Honestly, the Patriots would be much better off right now if they had lost to the Saints but Mayo, Talib, Amendola etc were healthy.
Yes, agreed.
Obviously the fact that we're going to lose some games because of this irks me. But another thing that irks me is that when the talking heads on TV/radio look back on this season it will all be about how "the Pats didn't find enough weapons for Brady", when it is clear that the rookies have been coming along, and the bigger issue is (or will be going forward) key injuries on the D.
Obviously we don't know how the season is going to play out, so it's a bit foolish to predict what the storylines will be when it's all over.
That said, I think that the two storylines SHOULD be:
1) Recognizing how amazing it is that the team managed to succeed as much as it did this year despite all of the injuries and everything else that went wrong.
2) Wondering what could have been if the team had managed to surround Brady with better weapons, if Gronk's injury situation had been managed a bit better (by the player and the team), if Hernandez hadn't turned out to be a murderer, and so many awful injuries hadn't afflicted the defense.
Despite everything, the Pats are still a pretty good team. Even with all of these injuries, I think they're on their way to winning at least 10 or 11 games, though who knows what they'll do in the playoffs.
If you had this team with both TEs, Welker, and decent luck as far as injuries go . . . man. That team might be the best in the league. Perhaps even without Welker.
In other words, I think we'll look back on this Pats team with some fondness as a group that managed a lot considering everything that went against them. But more than anything I think the feeling about this year will be to question what might have been. I know it's incredibly early in the season to be saying that, especially considering that the team is 5-1, but so much has gone wrong already. The team is a shell of what it might have been.
