2015 Patriots Vs. 2007 Patriots: Which Team Is Better?
BOSTON (CBS) -- Merely 120 minutes of football has elapsed in the 2015 Patriots season, yet the locals are feeling a surge of confidence.
The Patriots are 2-0, having hung 40 on the supposedly up-and-coming Buffalo Bills, and when looking ahead at their schedule ... there's a real chance this team could run the table. The combination of a fairly light schedule and a particularly motivated team has led some minds to peer ahead to January at the possibility of the Patriots going undefeated for the second time in nine years.
While that particular conversation can't take really take place in September, the comparisons of this year's team to the '07 squad have already begun.
In fact, Michael Felger went so far to say that the current Patriots are better than the 2007 team. Better.
"I think this team is better than '07. I would rather have this team than '07," Felger stated to open Tuesday's radio program on 98.5 The Sports Hub. "I didn't like '07. I've never liked '07. Overrated. Overrated, as was ultimately proven. I hated '07. I didn't like it when it was happening. That was a team that had no soul. That team was built on an approach that was not sustainable. That was a Patriots team that was unlike any other we've seen with an approach that has been shut down numerous times in the postseason, with that deep passing attack, and it infected them.
"Yes, this team throws it a lot. But they don't throw it [now] like they threw it then," Felger continued. "This is different. This is Brady's short possession game. I'd much rather have a team with Rob Gronkowski as the lead offensive weapon than Randy Moss, a hundred times out of a hundred."
(And he calls me a Pats honk. Jeez. Take a cold shower, Felger.)
On its surface, such a claim seems ridiculous. If they could have fended off the Giants a little bit better, the 2007 Patriots would have gone down as the undisputed single greatest professional football team of all time. No arguments. No debates. Best team of all time.
And now, eight years later, some people want to say we're looking at a better team.
Seems hard to believe. So let's roll through the rosters and compare the key players to explore how this year's team really stacks up vs. the '07 squad.
HEAD COACH
2007: 55-year-old Bill Belichick
2015: 63-year-old Bill Belichick
If the "Do Your Job" special on NFL Network proved anything, it's that Bill Belichick never stops working to improve as a head coach. Even if it means watching every last play of a meaningless Jets-Titans game to find inspiration, the coach will do. He's also endured five playoff losses and has won a Super Bowl in the past nine years. And so, it's fair to say the coach is better today than he was in '07.
Advantage: 2015
QUARTERBACK
2007: 30-year-old Tom Brady
2015: 38-year-old Tom Brady
This should be a no-contest, but amazingly, Brady's current play makes you sit and think about it for a minute. The guy is unbelievable, both with what he does physically as well as what he does pre-snap. From that standpoint, he's at his absolute peak right now, and through two weeks of the season he's leading the NFL in completions, yards and touchdown passes, all while throwing zero interceptions on 91 attempts. It's incredible.
But, come on. Nobody's beating Brady's 30-year-old season. Not even Brady himself.
Advantage: 2007
RUNNING BACKS
2007: Laurence Maroney, Sammy Morris, Kevin Faulk
2015: LeGarrette Blount, Dion Lewis, Brandon Bolden
Blount is better than Maroney, Bolden and Morris are kind of a wash, though Morris was a bit more versatile. And though it's early, Lewis looks like Faulk reincarnate. Slight edge to the new guys.
Advantage: 2015
WIDE RECEIVERS
2007: Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth, Jabar Gaffney
2015: Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, Aaron Dobson, Brandon LaFell (PUP)
Julian Edelman has really blossomed into a great player. He is as close to uncoverable as it gets. He's just too shifty, too precise, and too damn tenacious to stop. In that respect, you could argue that even as great as Welker played in 2007, Edelman is currently playing better football.
Fun fact: Welker caught 112 passes for 1,175 yards and eight touchdowns in '07. Edelman is currently on pace for 176 receptions, 1,552 yards and 16 touchdowns. Those numbers are impossible to keep up, but they indicate that the 29-year-old Edelman could outproduce the 26-year-old Welker.
But that's the only competition in this department. You're going to sit here and tell me you'd like Amendola/Dobson/LaFell over a receiving corps that includes one of the greatest receivers of all time? Randy Moss caught 23 touchdowns in '07. Do you know who else has done that in the history of the NFL? Nobody. Nobody has. Just Randy Moss, who was 30 years old at the time.
Argument over.
Advantage: 2007
TIGHT ENDS
2007: Benjamin Watson, Kyle Brady
2015: Rob Gronkowski, Scott Chandler, Michael Hoomanawanui, Michael Williams
No competition here. Gronkowski is on pace for 96 receptions and 32 touchdowns. He might come up a tad short of that pace, but that touchdown record set by Moss remains in jeopardy.
Advantage: 2015
OFFENSIVE LINE
2007: Matt Light, Logan Mankins, Dan Koppen, Steve Neal, Russ Hochstein, Nick Kaczur
2015: Nate Solder, Shaq Mason, David Andrews, Tre Jackson, Josh Kline, Sebastian Vollmer
Light and Mankins are likely to end up in the Patriots Hall of Fame. Koppen is not far behind them.
