Why Tom Brady's Deflategate ban may well help the New England Patriots
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Version 0 of 1. Roger Goodell’s hammer of virtue came down on Tom Brady and the Patriots on Monday, suspending the star quarterback for four games and stripping the team of two draft picks and $1m for the great sports crime of under-inflated footballs. While Brady’s “legacy” will be debated for months or even years, let’s take a break from all of that to talk about actual football and how the suspension will impact the 2015 season. You know, those game things that are played in the fall between all the “scandals” and investigations? Those are fun, right? Yeah. The Patriots are going to be awful ... ly good still The defending Super Bowl champs will be without their superstar quarterback for the first four games of the season, but it’s not going to hurt them much on the field. Sorry. Related: Tom Brady knew – and now his legacy is irreparably tainted The Patriots open the season with the Steelers. Pittsburgh’s defense traditionally destroys quarterbacks making their first career starts. But the current Steeler defense is more of a shower curtain than a steel curtain and several of the defenders Jimmy Garoppolo will face on the first Thursday night in September will also be making their first career starts. Not only is Pittsburgh’s defense in disarray, but the Steelers will be on the road and playing without the suspended Le’Veon Bell. All of this is why Vegas still has the Patriots as a heavy favorite in the opener. Week 2 sends the Patriots to Buffalo. Rex Ryan probably has grand plans about sending a message to the league in that game that the AFC East is no longer run by the Patriots. But Ryan had those same grand plans with the Jets and got himself fired (admittedly with a few successes against the Patriots on the way). Knocking the Patriots off their perch hasn’t been Ryan’s strong suit. The Bills may – may – be on the upswing, but the Garoppolo Patriots will still be favored. Week 3 the Patriots get the Jaguars at home. Here’s my in-depth analysis of that match-up: the Jacksonville Jaguars are bad at American football and will lose to the New England Patriots, who are good at American football. Week 4 is a bye (extra practice time for Jimmy G!) and Week 5 – Brady’s final suspension week – is on the road against the Cowboys. We’ll call that game a toss up. The best bet is that the Patriots get through the Brady suspension at 3-1, maybe even 4-0. At worst, they’ll go 2-2 and still be in position to win their lousy division for the 12th time in the last 13 years, and do it by a large margin. Don’t waste your time wishing that a slow start without Brady will do them in. Five times the Patriots have opened a season 2-2 or worse in the Brady-Belichick era and three of those times they won the Super Bowl. A slow start doesn’t hurt this franchise. It’s when they open 18-0 that they have problems. Related: Deflategate: Tom Brady banned for four games, Patriots lose first-round pick The Dolphins, Bills and Jets think they’re something now, but are not Every good-hearted football fan outside of New England wants to see the Patriots fall flat on their face. Either you hate them for being no-good, very bad, lying cheaters who are destroying the credibility of America’s greatest institution, the NFL, and teaching the impressionable youth to under-inflate things ... or, like more rational people, you’re just bored with seeing the same team win its division and make the playoffs year after year after year. While the Patriots won’t have Tom Brady for four games, the Dolphins, Bills and Jets won’t have Tom Brady – or anyone remotely close to his league – for all 16 games again. You could create a Frankenquarterback out of the best parts of Ryan Tannehill, Matt Cassel, EJ Manuel, Geno Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Bryce Petty and Brady would still be able to defeat that guy’s team twice a year. Yet New England’s AFC East foes are now feeling pretty good about their chances this year. Column: Tom Brady suspension makes Rex Ryan's Buffalo Bills the new favorite to win AFC East http://t.co/5DCo7fMv95 pic.twitter.com/EhDjAtyIXB With Tom Brady suspended four games, are the #Dolphins the new favorites in the AFC East? http://t.co/gbi9hbVIZt Hey, good for them. These teams need to have hope – and the Jets and Bills aren’t as bad as they once were with New York in particular having a good draft this year. But having hope is the best shot they’ve got short of finding a star quarterback that makes them legitimate threats to win something. Five weeks off will actually help Tom Brady Brady will turn 38 in August. He is a nearly-middle-aged man playing a young man’s game. He doesn’t take a lot of hits because the Patriots have a good line (and the NFL long ago made it clear that hitting a quarterback of Brady’s caliber results in hefty fines), but the hits he does take have to hurt a lot more than they did when he was young. Brady may be able to soften footballs, but he can’t soften the reality of aging: a 38 year-old quarterback will be beaten down at the end of the season. John Elway is the only quarterback in history to win a Super Bowl at that age, and his team relied on the running game late in Elway’s career. The Patriots offense relies on Brady. He simply can’t have much left in the tank. But Roger Goodell just let him conserve four games worth of fuel. Brady will take the field on 18 October in Indianapolis feeling as fresh as a new pair of Uggs. He’ll use his time away to dance awkwardly in Brazil, plunge down scary waterslides and go on a Pretty Woman-style shopping spree for his next jaunty Kentucky Derby outfit. This is a free vacation in beautiful September weather for a wealthy man who is married to a supermodel. He will be rested and relaxed by the time he has to put a fully-inflated ball in his hands again. There are worse punishments. Brady might be rusty for a game, but then he’ll hit his stride in Weeks 7 and 8 at home against the Dolphins and Jets, using those games to reestablish New England’s hold on the AFC East, and go on as usual from there - his body free from an entire month of abuse. Shaquille O’Neal used to have to delay surgeries on purpose to skip parts of the regular season so his old body could be fresh for the postseason. The NFL just did Brady that favor for free. The NFL did the Patriots a favor The Patriots are a team that has been honored and applauded by the football media for a generation. Yet now they can easily take on their favorite “us against the world” stance while trying to defend a Super Bowl title. Brady will be rested for a playoff push and beyond. The Patriots will get to develop their quarterback of the future in Garoppolo for four regular season games ... or show him off to other teams for a deal that gets back their lost draft picks and more. Sure, that million dollar fine is the “largest in NFL history,” but a million dollars to an NFL team is nothing. The team will make that back and more from additional merchandise sales to Patriots fans who are circling the wagons for their beloved team. As depressing as it may be, the Patriots come out of all of this better than they were before. Thanks a lot, Goodell, you messed up again. Your streak continues. |