Yes, there is a lot that goes into making an NFL schedule.  You have your six games against the other teams in your division, the four games against another division in your conference and the four games against a division from the other conference.  The final two games of each teams' schedule come from playing opponents within your conference who had the same standing at the end of the last season.  For this dive into random NFL results, I've looked at the place each NFL team finished the year before and the year after their 1st place finish.

The amount of criticism Bill Belichick gets as the General Manager of the Patriots is amazing and ludicrous.  Yes, he doesn't hit on everyone he drafts, but the guy doesn't have all day to hang out at the grocery store like some other teams.

Yeah, not punching it in from the one sealed the Patriots' fate last night.  Yes we all knew the Patriots were statistically bad from the red zone, but not being able to score from a yard outside the goal line is something beyond bad.  Not being able to sleep last night I decided to take a look at every Patriots' possession which had either a 1st and 10 within the 15 or a true 1st and goal.  Here is what I found.

Like most fans, I didn't want to see the Patriots playing this weekend after it seemed inevitable that they had the 2 seed locked up.  Yet, here we are getting ready to play wild card weekend.  No extra rest for the walking wounded, instead an 8:15 game against Tennessee. 

Last year the Patriots got their butts handed to them in Tennessee by a score of 34-10.  Does any of that matter come Saturday night in Gillette?