The Patriots overcame all obstacles last season to win their sixth Super Bowl title in franchise history.
They’ll be faced with similar challenges again in 2019, but Nick Wright isn’t ready to write off New England’s championship hopes despite some skepticism regarding the team’s current roster.
“Roster-wise, they have a change at left tackle and they have questions at the wide receiver corps — those are the headlines,” Wright said on Monday’s episode of “First Things First” on FS1. “That is exactly what the headlines were last season. Right?”
Pretty much.
“So it would be foolish of me to say that they can’t overcome these issues when last year Brady had the worst year he’s had in at least five years, threw the most picks he had thrown in almost a decade, they had questions at wide receiver all year long, they had a losing record on the road — all these red flags — and they won the damn Super Bowl,” Wright said. “By the end of the year, they were right there, if not for the crazy Miami finish, they somehow end with the No. 1 seed last year, which would have been bananas. They still got a bye even though they were 3-5 on the road. And they found a way to go into Kansas City and have a late, fourth-quarter comeback and then win that game in overtime.
“So I do think there are real roster questions, like there were last year, and I think not having (Rob Gronkowski) as a blocker and as a big-play, big-moment guy makes you worse than if he’s on the team. But are they the favorites in the AFC? They’re certainly right there, because at this point the history and the repeated success is unquestionable.”
Wright must have learned from Max Kellerman’s mistake.
Sunday marked the three-year anniversary of Kellerman declaring on “First Take” that Brady would fall off a proverbial “cliff” in short order, and Twitter reacted accordingly, well aware of the two Super Bowl titles the Patriots have won since the ESPN talking head’s ill-advised declaration.
It’s no wonder Wright is playing it safe when it comes to predicting New England’s downfall. Kellerman, after all, was dubbed the Patriots’ unofficial “hater of the year” last season while Brady and Co. continued to make him eat his words.
