The New England Patriots are two wins away from claiming the sixth Super Bowl championship of the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era.
After beginning the season as overwhelming Super Bowl favorites, the Patriots lost Julian Edelman to a torn ACL and were tasked with fixing a porous defense in order to secure the AFC’s No. 1 seed.
And while the Pats did all of that, Nick Wright believes everything has “set up perfectly” for them, in large part to luck.
Wright discussed how New England’s road to the Lombardi Trophy has been aided by the strange 2017 NFL season on Tuesday’s edition of FS1’s “First Things First.” While he did give the Patriots some credit, Wright appeared to more or less be testing a theory to discredit Brady and Belichick’s sixth championship.
“Throughout the season, once they dealt with the Julian Edelman injury in the preseason, throughout the season they have been very fortunate as far as key players being injured, more fortunate than we’ve seen from New England in recent years,” Wright said. “They’ve also been fortunate as far as injuries other teams have suffered. We mentioned Ryan Shazier, but Carson Wentz the guy who was probably going to win MVP on the other side of the bracket, Aaron Rodgers, now they see Drew Brees getting knocked out of the playoffs. And their path to winning their sixth Super Bowl goes through Marcus Mariota, Blake Bortles and either Case Keenum or Nick Foles.
“Could the Jaguars win this game? Sure. Everything has set up perfectly for New England. Part of that is their own doing. By getting the one seed they get to play Marcus Mariota. And they earned that. Part of that has to do with their maintenance, maybe it’s their pliability as far as why their guys have been healthy, I don’t know. But the Pats are in a better position now to be heavy Super Bowl favorites than any year I can remember since the undefeated season because of what’s happened around them in the league, and I know this past weekend was about defense, but because of the other quarterbacks left standing.”
It certainly sounds like Wright is planning an onslaught to delegitimize another Patriots Super Bowl win.
