The Patriots have clearly and consistently proven the ability to eventually get to where they want to be over the course of an NFL season.
New England has been to eight straight AFC title games and three straight Super Bowls.
But, according to Tom Brady, the Patriots don’t always start the season the way they want to.
Each of the last two campaigns has seen Bill Belichick’s team go 2-2 in its first four games. A year ago that included two road losses in Detroit and Jacksonville. In 2017 it was a pair of home defeats at the hands of the Chiefs and Panthers.
Though the Patriots have been far from a .500 team over the years, since 2012 New England has finished the first four weeks with as many losses as wins in four of seven seasons. While some try to rationalize such early-season mediocrity as Belichick treating the first month as “an extension of the preseason,” during his first game-week press conference of the year Brady didn’t seem to allow for the idea that early-season losing was some acceptable aspect of more grand plan.
“We always want to get off to a fast start. We've struggled at times doing that, and I think the thing is these are early in the year. They count the same as the ones late in the year,” Brady said. “So you can't start slow because if you start slow, you're fighting your way out of a hole the whole year. So I wish there was some secret play we could call that would work, and we'd know it would work. We've got to go out there and earn it. This is about hard work, it's about discipline, it's about consistency. It's about pressure and applying it. It's a big test.”
The big test comes in the form of the Sunday night opener at Gillette Stadium against a Steelers team that while not on the Patriots level in recent years has almost always found a way to keep itself in the playoff hunt. Pittsburgh handed New England its final loss of the season last December and the two franchises have become the measuring stick for sustained success in the AFC over the years.
“We've had a great rivalry against those guys and played a lot of meaningful games,” Brady acknowledged, going on to praise Pittsburgh’s ability in all three phases of the game as well as coaching. “We've got to be at the top of our game early in the season, as do they, which makes it a great matchup.”
One that puts pressure on Brady’s desire to get off to a fast start in the 2019 season, something that hasn’t necessarily come too easy for New England in recent years, though the early losses certainly haven’t really hurt the team in the long run.
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