CHA_CHING

I don't but the "Patriots apathy" talk.

Ratings were thru the roof for SB 51 when they came back and beat the Falcons. Ratings for Patriots SBs are usually fine, but this was the first one that was something of a blow out. Sure, the score was tied 3-3 in the 4th quarter, but never at any point did it feel like the Rams were going to win. It would've been 23-3 or worse if the Pats don't screw around on offense all game and get those dropped interceptions (and the fumble that went out of bounds. The Pats were kicking their butts. If a youthful Brady had showed up, this would've been a bloodbath and let's be fair here; New England has been long overdue a Super Bowl where they just kick the ever loving crap out of someone. This was it. This was their SB blow out they have been due for.

Blow out SBs generally have bad ratings. No one wanted to watch the Broncos and Panthers, which was also something of a blow out. Despite the score being 13-10 most of the second half, never did you feel like Carolina was going to score. It felt like Denver was up several TDs with how much they were dominating them (if Peyton Manning wasn't a washed up shell of his former Hall of Famer self, Denver would've blew them the hell out). The Seahawks/Broncos SB had horrible ratings too and no one watched that except bandwagon Seahawks fans and Peyton Manning haters.

I hate to say it, but New England most likely would've manhandled us too; maybe not as badly as they did the Rams, but I seen nothing in our final month of the season (playoffs included) that told me that they would've beat the Pats.

I can already see how it would've went for us - New England would gameplan around shutting down Kamara and MT, then forcing Brees to beat them with the cast of no name receivers who did diddly poo all year. We would've been hoping and praying for our defense to bail us out again.

We can keep talking about how we got screwed, but as time goes by, I really don't think we would've won this SB and we did have multiple opportunities in the NFCCG to put it out of reach. I felt we were going to lose as soon as they tied it up 20-20. Something went horribly wrong for our Saints at the end of the year and they never figured it out. The offense broke and coach SP didn't figure out how to fix it. I was dreading the NFCCG just based off how bad they looked against the Eagles. I would just accept a fair beating rather than the non-call.

BTW, I hope everyone truly appreciated last year's defense. While the offense was piddling around the last month, t defense bailed us out of every game after the Dallas loss (and nearly bailed us out of that game too). They just couldn't do it one last time against the Rams and losing Rankins on the D-line was a major blow. We had zero sacks in the playoffs after he went down and going up against New England and their o-line, he would've been needed.

TheOak

Ha! Not to minimize the rest of what you had to say but this just proves that people want to see the Falcons lose lol. Not that anyone wants to see the Patriots win .

On your comment about no-name receivers.. that's exactly how we won in 2009.