become tired of the ceiling of his fantastic roster being capped by Tom Brady’s ineptitudes?

Looking back with hindsight, that seems like yet another ludicrous scenario to suggest, but that’s only because hindsight knows how Tom Brady is going to play this second half.

Tom comes out in the second half, and leads us to a score every time we touch the ball. All the while, Steve McNair is doing exactly the same thing on the opposite side. This game goes all the way down to the wire, but ends on a crucial pick six by Ty Law, as the defence finally comes through at 2:01 of the fourth, which allows us to take this nail biter of a game (the most exciting of the entire first dynasty, in my opinion) 38-30.

This is just the second time in the Tom Brady era that we’ve won while having 30 points scored on us, with the only other time being against the first ranked offence, 32nd ranked defence of the 2002 Kansas City Chiefs, and the spread between offensive quality and defensive quality on that team is so ridiculous that I feel extremely comfortable calling that an outlier.

In the last two years, it's been close to an auto-loss if the other squad hits that 30 point mark, but today, we won. For the first time in his career, in a big spot, Tom Brady played like a great QB.

Don't get me wrong, he's had great games before, but in every big spot in his career to this point, Tom Brady has come up very small.

The Tuck Rule game gets a pass because of the thick snow, but Tom got injured and could not play most of the 2001 AFC Championship. He almost singlehandedly lost us the 2001 Super Bowl, and he did lose us the win-and-in playoff game against the New York Jets last year. Before this week five game, there are no important games where you can honestly say Tom Brady played well, but we’ve found the first one. The first of very very many.

Week five against league MVP Steve McNair and the Tennessee Titans is the coming out party for both Tom Brady personally and for us as a team. We were technically favourites in this game, but being a one point favourite at home means bettors do not have faith in you, and to those bettors' credit, our defence had nothing for Steve McNair, even as he was getting very little help from everybody on the Titans team except Derrick Mason.

Tom Brady did not outplay the league MVP, but he did not get outplayed by the league MVP either, and with a difference in the talent level of the rest of the roster as wide as that between us and the 2003 Tennessee Titans, that’s all we need out of our QB.

With the league MVP on the other sideline, you take that every day of the week, and we move to a very important 3-2.

In week six against the New York Giants, the offence slows down dramatically, but the defence earns their money, forcing four turnovers plus one on downs, and holding the electric early 2000s version of Tiki Barber to -0.43 EPA/Play in an easy 17-6 win.

This game becomes the start of another odd trend for the New England Patriots, that of being held in check on offence by teams that should not be able to stop us. It begins today, being held to -0.16 EPA/Play as a team by the 24th place Giants defence, but it will get even worse as the season goes along. Keep this in mind for later.

We’ve now won two in a row to move to 4-2 on the year, but still sit a half game behind the Miami Dolphins. With a newly healthy Jay Fiedler, the Dolphins have shot out the gates to a 4-1 start, and remain seated firmly in their preseason position of AFC East favourites.

Coming into the game, Miami are comfortable seven point home favourites. Both teams have electric defences, so I have to believe this is due to the difference in offensive talent. Like I said earlier, Jay Fiedler has been a top ten EPA/Play finisher each of the last two years, closer to fifth than tenth each time. Tom Brady had a big moment in week five, but is nowhere near that status. He's coming out of his shell, but still has generated negative EPA/Play over the first six weeks of the year.

As of yet, Tom Brady is not in Jay Fiedler's class, but once again, the time has come to change that.

In this game, Tom gets to know what Steve McNair felt a few weeks ago. The rushing offence provides no help whatsoever, operating at a 28% success rate in this game. Despite this, we elect to rush an astounding 29 times. A good example is our first drive of the second quarter. It goes like this: Kevin Faulk for four yards, Kevin Faulk for three yards, Tom Brady for two yards. Fumble.

Three rushes for nine yards, and a fumble. This turnover sets up Miami’s only TD of the day by the way. Perhaps this could’ve been avoided with a choice to throw even a single pass, but I digress.

The one drive in the entire first half the majority of our plays are passes, our last drive, blasts right down the field for a touchdown, although the TD is nullified by penalty and we end up having to settle for three. Still, how could Bill Belichick have seen this and not committed to pass more in the second half? As we go into the locker room, we’re losing 10-6, and it takes until our second drive of the second half for our play callers to finally get it. It’s nine passes to five runs, and we score a touchdown to tie the game at 13, as Miami had scored another three in the interim.

From here, both teams get stuck, and this is where I have to provide due credit to our defenders again. Jay Fiedler is a top half NFL QB at least, and he’s getting nothing done against this ravenous defence. The Dolphins have scored ten points in this game off of turnovers from the offence (one fumble each from Tom Brady and Kevin Faulk), but there’s little our defence can do about that, and in terms of driving all the way down the field, Miami hasn’t even gotten close.

This continues for the whole second half, as after the one long drive to tie the game at 13, our offence gets stuck in neutral again, just as bad and probably worse than Miami’s. There are four punts in the first four minutes of the fourth quarter. That is the character of game we’re talking about here. This is the character that would’ve continued for the whole game, if not for the 15 minutes of fame of TE Randy McMichael.

When the Dolphins get the ball back with 11:03 left in the game, it feels like business as usual for us, as we stop them on first down, stop them on second, and leave ourselves with a favourable third and ten position on defence, with a good chance to force the third three and out just this quarter, but Jay Fiedler twists his way out of it with a 16 yard completion to Randy McMichael. The next series goes the same way, with first and second down serving only to get us to a favourable third and long, where Jay is again bailed out by Randy McMichael. The ensuing first down play is another 16 yard completion to McMichael, and before you know it, we’ve allowed the Dolphins into FG range.

Randy McMichael is not a terrible player. He posts 598 receiving yards in 2003, but almost ten percent of those yards come on this one drive, and you can imagine how slow this all is, with every single first down resulting in a third down, and every single third down being bailed out by damned Randy McMichael. That causes this drive not to stall out until we finally manage a third down stop inside our own red zone, as the clock reaches the two minute warning.

Oh no.

After a fantastic defensive day, we’ve cracked at the worst possible time. We’ve allowed one drive to eat up almost all of the fourth quarter, and the Dolphins are going to steal it from us. All they have to do is kick this FG, and they would leave us facing a 16-13 deficit, with less than two minutes to go, and no timeouts. That is an extremely bad position. It’s an estimated WP of less than 20 percent. Somebody has to make a play, but who is going to do it? All we can do is hope for Olindo Mare to miss the game winning FG.

Unless…

Football is a game with three facets, and even as the offence has failed, and the defence has failed, there is one unit remaining to save us, and there is no team more known for having their special teams unit save them than the first dynasty of the New England Patriots.

Richard Seymour bursts through the middle to block the game winning FG try, and singlehandedly force this game into OT. In the resulting OT, the Dolphins have to miss a second chance at a game winning FG in order for us to get a chance, but with an 82 yard pass to Troy Brown, we are able to somehow sneak off the field with a 19-13 overtime win.

There's a new top dog in the AFC East, and it's the New England Patriots.

