By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

Josh Beckett is missing the point, though there is the possibility that he is simply trying to avoid it. This is not about chicken. This is not about beer. This is not even about on-field failure, because the Red Sox and their followers have endured a good deal of that before, too.

What this is about, quite simply, is the seeming absence of commitment from a man whom the Red Sox once regarded as a model of dedication.

Now, as spring training rapidly approaches in the aftermath of a Red Sox season that ended with a truly historic collapse, Beckett and his mates are poised to get back to work with a new manager, a renewed purpose and another chance. Months after the cataclysmic end to the 2011 Red Sox season, Beckett went on a talk show with former Red Sox infielder Kevin Millar last week and lamented the breach of trust that took place within the Red Sox organization last fall, never once accepting responsibility for the nonsense that took place inside the clubhouse walls at 4 Yawkey Way.

Fine, so Beckett is stubborn. Whatever. But instead of wondering how information leaked to the media last year, Beckett should probably be spending more energy wondering why.

His answer?

Because he let the team down with his attitude, not his performance, and he lost their trust in the process. Someone wanted people to know that.

Let's back up here for a moment. Since the day he arrived in Boston in the deal that sent Hanley Ramirez to the Florida Marlins, Beckett has been something of a lightning rod, the heir to a line of Red Sox kings that ran from Roger Clemens to Pedro Martinez to Curt Schilling. In his second season with the team, Beckett won 20 games and anchored the team's run to the 2007 World Series title. Beckett was such a model for the club that the Red Sox all but tucked Jon Lester under Beckett's wing, instructing Lester to work as Beckett did, care as Beckett did, commit as Beckett did.

Four years later, the move backfired. Beckett allowed himself to get terribly out of shape during a 2011 season that began with great promise and ended in utter disarray. Beckett showed up in camp saying he had never played on a team that won 100 games, then left town stigmatized from having played on a team that suffered the worst late-season collapse in the history of major league baseball.

In his final eight starts of 2011, Beckett posted a 5.06 ERA. In his final two outings - against the Baltimore Orioles - Beckett allowed 12 runs and four homers in 13.1 innings. Truth be told, Beckett's performance was not much worse than most anyone else who pitched for the Red Sox down the stretch, though there is one obvious difference between Beckett and everyone else.

On the pitching staff, at least, he is supposed to be their leader.

Here's the truly disturbing part: love Beckett or hate him, he has generally been accountable during his time in Boston. Nobody beat himself up more after losses. Particularly during the early part of his tenure with the Red Sox, Beckett took credit for nothing, blame for everything. He embraced the responsibility that came along with his talent. Privately, Beckett spoke of his desire to win 300 games and treated his job with the utmost professionalism, an approach that earned him the respect of his teammates, coaches and bosses.

When Terry Francona and John Farrell were here as manager and pitching coach, they most often spoke not of Beckett's talent, but of his work ethic. The spoke of his attitude. One year, when a Sox official appealed to the players to assist a team employee in need, Beckett immediately stepped up and wrote a check for $5,000, sending a message to anyone else in uniform.

I'm doing the right thing.

The obvious question now: where has that conviction gone? In more than one interview conducted since the end of last season, Schilling noted that Beckett has undergone major life changes in the last several months, from marriage to parenthood. He also noted that the job does not change as a result. This season, Beckett will enter the second year of a four-year contract that pays him handsomely - $17 million per season - and the Red Sox didn't agree to the terms assuming that Beckett would remain a single man free of other influences and commitments.

They agreed because Beckett can pitch, and they expected that he would continue to do so effectively no matter the changes and pressures that come with life.

Those are a given, after all, for all of us.

Now, as a result of last season, Beckett can complain about organizational leaks if he so chooses. But the media has always been at the mercy of its sources. So if Beckett wants to be truly thorough about it, if he wants to find out who said what and why after the implosion that was the 2011 Red Sox season, he needs to draw the line well past the organizational leaks and go all the way to the source of the problem.

Himself.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Staff

Today, we make up for time lost during the blur that was the Patriots' latest journey to the Super Bowl, though we should emphasize that any run to a championship is really not time lost at all.

Truth be told, it is really time gained.

"I’d rather come to this game and lose than not get here," said Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the aftermath of Sunday's 21-17 loss to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.

He's right, you know, because it takes months of work to get to position yourself for a championship, but only a few hours to actually win it.

-- With all due respect to Josh Beckett, he's not doing himself any favors when he glosses over the behavior of Red Sox players late last season by reminding us that the clubhouse should be sacrosanct.

If I were Beckett, I wouldn't be focusing so much on who ratted me out.

