You don’t have to go very far back to find the New England Patriots’ most recent playoffs road conquest. You just have to actually, you know, put in the work to find it, which apparently is something Bart Scott either is incapable and/or unwilling to do.
The former New York Jets and Baltimore Ravens linebacker has carved out a pretty decent post-playing career as a talking head. Most notably, Scott was part of a three-person team tabbed to replace Mike Francesa at WFAN when the longtime host left in 2017, and more recently, Scott has been doing work on FOX Sports 1.
Which leads us to Monday morning.
Scott is among the many already rushing to dump on the Patriots following their Sunday night loss to the Houston Texans. After the loss, New England now finds itself needing help from the Baltimore Ravens in order to secure the No. 1 seed in the AFC, as Baltimore usurped New England for the top spot in Week 13. The Patriots are a historically dominant team at Gillette Stadium with Tom Brady under center and Bill Belichick roaming the sidelines, and there’s no shortage of folks who will be betting against the Patriots if they have to go on the road in January.
Count Scott among that group.
“Their path to the Super Bowl, especially — we know what it is if they don’t host throughout — they’ve never made a Super Bowl when they had to go on the road at any point,” Scott confidently proclaimed Monday morning on FS1’s “First Things First.”
The Patriots, under Brady and Belichick, have been to the Super Bowl nine times. In three of those nine seasons, the Patriots won on the road in the playoffs: 2001, 2003 and 2018. That’s right, literally less than a year ago, New England went into Kansas City for the AFC Championship Game and beat the high-powered Chiefs on the way to its fifth title.
In case you missed it, which perhaps Scott may have:
Would the Patriots be better-suited having home-field advantage throughout the playoffs? Of course. Any team in the NFL falls into that category. But if there’s any team that has proved it’s capable of pulling out a big win on the road in the playoffs, it’s Belichick, Brady and Co. Hopefully someone can send along the message to Scott.