By all means, Miami should have won this game. They led for almost the entire thing, and had field goal tries in both regulation and overtime that would've given them the win. Just look at this Win Probability chart:

That's a lot of Dolphin blue, and creates yet another interesting what-if. What if Richard Seymour hadn’t been so clutch, blocking the FG at the end of regulation? What if Olindo Mare had been able to make the one in OT? If either of these FG tries fly through the uprights, this win streak stops at two. Instead of a new top dog in the AFC East, the previous top dog in the AFC East (the Dolphins) use this game to barely cling to power, and we have to wait two months to get another shot at them.

Looking back on it, these missed FGs, and this game in general, is the passing of the torch. This is the moment the AFC East stops being Miami's to lose every year. Ever since the 1990s Bills went away, the AFC East has been Miami’s playground. They do not always win it, as we came out of the woodwork in 1996 and the Jets shocked people in 1998 and Peyton Manning came along in 1999, before the 2002 divisional realignment took the Colts out of the AFC East, but by and large, Miami has been the preseason favourites to win this division every year for the last decade.

No more. This is our division now.

It's possible that if this passing of the torch hadn’t happened here, it would've happened in week 14 anyway, but it's also possible this could've become another bad day on this up and down Patriot carousel we've been riding since the 2001 Super Bowl.

This is a loss that really could've affected things, at least within the 2003 season. It would've dropped us to 4-3, a full two games behind Miami. Perhaps even if this is the case, the Jay Fiedler injury still happens, and the Dolphins still free fall from a 4-1 start all the way out of the playoffs, which is what happens in real life, but perhaps things go differently if Miami are definitively ahead in the race. It’s tough to say.

What I can say regardless of all this is that Tom Brady is exorcising the demons from the end of 2002. At the end of the 2002 season, he came out in a win-and-in playoff game and laid one of the biggest eggs of his career. This season, Tom came out in a big spot against a divisional opponent and had a great game.

He completed 24 of 34 for 283 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and generated 0.36 EPA/Play. If our coaches would've known then what we know now about what kind of QB we have on our hands, and not rushed the ball so much, there's no way this game would’ve even gotten to OT. It's hard for an offensive player to shine in a game where his team scores just 19 points, but in my opinion, Tom comes out of this one smelling like a rose.

These good feelings end quickly though, as in week eight as we play one of the most boring football games I've ever had the displeasure of covering. I'm not a person that thinks any game defensive in character is boring. In fact, the most popular article on this publication is about my joyous experience going back and watching the most inept offensive football game ever, but this game is boring. We host the Cleveland Browns for a game that is 3-3 at the half, 6-3 to begin the fourth, and 9-3 as Ty Law catches the game winning interception.

It’s charitable to call this game a snoozer, but this is another splendid showcase of our unassailable defence. This is the game that ends Tim Couch's career as an NFL starter. He would never recover from this, but once again, our offence (after doing great things against top ten defences against both Tennessee and Miami) is entirely shut down by a defence that should not be able to treat us this way. This is a Cleveland defence that ranks 21st in 2003. There's no way we should’ve been held to negative EPA/Play by these guys.

If our offence and defence can ever find a way to work in parallel, these Patriots look like a serious problem, but as of right now, we can't get both sides of the ball to work in unison, as in week nine the win streak moves to five, but we have to do so with a last minute touchdown drive, because our defence gives up 26 points to a Bronco offence quarterbacked by Danny Kanell.

Who is Danny Kanell, and why is he scoring 26 points against the first dynasty Patriot defence?

Exactly.

That takes us into the week ten bye. All of a sudden, things are looking really good in the standings, now having won five games in a row, and possessing a comfortable lead in the division over the Miami Dolphins, whose free fall with no Jay Fiedler has begun by this point. Perhaps over this bye week we can figure out how to get the offence and defence to stop taking turns every week, and both play well at once.

Not a chance.

In week eleven, we host the Dallas Cowboys. Against an offence led by Quincy Carter and Antonio Bryant, it's not shocking that our defence pitches a shutout. This game features one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in a football game, as at one point, the Cowboys engineer 16 play drive, only to punt the ball from our 36. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team take 16 plays just to get the opponent’s 36 before. This novelty is the furthest the Cowboys manage to get in the entire first half, and in the entire game, exempting a garbage time drive at the very end, the Cowboys got as far as our 35 just once.

If you're interested in an utterly suffocating display of defensive brilliance, go watch this game against the Cowboys, but once again, when the defence plays great, the offence cannot.

Negative EPA/Play again for the Patriots, although at least this time it’s negative EPA/Play against a 2003 Cowboys defence that does not get talked about enough, one of the best success rate defences of the entire play tracking era. If they didn’t have such poor luck with failing to generate turnovers, the 2003 Cowboys would be remembered as one of the best defences of all time, but nevertheless, we’ve beaten them, and for the first time in a while, this is not a one possession win, as we take this game 12-0.

Despite our consistent winning, it's beginning to feel like we really need to get it together in order to win at the highest level. We can't face the Browns and the Cowboys forever. At some point, we’re going to need our offence and defence to work in parallel.

We’re not going to need it in week 12 though

Our next game is against the Houston Texans, an expansion franchise playing just their 28th game ever, and as we go on the road to face the brand new Texans, it gets easier yet, as starting QB David Carr is out injured for this game. Instead, our voracious defence gets to go up against QB Tony Banks, best known as the QB the Rams kicked to the curb in order to sign Trent Green in the 1999 offseason, and the QB the Ravens kicked to the curb in order to start Trent Dilfer in the 2000 season.

As a team who have now won six games in a row, playing the Houston Texans in just their 28th game ever should not provide any difficulty, and in truth it doesn’t, as we win the time of possession battle 94 plays to 57. We win the total EPA battle by 11 points, and we win the football game, but my gosh. Oversimplification is not a big enough word for what I’ve just done to this football game.

Look at the WP graph:

All the Patriot red means we dominated this football game, but even the New England Patriots are not immune to one possession game luck. The Texan blue right at the end indicates the fact that, after trailing 10-3 for almost the entire game, as our offence failed to pull away but our defence was suffocating, the Texans somehow go TD, TD, FG in the fourth quarter, while we only manage to score three points, suddenly leaving us with a 20-13 deficit with three minutes left to go.

The game winning drive is also like pulling teeth, as we have to convert two third downs, and a fourth down, but inch by inch we’re able to get the ball into the end zone with 40 seconds left to play, and after a barn burner of an OT, featuring a back breaking Tony Banks INT bailed out by our game winning FG being blocked, and a back breaking Tom Brady INT being bailed out by a defensive holding penalty, we’re able to put the game away as the clock expires, barely avoiding a tie with a 23-20 win on the road in Houston.

This is the NFL. You take a road win however you can get it, but for a team that fancies ourselves contenders, what the heck was that? Why are we playing a game that got within a hair of being both a tie and a loss against the 4.95 Expected Win Houston Texans, with a backup QB?

I’ll tell you why.

The reason we had to play a game like this against the Houston Texans is because our offence could not stretch a lead wider than seven points, despite our defence holding Houston to three total points in the first forty minutes of this game. That’s why, and it’s getting old. How many times can the offence do this before one day it’s going to burn us?

The Houston Texans are in just their second season. It’s the bones of an expansion team. It makes sense that they have the 28th best defence in the NFL. They’re awful on that side of the ball, but just like against Washington, the Giants, Cleveland, and Denver, it doesn’t matter that the Texans are not a top ten defensive team. We couldn’t score on them anyway. Our win streak has now reached seven, but five of those wins have now come on negative EPA offensive days against defences that are not in the top ten.