I'd be more focused on why.

But we'll get to that on Friday.

-- Tim Thomas is a terrific goaltender and an even better story, and he is entitled to believe whatever he wants to believe, say whatever he wants to say, support whomever he wants to support.

Our country, after all, is built on those kinds of freedoms and on that type of individuality.

But still, have we reached the point where absolutely everything must be politicized, including a cookie-cutter visit to the White House that is now considered part of virtually every notable American sports achievement?

I mean, if we start doing that kind of stuff, shouldn't fans start asking whether their quarterbacks, goaltenders and shortstops are Democrats or Republicans?

And yes, that all goes for anyone else - including Theo Epstein - who blows off the White House so as to (allegedly) make some kind of political statement.

-- Rob Gronkowski can dance all he wants and Gisele Bundchen can say whatever she pleases, though most of us certainly would have preferred that the Patriots had done more dancing in the end zone at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Still, if you're going to use your smartphone to take pictures and video, can you just keep it as a personal memento instead of trying to become the next Abraham Zapruder?

At some point, people need to be people, and not newborn puppies in the pet store window.

-- Paul Pierce is a terrific scorer and tremendous competitor who forever who won many of us over with his performance during the 2008 NBA playoffs, particularly when he went nose-to-nose with both LeBron James and Kobe Bryant - and beat them both.

But with or without the points, Pierce is not quite Larry Bird.

That reminds me: no matter how much Bird couched it in his ESPN interview with Bill Simmons, he absolutely, positively was taking a dig at James' shortcomings as a competitor.

And he's right to.

-- So let me get this straight: after trading away their starting shortstop, Marco Scutaro, the Red Sox are not going to use the money on a starting pitcher?

I didn't feel good about that in the first place.

So please tell me how I'm supposed to feel good about it now.

-- Bruins president Cam Neely didn't tip his hand during his weekly radio appearance yesterday on 98.5 The Sports Hub, but one has to believe that the Bruins are at least a little worried about Nathan Horton - and that finding some way to account for his absence is among their primary objectives before the Feb. 27 trade deadline.

Or am I missing something?

-- I don't care what the Celtics' record is in the last 10 games.

If I'm Danny Ainge and I have a chance to trade Kevin Garnett or Ray Allen for something remotely substantive before the All-Star break, I still do it.

And if Pierce is willing, I'd trade him, too.

-- The national bashing of Bill Belichick obviously gets old, but when Belichick blows off NBC following the Super Bowl, it only supports the notion that Belichick is a positively terrible loser who possesses no tact when things fail to go his way.

Belichick is one of the truly great coaches, to be sure.

But he has never, ever been a model of sportsmanship.

-- When Bob Kraft goes out of his way to remind everyone that the Patriots possess "two 1s and two 2s" in the upcoming NFL draft, is it foolish for people like me to think that the Patriots might actually use all of those selections rather than trade them out?

Or that they may even - dare we say - trade up?

-- Maybe it's just me, but the more I hear from people who covered Bobby Valentine in New York, the more I believe that Valentine might not be as polarizing as everyone makes him out to be.

And that those who dislike Valentine just tend to be quite vocal about it.

-- Finally, even in the wake of a Super Bowl defeat, let's remember that no American city ever has had a run quite like this one, which has produced 14 trips to the league semifinals or better and seven championships, including one in each of the four major team sports, since the start of the 2002 calendar year.

While there is no way of knowing how much longer this will all last, we continue to live in the true Golden Age of Boston sports.

In the aftermath of something like this, the truth sits somewhere in the rubble, buried in piles of questions and missed opportunities. Sifting through the debris can take quite some time, and in the NFL, there is rarely any rest for the weary.

So what do you think: In the modern NFL, are the Patriots really that close to a championship? Or was this postseason some indication that they are as flawed – or more so – than the other teams who consider themselves to be at the top of the league hierarchy?

Where the Patriots go from here remains to be seen, but let’s start with the positives. In 2009, the Patriots were bounced in the wildcard round of the playoffs. In 2010, they were bounced in the divisional round. This year, they made it all the way to the Super Bowl before succumbing to the New York Giants by a 21-17 score last night at Lucas Oil Stadium in a wonderfully competitive and entertaining game that ended in pure heartbreak.

The point is that the Patriots are getting better, for sure, though they are not yet where Bill Belichick and Tom Brady expect them to be.

What last night reaffirmed for us, if anything, is that the Patriots still have some work to do, particularly if they expect to maximize the final years of Brady’s (and Belichick’s?) career. Last month, Brady himself told us the clock is ticking. With or without a healthy Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots need a viable receiving threat outside the numbers and they need help on defense, at least if they expect to win Super Bowls.

