Tom Brady’s reign over the AFC is finally coming to an end.
The Patriots’ 42-year-old quarterback is still playing at a high level, and there is no telling when he’ll eventually decide to hang it up. But with emerging young talent in the AFC, his time atop the conference is over.
I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, the Patriots’ 10-3 record is a result of a schedule full of dumpster fire teams. We love to talk about the Dallas Cowboys’ record against teams with winning records, but the Patriots are 2-3 in such games and haven’t won a game this season when their opponents score more than 20 points.
The Patriots will ride their strong defense and horrible schedule into the playoffs again, but come playoff time the young star quarterbacks in the AFC will be too much for this team.
The Patriots’ three losses have come at the hands of Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Houston’s Deshaun Watson. Assuming New England runs into one of these guys in the playoffs, the result will be the same.
I know better than to completely write them off, but New England’s offense as currently constructed simply can’t keep up with the likes of Baltimore and Kansas City. If the team hopes to do any damage in the postseason, its defense will have to shoulder the load.
This season isn’t an outlier. Without a top defense, the Patriots can’t cut it anymore with Tom Brady at the helm moving forward. Sure they have the talent to make the Dolphins and Jets look silly twice each year, but the days of moseying through the AFC playoffs are over.
Any questions about Jackson have been answered in his second season. At 22 years old, the ceiling to his talent is seemingly nonexistent. The only thing that has kept Mahomes from another MVP-caliber season this year was a knee injury that cost him a few weeks, and it took the Patriots an overtime period to beat his Chiefs last season in the AFC championship.
These two — as well as Watson if they can get him some help in Houston — have the makings of the type of dominance Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger once had in the AFC. Barring something drastic, the next generation of stars is here.
No one will ever have the kind of success that Brady has had over the last two decades, but the days of the AFC running through New England are over thanks to this group of young stars. This is the first time in a long time I would honestly be surprised to see the Patriots advance to the Super Bowl.