This is an article about the 2003 New England Patriots. I knew going into the process that the defence was going to be the driver of the success, but I did not know it was going to be this bad.

On the other hand, because nothing about the Patriots is ever allowed to make sense, the other two wins have been fantastic offensive showings against the only two top ten defences we’ve played in this stretch of winning, Tennessee and Miami. I believe I gave Tom Brady due credit for those performances when they happened, but it’s been more than a month now since he’s played well in a game.

The team as a whole is on a hot streak, but the offence in general and Tom Brady in specific is ice cold. The game winning drives against both Houston and Denver are nice, but if he had been able to play even okay in either game, their would’ve been no need for any game winning drive at all, with our defence holding the opponent well in the negative in each of those games.

This poor stretch of offensive play is going to be exposed in week 13, one way or another.

For week 13, we have to go on the road to play the Indianapolis Colts, for a game that is beyond crucial for playoff positioning. Crucial is not a big enough word for it. With the Kansas City Chiefs sitting at 10-1, one first round bye in the AFC is already gone. That leaves us in the fight for the second one, which is fierce.

There are three teams tied for second place in the AFC right now. Ourselves, the Tennessee Titans, and the Indianapolis Colts are all 9-2. The Titans have gone undefeated since losing the barn burner to us a couple months back, and have barely even played a one possession game since then. Our win over them is aging like the finest of wines. A head to head win over a team like this is a precious thing to have, but their recent form means keeping pace with them is imperative.

The same goes for the Colts, who have taken a couple of rogue losses in one possession games, but sport a point differential of positive 93, just 11 games into the season. The Titans are at 95. Then, you look at our Patriots, who have only 44 more points scored than points allowed.

The average game for the Colts and for the Titans is a multiple possession win (to say nothing about the Chiefs’ absurd point differential of 135 through just 11 games), but when you look at us, our average game is only a four point win. Even if you entirely exclude the 31-0 defeat in week one, this is still only a positive 75 point differential in ten games, which is still not a multiple possession win on average.

This is all to say that, if there is a fraud in this group of four teams at the top of the murderous 2003 AFC, we are the frauds. All these one possession wins against Houston and Cleveland and Denver and whoever else are great for the standings, but in terms of proving to the NFL fans that a team is not a fraud, they don’t go very far, but this week 13 game will.

If we’re able to get a win on the road over the Indianapolis Colts, nobody will be able to say we’re frauds.

This week 13 matchup is the first game of significance that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning ever play against each other, and in the most important game of our regular season, after doing nothing but mess it up for the entire month of November, our offence has come to play today.

It’s not pretty. There is one completed pass of longer than seven air yards, and two successful runs in all of the first quarter, but our first three drives are able to go FG, TD, TD, and our defence has come to play too, holding Peyton Manning down in the way they could not do when playing against Steve McNair earlier in the season. The Colts get just two first downs in the first quarter, which means when we finish our third drive with a TD, with 12 minutes left in the second quarter, we are winning 17-0.

How about that for the frauds, huh?

I told you that if the defence and the offence could ever play well at the same time, we would be a problem, and the proof is in the pudding. A 17-0 lead after 18 minutes. Fast forwarding to halfway through the third quarter, not much has changed. Peyton still cannot move, and the Indianapolis defence still cannot stop us. We’re up 31-10 now, and when Peyton turns the ball over for his second time of the day already, this game looks like it’s over.

Up 31-10, with the ball, with less when 22 minutes remaining, is a choke hold on the game. NFLFastR gives us a 97 percent chance to win from this position. It’s too early to coast. Our win probability is not 100, but if our offence is conservative and settles for field goals from this point on, we will win the game.

We don’t do that.

We run play action, and the Colts bite hard on it, leaving a wide open Bethel Johnson between the LBs and the safeties, but Tom misses him badly, so badly that I feel there has to be some kind of miscommunication on the depth of the route. An NFL QB would not miss an open receiver by this much.

Nevertheless, whoever’s fault it was, this ball is a turnover. Instead of a big completion. Indianapolis has been gifted the ball in our territory. The Colts were pretty much dead, but now they’re alive, and it’s been a while since I’ve used it, but we all know the motto. Repeat after me.

Do not give Peyton Manning life. He will punish you severely.

Quicker than a hiccup, Peyton has completed a touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne. The score is 31-17, and when we get the ball back, Tom makes a rookie mistake, trying to force the football to a blanketed Deion Branch. These rookie mistakes out of a QB who is not a rookie are a common theme throughout the first dynasty Patriots, and they kill us right now. It’s another turnover, and it takes one play for Peyton to complete a TD pass to Marvin Harrison that makes the score 31-24.

On our next drive, Bill Belichick does not allow the ball to be put back in Tom’s hands. We rush three times, and it’s a rather meek three and out. This would’ve worked with the 31-10 lead we had, but not with the 31-24 lead we have, and it takes barely even three minutes for Peyton to make us pay for it. Out of nowhere, this game is tied at 31, and the sky is falling.

It was not even ten minutes ago that our probability of winning this game was 97 percent. Now, as the Colts score a TD at 10:26 of the fourth quarter, that figure is not even 50 percent. We’ve slipped all the way down to a 48 percent estimated WP, in a tie game in the fourth quarter on the road.

This is a catastrophe.

It was looking good for a while, but the ship is sinking, and if we find a way to lose this game, we’re definitely going to be seen as the frauds in this first round bye race, because we’ll have done nothing to prevent it. We’ll have brought it on ourselves.

Somebody has to make a play.

It’s not going to be the offence. Since the halfway point of the third, they have managed to run just one successful offensive play, and turned the ball over twice. I’m having a hard time seeing the defence making a play either, as in that same stretch, the Colts have seen just four third downs, and scored three back to back to back touchdowns.

If the offence is almost definitely not going to make a play, and the defence is almost definitely not going to make a play, where does that leave us? Are we frauds after all?

No. We are not frauds.

Even if the offence is not going to make a play, and the defence is not going to make a play, there remains one more unit to rely on. The same unit that bailed out our offence and defence in Miami. Remember the 2001 AFC Championship game, where two special teams touchdowns saved us in a game where we were outclassed on both offence and defence. Remember that Miami game from earlier in the year, and remember this game, where our special teams unit saves us again.

Bethel Johnson on the kickoff return does not score the TD himself, but he does everything except that. The kickoff return gets us into FG range without having to do anything on offence, which is exactly what we needed. It puts everybody back at ease about throwing the ball again. Tom Brady is allowed to touch the ball this time, and it takes him just four tries to get back into the end zone for a 38-31 lead.

From here, it’s the defence’s time to shine.

This was a good TD drive, but it required just one first down, and that one is the only first down we achieve on offence in the final 22 minutes of this game. That means we give our defence no help in terms of running the clock out, which means the defence must prevent Peyton Manning from scoring the game winning touchdown three separate times as the game cock winds down.

The first time goes well, as the Colts stall at the 50, and have to punt. The second time is more nerve wracking, as Indy gets all the way to our 11 yard line, but ultimately has to settle for three points and a 38-34 score, but on the third and final try, against our exhausted defenders that have been on the field for almost all of the fourth quarter, the dam is breaking, and we end up in the same position we were in before. The sky is falling.