This year, more than any other in recent memory, the NFL affirmed for us that regular season play and postseason play are two entirely different things. Balance still wins. The NFL seems to have become a jazzed-up version of the Arena League during the regular season, no fewer than six quarterbacks this season passing for greater than 4,600 yards. The list includes Drew Brees, Brady, Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers and Manning, the last of whom had easily the best defense among the group.

So guess who won the championship?

Eli.

Of course, New England fans are likely to point out that the Giants’ defense during the regular season was marginally better than the Patriots’, but that’s missing the point. In their final six games this year, the Giants played the Jets, Cowboys, Falcons, Packers, Niners and Patriots. All of those clubs ranked in the top half of the league in scoring, the Packers, Patriots and Falcons finishing a respective, first, third and seventh. New York held that group to an average of 14 points per game, the large majority of that play coming during a postseason in which NFL officials generally swallowed the whistles and actually started letting people play football again.

To their credit, the Patriots played better defense, too. And yet, in the Super Bowl, the New England defense did not force a single three-and-out. New York’s eight possessions lasted 10, nine, 10, nine, 13, 11, 10 and nine snaps, which is why the Giants held the ball for a whopping 37:05, a number that would have been higher had New York drained the clock properly at the end of the game.

You know that familiar Patriots argument that points – and not yards – are what matter? Horse feathers. The yards mattered last night. They mattered because the Patriots couldn’t get Eli Manning off the field and, when they did, New York punter Steve Weatherford was working from no worse than his own 45-yard line with three of his four punts coming from the Patriots’ 43, 42 and 41.

As a result, New England’s average starting field position last night was its own 16-yard line. Maybe that doesn’t matter during the regular season against teams like the Denver Broncos and Buffalo Bills, but it matters during the playoffs.

The bottom line is that the Giants completely dictated the tempo and tenor of the game because they controlled the ball - pretty much on both sides. Had the Giants not committed at least two drive-killing penalties, the game wouldn’t have been so close.

For Belichick, the challenge now is to fix that, be that through acquisitions in the linebacking corps or secondary. Jerod Mayo is a nice tackler, but as the Giants’ first touchdown last night proved, he isn’t exactly Derrick Brooks when it comes to defending the pass. The Giants ran and threw on the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, and their ability to do so allowed New York to walk away with a second Super Bowl victory over the Patriots in five seasons.

Again, let’s say this in no uncertain terms so that we’re all on the same page: the Patriots are getting better again. Nonetheless, last night’s game offers further perspective on the AFC Championship victory over the Baltimore Ravens, who were saying the same thing two weeks ago that the Patriots are saying today: If only our receiver could have held onto the ball. If we’re going to suggest that the Ravens need to improve their offense (or, more specifically, their passing game) to win a Super Bowl, then we need to say the same about the Patriots defense.

For New England this year, remember, the road to the Super Bowl was impeccably paved. Until the victory over the Ravens in the AFC Championship, the Patriots did not beat a single team that finished the year with a winning record. The Pats earned both their first-round bye and their divisional round matchup with the Broncos, but there is now significant doubt as to whether that road is the best way to win a Super Bowl anymore.

The Giants, after all, were the No. 4 seed in the NFC, though they possessed a worse regular season record (9-7) than any team but the Broncos (8-8). New York subsequently beat the NFC’s top two seeds, Green Bay and San Francisco, on the road. Sunday’s win also gave the Giants a pair of wins this season over the Patriots, one on the road, one at neutral site.

In winning the Super Bowl last year, the Green Bay Packers were a No. 6 seed, though similarly blessed with balance. And if you want to add 2007 into the mix, the Giants were a No. 5 seed that similarly marched through a four-game postseason scheduled once deemed to be a minefield.

But not anymore.

Now, come playoff time in the NFL, the most balanced team can win four games far more easily than an imbalanced team can win three, something becoming indisputably to those of us in New England and, perhaps, even Bill Belichick.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

This time, on the seventh Super Bowl trip in New England Patriots history, the forecast is riddled with uncertainty. Never, in fact, have the Patriots played a title game in which the outcome was so clearly in doubt.

All of which makes the national perspective on this game all the more curious, because the large majority of people seem to be picking the New York Giants.

Let's back up here for a moment and state the obvious: in the NFL, especially, Super Bowl predictions mean nothing. The St. Louis Rams (in Super Bowl XXXVI) and the Patriots (Super Bowl XLII) were considerable favorites, and both teams lost the game outright. Not a single one of us can predict what will happen on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium, and that would be true whether the Patriots were favored by seven or 17.