We don't know, exactly, how the careers of rookies Mason/Jackson/Andrews will pan out. But it seems fair to say that nobody on the current line will end up donning a red jacket in one of those end-of-summer ceremonies in the future. (Though, Bryan Stork will continue his quest for Canton later this season, at which point we'll have a different discussion.)
Advantage: 2007
KICKER
2007: 23-year-old Stephen Gostkowski
2015: 31-year-old Stephen Gostkowski
The second-year kicker out of Memphis hadn't earned Bill Belichick's trust by the end of his second NFL season. Now, that same kicker is one of the best in the NFL.
Advantage: 2015
DEFENSIVE LINE
2007: Ty Warren, Vince Wilfork, Jarvis Green, Richard Seymour
2015: Alan Branch, Malcom Brown, Dominique Easley, Trey Flowers, Geneo Grissom, Chandler Jones, Rob Ninkovich, Jabaal Sheard, Sealver Siliga
There's a lot more people in the mix nowadays, but it'd be hard to field a more talented unit than those players in '07.
Advantage: 2007
LINEBACKERS
2007: Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Junior Seau, Rosevelt Colvin, Adalius Thomas
2015: Jamie Collins, Dont'a Hightower, Jerod Mayo, Jonathan Freeny
Collins is a phenomenal athlete and Hightower took huge strides in his development last year. They're both great players.
But again, look at that '07 group.
Advantage: 2007
CORNERBACKS
2007: Asante Samuel, Ellis Hobbs, Randall Gay
2015: Malcolm Butler, Tarell Brown, Logan Ryan, Bradley Fletcher
Samuel was a very good cornerback, but he compiled the shiny stats by taking calculated gambles and jumping routes. He wasn't necessarily a great cover corner by any means. Hobbs and Gay were average and sort of cancel out with Brown and Ryan when comparing the two teams.
So let's go with the optimistic approach and say that we've seen enough from Butler in his year-plus in the NFL to say he'll be better than Samuel. We can't actually know that, but we do know that Butler was able to make a game-saving interception in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl. We cannot say the same for Asante.
Advantage: 2015
SAFETIES
2007: Rodney Harrison, James Sanders, Eugene Wilson, Brandon Meriweather
2015: Devin McCourty, Patrick Chung, Duron Harmon, Tavon Wilson
McCourty is an excellent safety whose smarts and abilities allow the Patriots tremendous flexibility with their defensive schemes. At 28 years old, he's in the prime of his career. Though he might not make too many highlight-reel types of plays, he is an invaluable member of the Patriots secondary.
Yet, I struggle to say the current Patriots have a better group of safeties. Even though Rodney Harrison was 35 years old and was less than a year away from his career coming to an end, he was a special player. He put everything he had into that final season in an effort to go out on top. Yes, he has the misfortune of being caught in the snapshot of David Tyree's helmet catch, but Harrison did just about everything right in trying to defend that pass.
Aside from the comparison of alphas, Sanders was better than Chung, and the others sort of wash out.
Advantage: 2007
Sum it all up, and here's what you get.
2007
Quarterback
Wide Receiver
Offensive Line
Defensive Line
Linebackers
Safeties
2015
Head Coach
Running Back
Tight Ends
Kicker
Cornerbacks
The numbers make it close. The '07 teams wins out in six spots, with the '15 team earning the edge in five. Yet you can't discount the importance of the quarterback, receivers and basically the entire defense of the 2007 team being better than the current roster.
Of course, that's not to disparage the 2015 Patriots. After all, it would be nothing short of stunning if the team lost more than three games all year. That's nothing to sneeze at. And with the possibility of repeating as champions on the table, the goal remains to win the Super Bowl -- not to be better than some team from a decade ago.
Plus, to discredit the '07 team for failing in February and then to take the next step to say that pass-heavy approach brought about their downfall would be mostly inaccurate. If you'll remember those '07 Patriots scored 37 points per game (thirty-seven points per game!) by running a shotgun, spread offense. Faulk or Morris would stand next to Brady and often motion out wide, laying five lethal receiving options at Brady's disposal. The main reason they lost the Super Bowl, if you ask me, had to do with them taking their stripped-down, basic offense from their two home, cold-weather playoff games and continuing that in Arizona for Super Bowl XLII.
That fateful night in Glendale, the 2007 Patriots lined up for their first offensive play with two tight ends, Wes Welker out wide, and Randy Moss on the sideline. They ended up scoring a touchdown on their first drive, but the slow, methodical approach as an offensive gameplan is what killed them. They went three-and-out on their next two drives and then fumbled on a strip-sack on their only other drive before halftime. Brady threw just 14 passes in that first half.
This is all ancient history by now, but saying the '07 Patriots' pass-heavy approach proved beatable in the postseason is not entirely true. If anything, veering from the regular-season strategy is what killed their chance at history.
While some folks may be able to ramble on and on and on about the fascinating 2007 Patriots, that's not what this story is about. We set out to examine whether the 2015 Patriots are better than the 2007 Patriots. The answer, in a word, is ... no. So let's go ahead and stop saying that.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.