The score is 38-34. There are 40 seconds left. The Indianapolis Colts have worked their way all the way down to our two yard line. If they score a TD here, they win, our winning streak ends, we’re almost assured not to get a first round bye in the AFC, we’ll be seen as frauds by everybody, and considering this is a Peyton Manning vs Tom Brady game, our almighty choke here, blowing a 31-10 lead in the final 22 minutes to lead to all these outcomes, will be remembered forever.

However, if we can somehow keep the Colts out of the end zone, this all flips. We have head to head wins over both Indianapolis and Tennessee, putting us in the commanding lead to take this first round bye in the AFC, everybody will know we are not frauds, and the 2003 New England Patriots will not have to wear one of the biggest chokes in the history of the league (in an era before comebacks were as common as they are in 2025) on our sleeves.

It all comes down to these four plays.

First down.

The Colts come out in 11 personnel, with three spread WRs. We choose to match it with seven box defenders and only one safety. I personally cannot believe the football genius that is Peyton Manning did not check to a pass on this play, but that’s not our problem. He runs it as called, handing the ball off to Edgerrin James, who is stood up in the hole by Tedy Bruschi.

Second down.

The Colts hurry to the line, trying to trap us with this group of players on the field, but we line up perfectly, leaving eight men in the box including our safety, meaning every receiver has straight up one on one. I once again cannot believe Peyton Manning does not check to a pass, but once again, not our problem. Our defensive line stands strong. James is stood up at the line again for no gain.

Third down.

Both sides get a chance to huddle this time, but both sides like the look they had. The Colts come out with the same three WR, one TE, one RB personnel group, and we come out without any safeties at all this time, with three corners covering the receivers one on one, and eight big guys to clog the middle. No self respecting QB can allow his team to run facing this defensive alignment, so the Colts do pass, but it’s a fade that’s excellently covered by CB Tyrone Poole. It falls incomplete. One play to go.

Fourth down.

Neither team blinks. It’s the same players across the board as it was last time, but this time it’s only six vs seven in the run game, because on fourth down, we are double covering Reggie Wayne. Peyton notices this added wrinkle, and believes that his guys can get one yard in the run game in a six vs seven situation. It’s not a bad idea, but we’re just too good for them.

Edgerrin James runs into the brick wall named Ted Washington, and cannot make it the one yard he needs. Patriots win.

After a fourth quarter where our defenders have been on the field for 12 and half of its 15 minute duration, we have somehow found the guts to stop the almighty Indianapolis Colts offence not once, not twice, not three times, but four consecutive times from inside our two yard line.

The great thing about these Patriots is that this goal line stand was made up of a different guy making a play every time. First down was the closest the Colts actually got to scoring, as the game depended on a one on one tackle in the hole of a Hall of Fame RB, which we got out of Tedy Bruschi.

The second down tackle is also credited to Bruschi, but there was no hole across the entire defensive line. Everybody made that play. Third down was excellent pass coverage out of Tyrone Poole, and fourth down was big Ted Washington making an exceptional DT play, refusing to go down for a cut block. Everybody played their role, even with a gas tank that cannot have been anything except completely empty, and this goal line stand for the ages allowed us to barely skirt disaster, and get out of Indianapolis with a 38-34 victory.

Was the offence an aid in this game, or a hinderance? It’s tough to say they had a bad day when we scored 38 points in a game, but it’s tough to say they had a good day when we got one first down in the final 22 minutes. It’s fitting then that we end this day with 0.03 EPA/Play as an offence, very close to a 50th percentile game, despite the 38 points.

The same can be said about the defence. This was not as good as our normal day. We don’t give up 34 points very often, but when they needed to be there, they were there.

This was a team effort, and very emblematic of exactly how the early 2003 Patriots choose to beat teams. It can be on offence, defence, or special teams, but somebody somewhere will make a play, and we will beat you.

Thank goodness we did beat the Colts, because in the following few weeks, our offence goes right back into the gutter again. -0.32 EPA/Play as a team (one of the worst offensive performances in a win ever) in a 12-0 win in our second game against the Miami Dolphins, -0.02 EPA/Play (although a good game for Tom Brady individually) in a 27-13 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, and -0.03 EPA/Play in a 21-16 win over the Jets in week 16 are not impressing anybody.

To compensate for this, our defence is ramping up even more since the Colts game, which is why the one possession wins have mostly been replaced by multiple possession ones, as although our offence has had one truly positive game (Indianapolis) since we beat Miami all the way back in week seven, the team in general is finding its stride. Don’t look now, but since our bye week, we have played just three one possession games. All three of them (Houston, Indianapolis, New York Jets) were needlessly close, games that could’ve easily been won by more than one possession had just a few things went differently, so as we go into week 17, out of nowhere, we have become the league’s hottest team.

As the Titans have been struggling through Steve McNair’s late season injuries, the Colts have buckled under the weight of the head to head loss to us, and the KC Chiefs have taken a freak loss to the Minnesota Vikings, we have also worked ourselves into the position of only needing to defeat the Buffalo Bills in week 17 to clinch homefield advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.

This is the same Bills team that beat us 31-0 all the way back in week one. The game that caused the bottom to fall out. The game that led to everybody questioning whether the Patriots would ever win the Super Bowl again. I have to believe there’s revenge on the mind, as everybody, even our offence, shows up for this one, to beat on the corpse of the 2003 Buffalo Bills.

This is top ten Buffalo defence we’re talking about, but it gives our offence just its third positive EPA showing since week five. We run them up and down the field, with RB Antowain Smith putting up a 67 percent success rate in this game, and Tom Brady’s 0.23 EPA/Play is not bad either.

On defence, we humiliate Drew Bledsoe, to the tune of -0.77 EPA/Play, one of the worst QB performances of the entire 2003 season, before he is finally benched in the fourth quarter, and we pull the starters once we reach a 31-0 lead, but not a second before.

We had a 28-0 lead at halftime, and homefield advantage basically sewn up. We could’ve pulled the starters at any time, but Bill Belichick is not one to forget. The starters play until deep into the fourth quarter, where on fourth and two from deep in Buffalo territory, Bill sends out Adam Vinatieri to kick the FG that gets us to the magic score.

This is a horrendous fourth down decision out of a coach who normally makes very good fourth down decisions, but in this game, it’s not about making the optimal football decision. If it was, we would’ve pulled the starters at half and won 28-16 or so. No. This game is about revenge, and as the clock hits zeroes, and we’ve beaten the Buffalo Bills by the same score of 31-0, revenge has been well served.

They beat us by 27 points in the total EPA battle in week one, but we’ve now beaten them by 33.5 points in the rematch. The Bills have nothing on us. In our 12th victory in a row in the final week of the 2003 season, we have exorcised our final demon. We have gotten our offence going into the playoffs on a high note, which in my opinion we needed after several weeks in a row (and most of the season) of underperforming on that side of the ball, and we have also clinched home field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. If anybody wants to win the Super Bowl, their road to the championship is going to have to come through the frigid Northeast.

At some point though, a team runs out of demons to exorcise. Runs out of monsters to slay. After being an underdog in every big game we’ve played since the 2001 Tuck Rule game against the Raiders, by the end of the 2003 season we are no longer the underdog. We’ve become the team to beat. We’re no longer in a position to get revenge for our past defeats. The victory over the Bills tied up our only remaining loose end.