But here's what doesn't make sense about this game in particular: the Patriots essentially have been a three-point favorite from the start - the smallest Super Bowl point spread in roughly 30 years - and yet most everyone outside of New England is picking the Giants. Why? Based on what? When did such a mismatch become so clear? Everything about Sunday's game suggests that public sentiment should be split as evenly as it was in the 1960 presidential election, and yet the scale seems noticeably skewed in favor of New York.

If you don't understand this, you're not alone.

In New England, too, we all know how good the Giants can be. During New York's run to the Super Bowl, the Giants have played better and more complete football than any other team in what Bill Parcells often referred to as "the tournament." Beginning with a pair of regular season victories over the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys in Weeks 16 and 17, the Giants have won five straight while allowing a measly 13.4 points per game. They have beaten the top two seeds in the NFC (the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers) on the road. They have beaten no team with anything worse than a .500 record.

Fine. We get it. The Giants are hot. But this is also a team with the capability to play very poorly, something everyone seems to have forgotten in the last month or so.

For example, did you know the Giants were actually outscored during the regular season? Did you know that prior to Week 16, they were a minus 38 for the year? Overall, their pass defense ranked 29th. Their rushing defense ranked 19th. Their rushing offense ranked 32nd. Simply put, there's a reason why the Giants went 7-7 through their first 14 games, something everyone is now too readily dismissing.

So are we just supposed to chuck 14 games of history out the window?

Yes, yes, yes - that was then and this is now. But those earlier games during the season are still at least part of who the Giants are whether New York fans want to admit it or not, just as surely as the Patriots' early-season performance is a part of theirs.

In New England, we know the Patriots' flaws all too well. The Patriots ranked 31st in pass defense, 17th in rushing defense, 20th in rushing offense. Sounds a lot like the Giants, right? Until New England's AFC Championship victory over the Baltimore Ravens, the Patriots had not beaten a team that finished the year with a winning record. Not one. The Patriots faced maybe three teams all year with an elite quarterback - the San Diego Chargers, Pittsburgh Steelers and Giants - and lost two; the only victory came against San Diego in Week 2, when Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers looked more like Ryan Leaf.

So let's get this straight: the national audience is holding the Patriots' regular season against them, but not that of the Giants. Does that make any sense? The Patriots still have Tom Brady. The Patriots still have Bill Belichick. Vince Wilfork could be the best defensive player on either team to be playing in the Super Bowl, something we learned when Wilfork manhandled the Ravens in the AFC title game.

Everything about this game screams that it is a 50-50 proposition - a true coin flip - and yet people seem to be treating it nationally as if the Giants are the obvious choice.

For the Patriots, in some ways, this Super Bowl is unlike any other in which they have played. In Super Bowl XX, despite what people wanted to believe, the Chicago Bears were the obvious choice. Eleven years later, the Green Bay Packers were the clear favorite. The St. Louis Rams were the clear pick in Super Bowl XXXVI, the Patriots in Super Bowls XXXVIII and XXXIX. In Super Bowl XLII, the Patriots were 18-0 entering the game and prohibitive favorites.

Nationally, some skewing of national predictions made sense. But this time?

During the height of the Belichick era, we all know how the Patriots operated. In 2003 and 2004, when the Patriots won back-to-back titles, the Patriots went a combined 34-4 and were clearly the best team in football. Nonetheless, Belichick somehow convinced his players that they were being disrespected, which we all deemed preposterous. The Patriots were damn good and everybody knew it - including them - and nobody disrespected them.

Now, years later, it feels as if people are indeed looking past New England.

Or maybe they're just a little too focused on the Giants.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

Today, as much as ever, I worry about Gronk. The Patriots put Rob Gronkowski out there for the world to see yesterday at Super Bowl media day, and the Patriots all but fell over themselves trying to convince us that Gronk is getting better.

Pardon the expression …

But my foot.

"Well, he's obviously making progress, he's out of his boot today, which is making me feel better," offered quarterback Tom Brady. "I told him to write 'Hi Mom' on his sock, because there will be a lot of pictures today. ... No one is as tough as him, he makes our offense go. Hopefully we have him out there."

No fools, those Patriots. They knew Gronkowski would be an obvious focus yesterday. They subsequently sent him into public without his protective boot. Brady all but encouraged people to take pictures of Gronkowski’s feet – which we did – while Gronkowski emphasized, over and over again, that he is taking things day by day.

Clearly, the detail-oriented Bill Belichick wanted it out there that Gronkowski’s status is improving.

