Kerry J. Byrne must be bored. When the website you work for, coldhardfootballfacts.com, has little in the way of facts to write about, why not start slamming one of the best coaches in the game today. The piece I'm referring to, linked by our industrious Marima, got my blood boiling. Our very own NESilver said it best:
The minute I saw that it said, "remove your head from your rectum" on that Byrne piece, I stopped reading it. It makes me laugh when these people think they know how to run a football team better than Bill Belichick does.
I should've taken the above advice and stopped reading, but like a highway gawker drawn to a car wreck, I had to continue on. Byrne is cut from the same cloth as our illustrious friend and Boston Globe "writer", Dan Shaughnessy. That is the negativity cloth, the one that instructs writers who flunked Journalism 101 in college, to simply take the opposite side to appear "brainy". Of course, Kerry, you know something we don't.
The Premise of his whole vomitous mess is this: the Patriots haven't won a Super Bowl in 3 years, hence they're dog meat. Let's see: in 2006, they lost a squeaker to the Colts in the AFCCG, 2007 they made it to the Super Bowl and were one play away from history, and in 2008 they persevered through a ridiculous number of injuries to narrowly miss a division championship. If my math is right, that's 2 trips to the AFCCG, one resulting in a Super Bowl berth, and one narrow miss. Not bad, huh Kerry?
Sure, a major premise of Byrne's arguement is defenses win championships. I agree. And that's exactly why Belichick and Pioli went to town in the 2008 draft and 5 out of 7 draft picks were defensive. Unfortunately, some of them went down during the season so you had backups to backups. Did you figure that out yet? Kerry? Are you listening? The defensive players were there, they were just spending most of the time in the trainer's facilities. Dolt.
Fans, "pundits" and apparently even your own jet-setting magazine cover-boy quarterback wanted - no, they demanded! - a few toys to play with on offense.
Yeah, Brady whined to Belichick and Pioli. He threw a hissy fit after the 2006 AFCCG loss and forced a coach and a VP of player personnel - two men with some serious hardware on their fingers - to get more toys. I'm pretty sure if Bill and Scott thought they needed to strengthen the defense, they would've. These are guys who built this team from the ground up. It may be a stretch, but I think they're smarter than you...Kerry. No, I KNOW they're smarter. Dolt times two. Mostly because hindsight is 20/20 and it's easy.
The most unfortunate thing, Kerry, is that you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. With a simple Google, I came up with this gem, Putting the Pats '07 Season in perspective."
2007 Patriots were, inarguably, the single most dominant team of the Super Bowl Era, and, arguably (as you'll see below), the single most dominant team in the history of professional football (a fact which makes their Super Bowl defeat all the more shocking
Single most dominant team in the history of professional football. Does that sound like a coach who has his head up his rectum?