Now, teams are looking to get revenge on us.

This begins in the divisional playoff round, with our matchup against the Tennessee Titans. Their loss to us in week five is the only thing that prevented them from taking the conference’s second first round bye, and caused them to have to come play us in this playoff game.

Since I checked in on them at 9-2 through their first 11 games, these Titans have fallen off the cliff, primarily due to injuries to starting QB and league MVP Steve McNair, who is dealing with bone spurs in his ankle on one leg, and a bad calf on the other. They have gone just 3-2 since then, and have fallen from looking like probably the AFC’s best team to looking like a bit of a soft touch as a playoff opponent. They have already played a brutal first round playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, that if you watch, you will see what a man limping on both legs at once looks like. It’s difficult to describe the look of it in words, but Steve McNair is clearly playing through serious pain.

The Titans’ rush offence stinks, and has all season, hampered by an Eddie George who by 2003 is completely done. In totality, this means the Titans are bringing a severely hampered pass offence, a rush offence that was no good to begin with, led by the league’s MVP, who is limping on both legs, to face our defence that has been on a tear throughout the entire course of the piece.

Since we played the uninjured version of Steve McNair back in week five (where to his credit, he torched us), we have allowed only one opponent (the Colts) to generate positive EPA on us. Now, as a playoff opponent, we get a Tennessee Titans team that is running on fumes, to say the least.

This is a 12 win team, backed up by 11.88 Expected Wins. They’re no joke, but the Titans right now are not what the Titans have been for almost all of the season, which explains why we are installed as healthy six point home favourites in this playoff matchup.

I’ve covered this game from McNair’s perspective as part of his His Year article, but to offer just a brief comment here, it is painful all night to watch the Titans play offence. Steve McNair, who had been one of the league’s most mobile QBs just a couple months ago, is walking through molasses with concrete boots on now. He can barely get his feet off the ground. This helps us immensely.

On the Titans’ first drive, this shows, as I wouldn’t say it’s a good series for our defence at all. On first down, Steve has Derrick Mason open for a first down, and misses him, and on third and long, Steve has Drew Bennett wide open for a touchdown, and misses him. It’s a three and out, which we will take any way we can get, but it’s not exactly encouraging to begin the football game this way on defence, which passes the buck to our offence to try to make something out of this.

Our offence has been failing to make something out of situations like this for an entire season, exempting a few bright spots here and there, but they do not fail at it today. Their top ten defensive unit is the one thing the Titans have not lost over the last month, but it does not phase us. When Tom Brady sees Bethel Johnson wide open behind the defence for a touchdown, he does not miss.

Right out of the gate, it’s 7-0 Patriots, and I must say, it’s hard to beat this defence coming from behind.

Peyton Manning managed to come all the way back from a 21 point deficit, but there is only one Peyton Manning. No team without Peyton Manning has overcome a deficit wider than seven points against us all year, as for almost all of the season we’ve just led, and led, and kept leading, even if our oftentimes subpar offence has kept those leads from being as wide as they should’ve been, especially in the first half of the year.

If our defence can find a stop here, we can pull out a lead wider than seven. If we can do that, this game would be getting very close to being over already. NFLFastR agrees with me, giving us an 85 percent chance to win with a 7-0 lead in the first quarter against an 11.88 Expected Win team, but we just cannot find a stop.

What we find instead is the easiest scoring drive anybody is able to put together all season against the 2003 Patriot defence. It begins with a kickoff return out to the Tennessee 39, an uncharacteristic special teams blunder, and once the Titan offence gets on the field, there are no incomplete passes. There is only one unsuccessful offensive play, and the one play that would have been an incomplete pass to put the Titans in an uncomfortable third and six situation is undone by another uncharacteristic mistake, this time Richard Seymour taking a cheap shot at Steve McNair, which draws a 15 yard penalty.

I understand the point of this hit, as Steve can barely get up, but this 15 yard penalty is very poorly timed, and greatly aids the Titans in scoring the touchdown that ties this game at seven apiece.

This again passes the buck to our offence, but again we respond. Most of the work is done on one 22 yard completion, with only one additional first down. That’s enough though to get the ball well into field goal range, but we are again undercut by an uncharacteristic special teams blunder, this time Adam Vinatieri missing his FG attempt, so the score has to remain tied at seven.

All of this has happened just in the first ten minutes of the game by the way. This is all very atypical for these Patriots. Letting a WR clear behind the defence that was thankfully missed on drive one, scoring a one play touchdown ourselves, and then allowing the Titans to score a TD of their own, leaving the game tied mostly due to our own blunders, is entirely out of character for us.

We don’t play this kind of football, but as of right now, we’re winning at it, as after a fantastic individual play by Rodney Harrison to win a 50/50 ball against Justin McCareins, coming down with the INT, our offence scores again, giving us a 14-7 lead one minute into the second quarter.

By our standards, this is a barn burner, and that is not a good thing. It’s exciting yes, but in a match up of the league’s MVP against Tom Brady in a playoff game, even on two bad legs, smart money is on Steve McNair every time. It’s going to be exceedingly difficult for us to win the football game this way. I know we did exactly that earlier in the season, beating Tennessee in a 38-30 barn burner back in October, but would you want to bet on lightning striking twice?

I wouldn’t, which is why it’s great for us that we go back to playing Patriot football for the entire rest of the first half. By this I mean that the Titans get close to scoring twice. One time being taken out of FG range on a big time sack by Willie McGinest, and the other being foiled by a blocked FG attempt by Richard Seymour, who I can’t help but notice is a ridiculously good special teams player. Our offence does not get anywhere near scoring while our defence is doing this Houdini act, but that’s par for the course with this team.

This continues into the second half too, with one key difference. With our offence still utterly mired in quicksand, McNair is able to complete a 30 yard 50/50 ball to Tyrone Calico, which changes everything. The Titan offence is still not especially productive, but with the benefit of these 30 extra yards, it’s enough. It takes them nine plays just to get from our 35 to the end zone, so by no means did we give up and die, but with a fantastic catch and run by Derrick Mason, a man not necessarily known for his catching and running, the Titans tie this game at 14 points each.

By this point, the weather is really getting bad. It’s extremely cold, in the negatives even in Fahrenheit degrees. About 20 below in Celsius terms. There is a sheet of ice developing over the playing surface. There’s even a fairly strong wind, so who knows what the wind chill may be out there. Weather like we’re playing through is why the NFL does not start playoff games at 8:30 local time anymore, because even two of the best cold weather QBs in the NFL in Steve McNair and Tom Brady are having an extremely difficult time accomplishing anything.

This Titans touchdown is scored with 4:19 remaining in the third quarter. In the next 15 minutes of football, there are six first downs to share between both teams, but slowly and gradually, due to special teams aptitude that cannot be matched, in addition to five of those six first downs being achieved by our offence, we win the field position battle. It is not a great offensive drive that takes us the lead, but when Titans punter Craig Hentrich punts standing on his own goal line, and we get the ball on the Tennessee 40, it only takes one first down to get us into Adam Vinatieri field goal range, and he’s not going to miss twice, even in this appalling weather.

With 4:11 left to play in the the fourth quarter, we take a 17-14 lead.

