Ringer Names ‘Only Enemy’ That Could Make Patriots Miss NFL Playoffs

The New England Patriots have a lot of critics breathing in their neck, but they still play the best football. If you ask Danny Heifetz from The Ringer, he will say that the Patriots have one major enemy.

Father Time. According to Heifetz, this s the only enemy that may prevent the Patriots from making the postseason.

“Every team that made the playoffs last year has their eyes on the Super Bowl this season. On the eve of the NFL season, it’s time to burst their playoff bubbles. At least four teams that made the playoffs the previous season have fallen out the next in each year of the past decade. Both of the past two years saw a higher turnover rate, with eight teams that did not return to the postseason in 2017 and seven teams not returning last year. Let’s run through last year’s playoff teams in each conference, in descending order of how likely they are to qualify for the playoffs this season.”

We believe that many people will argue with Heifetz on this one.

“Let’s get the easy ones out of the way. New England has missed the playoffs once in the last 16 years, and that season the Pats went 11-5 without Tom Brady. This nearly two-decade Brady-Bill Belichick postseason run is the most successful stretch since the one by Tom Landry’s Cowboys. New England’s reign will end eventually. Brady is 42, and while he’s defied Father Time, he is officially in uncharted waters for NFL quarterbacks; he looked uneasy by the end of last season (including a quietly meh Super Bowl performance that would have been a bigger story if his team needed more than one touchdown). But picking against the Patriots is silly until we see otherwise.

“Danger of missing the playoffs: Their only enemy is the slow march of time, and we rarely know when it is outside the gates.”

Some say the Patriots won’t be as successful as they were last season. Well, stats shows that the Patriots are still the favorite. There’s plenty of time before Father Time shuts down Tom Brady.