There are a lot of teams in the league right now that seem to be way, way ahead of the pats.
I was watching some Red Zone today and there's just such a huge difference in what these other teams have to work with on offense.
Agreed. I was actually going to come on here and point out another thing I noticed.
A lot of these teams have SPEED. Not just on offense, but defense too. They've got LBs and even D-Lineman who can cover, tackle someone even while they are running and secure the edges.
In the Niners-Pats game too, the Niners didn't even do anything that special. They ran outside and beat all our LBs to the outside and outran them. Didn't matter if we tried to cover the edge, they'd just outrun us all game long and of course they crushed us with that. And on defense, our RBs had some trouble because the Niners defense, even with all the injuries have guys that can run.
Meanwhile, the Pats are SLOW lol. This was honestly true even last season despite our defense being historically good through the first 8 games. Mobile QBs and teams that can run just kill us and this has been true even over the last 2-3 years. Of course, we had Brady and a great offense ourselves to often overcome that but that's no longer the case.
I think the biggest problem right now though is, we don't really have a "QB of the future". I don't think they consider Stidham that and who knows if Cam's even here next season. I could live with going say, 7-9 but taking strides with a young QB. But right now they just seem kind of stuck in the middle. Meanwhile there are a lot of up and coming teams with talent AND QBs to build with, so even if those teams happen to go like 8-8 or 9-7 and sneak into the playoffs they are still in a great spot.