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Snoopy on 03 January 2017
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MTZehvor said:
Snoopy said:

Patriots weakness is to put pressure on brady. He has been known to go three and out all the time when the pressure is on him.

Well, there's another part to that equation. It's not enough to simply pressure Brady; Buffalo, Baltimore, and Miami consistently blitzed and got shredded. If you try to blitz Brady, he'll just dump it off to an underneath crossing route that is now either going uncovered or is being man to man covered by a linebacker as a result of the blitz. You have to be able to consistently put pressure on Brady by rushing 3 or 4 guys at most. 

The AFC Championship Game last year is arguably the prime example of this. Denver only blitzed three times all game, yet Brady was pressured on nearly a third of his dropbacks. This allows the defense to keep enough people in coverage to prevent the crossing routes from getting open quickly, which forces Brady to hang onto the ball longer. If you send any more than 3 or 4 people, you're not going to have enough people in coverage to stop guys like Edelman, Amendonla, Hogan, Lewis, and now Floyd from getting open in 2-3 seconds. 2-3 seconds is very rarely going to be enough to get to Brady.

You need either an extremely good defensive line (like 2015 Denver and 2007/2011 Giants), or an extremely good secondary (like 2013/14 Seattle). If Justin Houston comes back in time for a potential AFCG rematch, then KC could fit into that category, but the only other playoff teams I would throw in there would be the Giants and the Seahawks. Which isn't to say that New England is unbeatable unless they run into one of those three teams, but other teams are going to need to put up some serious points to win. And, in all fairness, there are plenty of teams capable of that as well (Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Dallas, Atlanta...even Miami looked good until that red zone turnover).

Don't underestimate cowboys d-line. They've been putting a lot of preasure on  qbs in recent games. For example, look at what they did to Detroit Lions. They shut Stafford down for two quarters and a half. Cowboys defense is getting hot at the right time, not to mention cowboys can run the ball to keep Patriots offence off the field and give Cowboys enough time to rest their defense.