11/26 Quote

In the next 90 or so pages in, War Room, by Michael Holley, the book transitions into the 2007, and then the 2008 season, when the patriots had a very good season. The patriots team that assembled in the 2008 season was a furious one, always chomping at the bit for a scrappy game. With players like Randy Moss and Eric Alexander leading the offense and defense, there was no way this New England team would go out without a fight, and they played on another level.



"After just thirty minutes and a 35-7 lead, it was obvious the patriots and bills were not playing the same game. But everyone associated with NE wanted more. Not just in a cold November Sunday in Buffalo, where they'd go on to win 56-10, but every week" (Holley 163).

This quote correctly sums up the mood of the patriots team that stormed the league that year. They did not just want to go into stadiums and win, they wanted to go and embarrass teams that were supposed to be good, teams that never thought of being beaten 56-10 at home. They wanted to be bullies, and bullies they were. When one plays at the NFL level, this is the mindset it takes to dominate. One must taking losing so personal that they would not want to continue playing without winning it all. This is not a very common mindset of NFL players today, but that it why there are so few that played like the 2008 patriots. Nobody wanted to win as badly as them, so nobody did. Personally, I would love to play on a team where the mindset is like this. It feels amazing to beat teams as badly as the patriots did that year, and I can say that doing that creates a team chemistry like no other, and at the NFL level I can only imaging how much fun it would have been to be on the team that year. Stemming off that, the patriots only averaged 0.6 penalties per game, and .8 turnovers per game. The players held each other accountable for their mistakes, and if someone was going to beat the patriots, they knew very well they would have to play spotless, mistake free football. Overall their mindset of being the best and never letting anybody be better than them resulted in a great season in New England, and it is the mindset of champions throughout history.