NFLFastR loves this. It gives us a 77 percent chance to win from this position, but I know better than to count out the winningest active playoff QB in the NFL, which in 2003 is Steve McNair. Mathematical formulas don’t take things like that into account, but I am terrified right now. Our defence has been holding for the whole game, and we held against Steve McNair the last time we found ourselves in this exact situation, with a 31-30 lead back in October, but this is the playoffs. I cannot force myself not to be scared.

We try a couple of different ideas on defence in this final drive. We begin with six DBs and only one linebacker, but in this alignment, it is impossible to put any pressure on Steve McNair. From the time the snap hits his hands to the time he finally throws the ball to an open Justin McCareins cannot be any shorter than six seconds, and there is still no Patriot in his vicinity when he does. He could’ve sat in that pocket for all of the last 4:11. On the second play we have the same problem, giving Steve the time he needs to throw the ball to Drew Bennett, who is not open, but makes one of the best catches in the history of football.

Watch this play. I’m not exaggerating, but move on like the football game does to the third play of this drive, where this time our four rushers lose contain, allowing even the current state of Steve McNair to run for a 12 yard gain. He cannot get up without help from this run, but he’s got his team inside our territory, and when a seven yard completion to Derrick Mason gets them to our 33 yard line, we finally reach the two minute warning.

At this point, Bill Belichick has had enough. Enough with the four rusher stuff. Enough with the six DB stuff. Steve McNair cannot move, and has not been able to move the whole night. Why are we not making him move?

Coming out of the two minute warning, we come out in base, with seven big guys on the field, and send six of them directly towards the quarterback. Steve can’t handle this pressure whatsoever, and we force an intentional grounding penalty, moving the Titans into a third and 13 situation.

On third down, we do the exact same thing, sending six at Steve, but we play directly into the hands of a Titan screen pass. Thankfully, the pressure causes the first down to be wiped out by an offensive holding penalty, so we now have the Titans in a third and 23 situation. Normally, this would be the time to go back to six DBs, but Bill Belichick puts an absolute veto on that. Steve McNair can barely lift his feet off the ground, and we are sending six guys at him again.

He burns us with a ridiculously accurate pass to Drew Bennett, but it’s only for 11 yards, leaving us with just one more stop to make. It’s fourth and 12, and in my opinion, what follows is the most important play of the entire first Patriot dynasty.

If we allow a conversion, the Titans are in the red zone. That means overtime against the league’s MVP, in the the absolute best case scenario, and in the worst case, they’re going to beat us before we get to the overtime, but a stop on this fourth and 12 means we’re going to the AFC Championship game, where we will host either the KC Chiefs or Indianapolis Colts.

This one play is going to prove whether we are contenders, favourites to win the 2003 AFC, or whether we’re pretenders. The guys who rode a streak of one possession game luck all the way to the playoffs, but couldn’t even beat the seriously hampered Tennessee Titans once they got there.

Our hand on defence has been face up for a long time now. The Titans know what we’re going to do, and we do it. We play undisguised cover zero, sending six at Steve McNair for the fourth play in a row. Rodney Harrison comes through completely unblocked, giving McNair approximately a second and a half to put the ball in the air. He decides to throw a 50/50 ball to his guy, little Drew Bennett. The same Drew Bennett that made (without exaggeration) one of the best catches I have ever seen just five plays ago.

As this ball is in the air, every Patriot fan comes to the same horrifying realisation at the same time.

Drew Bennett is standing by himself.

For just a split second, all of the worst possible thoughts go through the heads of the Patriot fans. How could we possibly let this happen? McNair threw up a prayer. How often do you see a prayer come down with no Patriot there to contest the ball? After all the elite defensive play we’ve seen in the 2003 season, we’re going to blow it all on this? A botched man coverage on the most important play of the year?

Steve McNair threw this ball up as a 50/50 ball. A prayer, but it does not come down as a 50/50 ball, or a prayer. It comes down as a pass to an open Drew Bennett. The same Drew Bennett who has made two spectacular catches on this final drive alone.

Watch the outcome for yourself.

Because we’re the Patriots, and nothing is allowed to make sense, one of the NFL’s very best receivers completely shakes Tyrone Poole, to end up as open as any WR will ever get on any fourth and 12 play where the QB has less than two seconds to throw. He is standing there, waiting, all by himself for the ball to come down, and once it finally gets there, one of the best receivers in the NFL drops a pass that any NFL receiver, most college receivers, and a lot of high school receivers would’ve made in his place.

All due credit to Asante Samuel for using the immense amount of time this ball was in the air to sprint all the way from the complete opposite side of the field to put a hit on Drew Bennett, preventing him any opportunity to make a juggling catch, but this is a ball that virtually any NFL receiver would’ve caught without need for a second chance.

Depending on where you sit in terms of opinion about the first Patriot dynasty, it is either extremely fitting that the most important play of its entire duration has nothing to do with any Patriot, and instead has everything to do with Drew Bennett dropping the football, or it’s entirely out of character for this team to allow the outcome to be taken out of our own hands in this way. I think it’s both.

These Patriots have gotten a lot of luck over the course of this season, but we’ve also very rarely let things get out of our control. The goal line stand against Indianapolis is the perfect example. Even if you do everything perfectly, it still takes a fair amount of luck to keep an NFL team from going one yard in four tries, but we were still able to do it. That time, we at least did everything to maximise our chances of success, and the football Gods smiled on us for doing so.

That’s not like this.

This time, it’s the opposite. On this particular play, we did everything we could possibly do to minimise our chances of success, but the football Gods, manifesting themselves through the bone chilling weather, just how high Steve McNair chose to throw this pass, and whatever other factors contributed to Drew Bennett dropping this ball, let us off with a warning.

This is an epic playoff game. The final epic playoff game of the old school variety. The kind of knock down, drag out brawl that used to characterise the playoffs, but which the NFL is very soon (with the 2004 rule changes) going to make illegal. In a 2003 playoff bracket that is often remembered as the best in the history of the league, this game is the one that is not appreciated enough in my opinion.

There are two reasons this game is not remembered. First, Tom Brady had no part to play in it. This is not entirely his fault. Like I said, the weather for this game was appalling, but that weather did not stop Steve McNair from generating 0.17 EPA/Play on a 51 percent success rate, the best game any QB has had against our defence since, funnily enough, Steve McNair, back in week five.

This weather (and the Titans’ top ten defensive unit) put a screeching halt on Tom Brady though, as on his 43 total touches, only 15 of them made us more likely to score. The one play touchdown in the first quarter pulls his EPA/Play all the way up to 0.02, but the real star on our offence was once again Antowain Smith, who on 16 touches had a success rate of 44 percent, which is not good but at least better than Tom’s today.

There has been a lot of one possession wins this season, which always require a bit of luck, but our offensive ineptitude in this game leads us to lose the total EPA battle in a football game for the first time since the ugly loss against Washington that began this saga. That means that if football were a completely fair game, the Titans would’ve beaten us, even including the Drew Bennett drop.

This is a Titans team that many thought we were going to defeat easily. We did not come anywhere close to doing that, but football is not one hundred percent fair though. We all knew this going in, and that allows us to move on, and forces me to confront the second reason this playoff game is not remembered.

