(Editor’s Note: this article is not intended to be taken seriously, just like anyone making the argument that the dynasty is dead in real life)
20-13.
Read it and weep. That’s your 28-3 now, New England. The knockout punch that your historically successful team that will return almost every starter will tap out on, hit the mat, and never recover from.
The Patriots dynasty is officially dead after failing to reach the Super Bowl for a fourth consecutive year in a row, and the Tennessee Titans and the fourteen (14) non-garbage-time points they punched in the end zone proves it. There’s just no way you can call yourself a dynasty when you make the playoffs for 11 straight seasons and then fail to advance to your fourth consecutive Super Bowl and your fifth in the last 6 years.
After 19 winning seasons, 13 AFC Championship Game appearances, 9 AFC Championship Game victories, 9 Super Bowl appearances, and 6 Super Bowl victories, this year’s 12-4 regular season campaign that ended merely in being one of the 12 teams to play in the playoffs obviously means this team is washed. Period, end of story. Your track record of literally unprecedented success and ability to navigate any rule change the league throws at you despite losing multiple first-round picks means nothing, because a track record of nearly flawless roster and salary cap management for two decades is obviously unsustainable. You can’t do it for another year! Nobody, not even Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft, and Nick Caserio, can properly manage a team for over 20 years! It’s totally not repeatable!
Your offensive coordinator is almost certainly heading to a coach’s dream job with the Cleveland Browns, where he’ll get to draw up plays for rising, proven, blue-chip stars like Baker Mayfield, Odell Beckham Jr, and Jarvis Landry, and the Patriots offensive system is doomed to fail without Josh McDaniels telling Brady whether to press X, Y, Circle, or Square to throw the ball. Tom Brady can’t run the system if Josh McDaniels takes it with him!
About Tom Brady...oh, we’re going there. Dynasties don’t die if the best player in NFL history is still the best player in NFL history, folks.
Tom Brady being 42 years old and dealing with a duct-tape-and-popsicle-sticks receiving corps and backup offensive linemen and elbow and foot injuries is no excuse to not be able to out-gunsling Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes. 2019 TB12 is only good enough to throw for the 7th-most passing yards in the NFL, the 13th-most passing touchdowns, the 8th-best interception ratio, and a pathetic 3 rushing touchdowns. Weak. Just absolutely the cliff type stuff that’ll doom you against superior competition and end a dynasty. Tom, it’s been fun, but you gotta hang ‘em up after that. You obviously don’t have the secret to success anymore. If Bill Belichick had a clue, he would’ve signed Kirk Cousins when he had the chance.
And about that team that put New England’s dynasty in the ground, the Titans ended our long national nightmare of Patriots domination the old fashioned way - with homegrown talent put together by longtime Titans GM Jon Robinson (four years with the Titans). Stud coaching from Mike Vrabel (two years with the Titans) and Dean Pees (two years). A veteran Tennessee Titans secondary corps with lockdown talents like Logan Ryan (three years) and Malcolm Butler (two years) and to top it all off, a versatile OFFENSIVE WEAPON like Dion Lewis (two years). You know how you get that edge? Championship DNA, and that’s what they have in spades at the Titans organization, unlike whatever fatal loser virus New England has now.
Which they could do because Bill Belichick has obviously lost his fastball! All Bill accomplished this season was building a defense that ranked best in the entire NFL in points allowed and give Tom Brady the chance to work with Josh Gordon, Antonio Brown, Demaryius Thomas, a first-round rookie wide receiver, Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Phillip Dorsett, Maurice Harris, Bruce Ellington, Brandon Bolden, and Mohamed Sanu. Does that sound like a man who knows how to effectively manage a team to you? Nope. He’s washed. There’s not a single proven player in that entire group! Meanwhile the best pass-rusher on this defense only had seven sacks. Seven. Where’s the Von Miller or Khalil Mack on this defense? Nowhere. Does that sound like a coach who still knows how to win to you?
And Stephon Gilmore... enjoy it if he wins Defensive Player of the Year, because there’s clearly no way for him to improve from there. Once you get to the top, the only place to go is down. Everybody knows this, except the homer fans who are too scared to admit it.
Back to the offense, what good is having 15 running backs on your team if they can’t even score on the goal line? How does it help a team to only be able to move the chains all the way down the field, game after game, if they can’t be prime Adrian Peterson and punch it in? The 2019 Patriots only scored 17 rushing touchdowns this year, and that’s MILES behind the Super Bowl favorite Baltimore Ravens’ 21 rushing scores. No way the Patriots can hang with those big dogs anymore.
It’s dead. Over. Just like it was in 2017, and 2013, and ESPECIALLY 2015, when your team struggled to win a lowly spot in the AFC Championship Game and got mercilessly barbecued as your rejuvenated, 40-is-the-new-25 arch-nemesis Peyton Manning slung the ball all over the yard complete with his trademark tight spirals and cannon arm and sent your washed, ineffective quarterback back to the depths of Loserdom.
Take your precious dynasty and put it in one of those picture frames every sorority girl has in college that says “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”.
And then cry because it’s OVER.
(Obviously this is not how it works with any of the other 30 teams in the National Football League that will suffer playoff defeats this season and every other season and not win the Super Bowl, because reasons.)