Since 2000, the New England Patriots have put together some insanely talented rosters.
Narrowing into this past decade alone — they have made it to five Super Bowls and won three of them. They beat the Seattle Seahawks, Atlanta Falcons and Los Angeles Rams in very unique and difficult Super Bowl matchups.
Out of those five Super Bowl teams — Tom Blair from NFL.com believes that the 2016 squad was the best team that they put forth. He also believes that they weren’t the best team of the decade, after ranking them as the No. 4 best team.
Blair believes that the 2013 Seahawks were the best team, followed by the 2015 Carolina Panthers and the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles. Here’s what he had to say about the 2016 Patriots unit.
It was a struggle to pick the best Patriots team of the decade, with the squads from 2010, ’12, ’14 and ’17 earning strong consideration. But the 2016 edition both dominated the regular season and also won a Lombardi Trophy, which, it turns out, is hard to do. This was not Tom Brady’s best season, while tight end Rob Gronkowski struggled to stay on the field. And yet, New England just kept winning. After a few years of appearing to give the rest of the NFL a sporting chance, the Patriots stopped fooling around and took complete control of the AFC, stomping their way to the first of three straight conference titles. This team gets bonus points for helping Brady enter the surreal, unprecedented phase of his career as a 39-and-over quarterback who can’t be stopped.
This 2016 team was resilient and was able to finish with a 14-2 regular season record — while completing the greatest comeback ever in Super Bowl history.