This game was played on a Saturday, at 8:30. The next afternoon, Sunday at 1 PM, Peyton Manning and Trent Green burn the football world to the ground with the only playoff game in NFL history (this still holds in 2025) featuring no punts. None from either team. The Colts end up having the ball last, so Indy ends up winning, which sets up an AFC Championship rematch of our week 13 game, this time in our stadium.

The last time we played the Colts, things got ugly. We shot out to a 31-10 lead, and then lost the whole thing within ten minutes. I sincerely believe that loss pissed Peyton Manning off, a lot, because since then, Peyton is basically getting his 2004 started early, with an absurd 0.366 EPA/Play (before the 2004 rule changes) in his 208 total touches since then, including an eye watering 0.981 EPA/Play, not punting in either of his two playoff starts so far.

I have no idea how we’re coming in as favourites against this. I know we’re playing at home, have won 13 games in a row, and Peyton has a reputation for being poor in the cold, but my gosh, he’s just played the best two game stretch of football for any QB in at least the play tracking era, probably ever (playoffs or otherwise).

Now you know what I mean when I was talking about the difference between a loss vs Tennessee and a win vs Tennessee. With a loss, this team would’ve become the guys that were frauds all along, who won 12 in a row because of immense one possession game luck. Instead, we are now four point favourites in the AFC Championship game against quite probably the hottest QB in NFL history.

For my entire experience writing about the 2003 AFC, which is my favourite conference of all time, and everybody knows that, I have boycotted talking about the championship game. I’ve simply had nothing to say about it except for the obvious, that Bill Belichick’s defence played so well that the NFL changed the rules to make it so that no defence could ever play this well again, but now that I’m covering the 2003 Patriots, I have to go a bit deeper. There is more to it than that.

When I watch this game, I’m reminded of the story that I’ve heard Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks tell about the 1990 Super Bowl against the Buffalo Bills. Bill Belichick (DC of the Giants at the time) told both his highly respected LBs that in order to play good defence, Thurman Thomas had to rush for at least 100 yards, to bait the Bills into rushing too much, because (in modern parlance) passing > rushing.

Because of the unique nature of this game, I’m going to begin at the end. Look at the offensive production breakdown that we allow the Indianapolis Colts to have in this game:

0.39 EPA/Play as a team rushing offence is a 99th percentile game. It’s almost impossible to have a better day as a rushing offence than we allow the Colts to have in this AFC Championship game, and yet, this game is still remembered as Bill Belichick’s finest hour, because he gets it. He understands how NFL offence is played. Many NFL coaches do not understand this simple reality, but Bill Belichick always did, and always will.

No matter how good a team’s rushing offence is, they cannot beat you if their pass game is completely clamped up.

This is the defensive philosophy that got Bill’s team the win in the 1990 Super Bowl, against a Buffalo Bills offence that seemed overwhelming. It’s the defensive philosophy that gets Bill’s team the win in this 2003 AFC Championship game, despite a Colts offence that would have been overwhelming to any team with a mere mortal as their coach.

To implement this philosophy, the 2003 AFC Championship features two strokes of absolute genius. First is to shift defensive personnel as if it’s 2024, coming out in a 3-3-5 nickel for basically the entire game.

Second, with the extra DBs on the field, Bill also tells his players to go ahead and commit penalties, as long as those penalties occur before the ball is thrown. Firstly, the referees are not going to call it on every single play, so you will get away with it the majority of the time, and secondly, anything to prevent the Indianapolis passing attack from getting into rhythm is exactly what the Patriots need to do. Five yard penalties will not hurt that badly compared to what Peyton Manning can do through the air.

This is the strategy for the 2003 AFC Championship game. Ignore Edgerrin James completely, come out in 3-3-5 (a novel concept for 2003) for basically all of the game, and if you’re a DB, commit every illegal contact and holding penalty that you can, because we know the referees are not going to call them all, and as it turns out, they’re basically going to let it all go, as there are only seven penalties in this game across both teams.

I have to say, this is genius. It is absolute genius. There are not many places in history where the public narrative has things exactly correct, but this is one of those few. The 2003 AFC Championship game is Bill Belichick’s finest hour, one of the best (perhaps the very best) examples of a game plan winning a football game by itself that you will find in the history of the NFL.

With 2025 hindsight, a lot of this strategy sounds standard. There’s nothing novel these days about coming out in the nickel way more than half the time, simply allowing yourself to get killed by the run, or taking advantage of referees too chicken to throw the flag. All three of these practices are standard these days, but in 2003, this is revolutionary stuff.

It’s for all these reasons that this clip is my favourite play of this whole game. There’s nothing special about it. It’s just a simple third down rep, but it shows everything that’s special about this game. The Patriots are small, in a 3-3-5 defensive alignment. Ty Law in press coverage rides Marvin Harrison way too long, daring the referee to call the penalty, and then passes him off to Rodney Harrison, who flagrantly grabs the jersey, daring the referee to call the penalty.

There is no flag on this play, but there are two very obvious penalties committed, and this is the genius of Bill’s strategy. Even the greatness of Marvin Harrison cannot find a way to create any separation at all against this. With no referees coming to anybody’s aid, and no mismatches because the Patriots are playing so small, there is just nothing the Colts can do.

This 2003 AFC Championship is the game that forever ended the idea of letting the players play in the NFL, because it showed everybody that if you take the idea of letting the players play to its logical extreme, passing offence is not possible.

Did this make a mockery of the game? Yes it did, but no more a mockery than Patrick Mahomes’ constant flopping makes in 2025. Taking advantage of referees who are more scared to be chastised by the league office than scared to get the call incorrect is part of the game. It’s part of any game. We can argue about whether it should be part of any game, but it is. To not take advantage of that fact is to put yourself at a disadvantage.

This is what Bill Belichick is good at. Taking rules that are not written, not even unwritten (an unwritten rule at least implies some understanding exists beforehand), and bending even those to the advantage of his team. Our offence was really bad in this game (negative EPA again), and what people forget is that our defence was not that good either (the Colts converted 21 of their 30 first downs into another first down in this game), but Bill Belichick won this game for us.

If you think Bill is the GOAT of NFL coaches, it’s difficult not to also believe that this is the best coached NFL game of all time. We win it 24-14, and the league sharpens up its rules immediately so that no football game can ever be won in this way ever again, and a new offensive era is born. Bill Belichick’s game plan in this game is the reason for that, so if you’re one of the many that hate the way the game is hopelessly slanted towards offence these days, blame Bill, and blame this AFC Championship game.

I colloquially call this rule sharpening the ‘2004 rule changes,’ but they actually come into force immediately, as after 16 penalties combined in the AFC and NFC Championship games, there are 20 in the Super Bowl alone, but let’s take a step back for a minute to admire all the progress we’ve made.

When this winning streak began, we were champions, but fluky champions. Unmemorable champions, in the mold of the 2011 New York Giants. We were coming off a 2002 season that was an absolute disaster, seeing us as the only team since the NFL went to 12 playoff teams to win the Super Bowl, but miss the playoffs the next year, without a change at the QB position.

We had just lost in dominating fashion against the luckless 5-11 Washington Redskins, a game in which a RB named Trung Canidate put up six yards per carry on us. The questions were loud about what exactly the Patriots were, what exactly Tom Brady was, what exactly Bill Belichick was. Are team, QB, and coach all just a big fish in a very small 2001 pond? Or is this a real team to worry about in the AFC moving forward?

At the beginning of this winning streak, nobody knew the answers to these questions, but now, our winning streak is going to come to an end one way or another. Either we lose the Super Bowl, or ride into the sunset winners of 15 straight, and champions again.

There is only one thing standing between us and that ultimate goal. The 2003 Carolina Panthers.

Never say this about a team that’s just won three playoff games in a row, but these Panthers are a soft touch. There’s no other way to say it. The 2003 NFC is weak anyways, and could not have produced a team as good as either the Titans or the Colts, even had their best team won every game, but their best team did not win every game. Their best team remaining lost to the Carolina Panthers, in two consecutive rounds.

The 2003 Carolina Panthers are like when your grandfather buys you the knock off version of the New England Patriots for Christmas, and tries to spin to you that it’s just as good as the real thing. Just like us, the Panthers are a poor offensive team, still living due to their defence, but unlike our defence that would lead the league in a lot of seasons, theirs ranks just tenth.

While our offence can at least do something some of the time, the Panthers’ offence is flat out bad. Despite two All-Pro receivers in Muhsin Muhammad and Steve Smith, this team comes into the Super Bowl with a negative EPA/Play passing offence, a negative EPA/Play rushing offence, and they rank 24th in the NFL in offensive success rate, meaning none of this is a fluke.

There are teams like us that have bad offence, for a team that’s won 14 games in a row, but approximately league average offence when removing it from this context, and then there are teams like the 2003 Carolina Panthers, that are legitimately bad at offence. They are the knock off version of what we are, and in my opinion, we ought to mop the floor with them, like we did with the Colts last week. As such, we come into this game as weighty seven point favourites, which for the Super Bowl is quite extreme.

It’s tough to even conceptualise the 2003 Super Bowl as part of the 2003 season, or this 2003 team, because this one game is played under a completely different set of rules than the rest. It’s much more reminiscent of 2004 and onwards football, which means that I believe this 2003 Super Bowl marks a clear delineation between what the 2001-2003 Patriots were, and what we’re going to become in the next 15 years.

Looking back on it, the 2003 AFC Championship game truly was the end of an era, both for the New England Patriots and for the NFL as a whole. Bill Belichick in that game broke the NFL so badly that it could never go back to the way it had been before, and that includes his team. In specific, it pertains to his quarterback.

It’s not talked about enough how Tom Brady’s career is immensely benefited (some would say saved) by the 2004 rule changes, as they suit his playing style perfectly. He’s not the only one (Drew Brees also benefits from them massively), but I would say he’s the biggest offender of a QB who was not notable before the rule changes, but is very notable now.

As such, he plays like the Tom Brady we know and love in this 2003 Super Bowl, which because it’s so distant from what this team and this league have been for the whole season, I feel little need to cover. In short, the Tom Brady that everybody remembers begins today, as he generates 0.37 EPA/Play against a good defence, which makes this one of the better Super Bowl QB games ever.

Out of a team that’s been hampered by our offence all year long, this is an extremely out of character performance. Our defence that’s been carrying us for most of the regular season and all of the playoffs comes up very small, allowing 0.09 EPA/Play to a Panther offence that is legitimately quite bad, and our special teams units come up very small too, as Adam Vinatieri misses two field goal attempts, and we lose the special teams EPA battle by 7.78 points, our worst ST performance of the entire season, but despite all this, we still have no real trouble sweeping the Carolina Panthers to the side, because under the new rules, we suddenly have one of the league’s top QBs on our side.

Sometimes that truly is all it takes.

This game oftentimes gets lumped in as some kind of clutch performance, but look at the WP graph here:

We just eat the Panthers’ lunch all game long. This game looks a lot like when we played the Houston Texans, as despite being the better team by an immense margin and nothing happening in this game to dispute that fact, we somehow manage to allow this team to score a couple of unanswered TDs on us in the fourth to spring a lead out of nowhere, but even facing a fourth quarter deficit, that deficit was only 22-21, and circumstances dictate that even then, our estimated WP never falls below 50 percent, because now that we’re in the new rules era, it’s not like it was for Steve McNair just a couple weeks ago. A lead of a FG or less in the fourth quarter is nothing now.

There was one second half drive in this entire game where the Panthers had a chance to take the lead, and to their credit, they took the lead on it, but that does not by itself mean that they belonged on the same field with us. This game was domination, but not domination by Belichick and the defence, like it’s been all season. This game is domination out of Tom Brady and the offence. A sign of things to come.

As the clock strikes zeroes, Adam Vinatieri does not let the two misses from earlier in the game get to him, as he nails a 41 yarder to secure our 15th win in a row, our second Super Bowl championship in three seasons, and definitively answer all the questions.

What are the New England Patriots?

We are the NFL’s next dynasty.

If we count the beginning of the 2004 season, this 15 game win streak eventually balloons to 21 wins in a row, multiple games clear of the second longest streak of 19 games, also accomplished over multiple seasons, but I don’t like to do that. To me, winning streaks are about dominance within one season, by one cohesive roster, and what better words are there to describe the 2003 New England Patriots than to call us a cohesive roster?

This team has accomplished great things. You just watched us accomplish them all, but by and large, we accomplished those things without any outstanding individual players. Despite our 14-2 record, this team featured just three Pro Bowlers, although I’ll grant you that they are three fantastic individual players: Ty Law, Richard Seymour, and Willie McGinest. Even with all the winning likely biasing the voting in our favour, three measly spots on AFC’s Pro Bowl roster is all we managed. The 7-9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers had more Pro Bowl players than we did.

Does this come down to our team being primarily driven by defence, with no Pro Bowl calibre offensive players, and fans being generally poor at voting for defensive players? A little bit, but I think more than that, it epitomises the character of this team. The 2003 Patriots were not a place that any individual was going to be able to shine, the way he would on another team, but we were a place where everybody played for each other, did their jobs, and won football games.

Be this Pro Bowler Richard Seymour making big play after big play as a member of the special teams unit, the crucial fourth down stop in Indianapolis being made by (of all people on this defence) big Ted Washington, or Drew Bennett dropping the football primarily due to the incoming footsteps of backup DB (for now) Asante Samuel, everybody was in the right place at the right time, and helped us to win.

In a game like the Super Bowl, where both the defence and special teams were really struggling, the offence stepped up. In a game like in the playoffs against the Titans, where both the offence and special teams were really struggling, the defence stepped up. In a game like the regular season game against Miami, where both the offence and defence were struggling, Richard Seymour blocked a FG on special teams to save the day.

We won 15 games in a row based upon the contributions of everybody, and I think that more than anything else is the legacy of the 2003 New England Patriots.

In closing, I would like to share one final thought, and it’s that the specifics of these Patriots teams are woefully buried under both the hate and love for Tom Brady. I think this does a great disservice to what these teams actually were, which are very fun stories in themselves. The story of the 2003 Patriots has very little to do with our QB, and that’s okay. I just ask that we not make this a comments section about Tom Brady please.

To do so would be completely antithetical to what I interpret the 2003 Patriots to be all about, which is a story of men coming together as a unit, even without the talent of some other teams in the league, but winning based upon our united strength making us far greater than the sum of our parts. Football is a team game, and to me, no stretch of football embodies that more than these 15 wins in a row.

That deserves to be remembered.

Thanks so much for reading.