We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: Gronkowski will likely play Sunday. The question is how effectively and for how long, something that Belichick and the Patriots knew days ago. The moment Gronkowski went down in the AFC Championship Game against the Baltimore Ravens at Gillette Stadium, anyone with half a brain knew that the colossus who serves as New England’s all-galaxy tight end had suffered a high ankle sprain – or worse.

Since that time, it has been reported that Gronkowski had at least “some” ligament damage and that he will likely need surgery to repair his ankle after the Super Bowl. And yet, there was Gronkowski yesterday, questioned by everyone from Maria Menounos to Dan Shaughnessy - now there’s a spectrum for you - about the health of a left ankle that might as well have been propped up on a chair.

Why didn’t the Patriots just hand out results of Gronkowski’s X-rays or medical reports? Couldn’t he have at least taken his socks off?

We all know what Gronkowski means to the Patriots offense. If and when a movie is made about the 2011 Patriots, the lovable Gronkowski would be played by Dolph Lundgren. This season, Gronkowski had the greatest season ever put forth by a tight end in the history of the NFL. He is the prototype for what a tight end should be. Gronkowski is so big, fast, strong, quick and tough that one cannot help but wonder if, at birth, his mother held him by the back of the ankles and dipped him in to the river Styx.

Nonetheless – and unfortunately – Gronkowski is human, ultimately vulnerable to the same injuries and pitfalls as any man.

As has been noted in recent days, the dreaded high ankle sprain is typically an injury that requires somewhere in the neighborhood of six weeks to heel. Last night, on local television, former Patriots receiver Troy Brown said he still sometimes feels the effects of a high ankle sprain. Former Patriots defensive back Ty Law said it was foolish for Gronkowski to be out of his boot. In recent years, Pittsburgh Steelers Maurkice Pouncey and Indianapolis Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney both suffered high ankle sprains during the playoffs.

Freeney played in the Super Bowl and, by his own admission, was reasonably effective for about a half. Pouncey did not play at all.

So now, 10 days removed from Gronkowski’s injury, is anyone seriously going to argue that Gronkowski will be himself come Sunday? Please. Let’s not be delusional about this. The Patriots have to prepare this week as if they will have a severely compromised Gronkowski, assuming they have him at all. If Gronkowski somehow manages to give the team more on Sunday night, fabulous. Gronkowski didn’t miss a practice during the regular season, so the Patriots will have no difficulty adjusting on the fly to accommodate him.

Earlier this week, without tipping his hand on Gronkowski, Patriots president Jonathan Kraft suggested that injuries generally fall into two categories: the kind that can lead to permanent damage if handled recklessly, and the kind that merely extend rehabilitation time if dealt with in the same manner. Kraft gave no hint as to whether Gronkowski fell into either class, but it is difficult to imagine the Patriots putting Gronkowski’s career in jeopardy, even if this is the Super Bowl.

During his time as coach of the Patriots, Belichick has treated injuries as highly classified information. Publicly, at least, the Patriots often acknowledge nothing. Now the Patriots are back in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in the Belichick era and first time in four years, and Belichick’s favorite son, Brady, is pointing out that Gronkowski is “obviously” making progress and that Gronkowski is “out of his boot.”

Call me a cynic, but I’m still not sure what that all means some Sunday.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

INDIANAPOLIS -- The thrill has indisputably returned, the Patriots and their loyal followers now turning out for pep rallies again as if this were indeed Hooterville. New England will play in its fifth Super Bowl in 11 seasons come Sunday, but even the typically humorless Bill Belichick is poking fun at himself as if shrouded in the euphoria.

And you know what? Belichick should be happy. We all should. Because for all that the Patriots have accomplished this season, their greatest achievement may have come in making this all so much fun again.

"I've never had too much hospitality here until I went for it on fourth-and-2," Belichick said yesterday after the Patriots arrived in town for Super Bowl XLVI. "Since then I've been greeted in a lot more friendly manner than I was in the past."

So it began yesterday in the American Heartland, where the Patriots and New York Giants will clash on Sunday in the center of the football world. Let's be honest here. Putting aside all point spreads and individual biases, the Giants have recently been playing better football than anyone. In their last five games, the Giants have effectively knocked the New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers from contention, head coach Tom Coughlin and troops running the gauntlet to earn their way into the most celebrated event in sports.

The Patriots? They tipped over a succession of empty soup cans before defeating the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, and even then it took some extremely good fortune. How the Patriots and Giants got here are two very different stories, though the beauty of the Super Bowl is that none of it really matters.

Once you're here, you're here. And as Patriots history has taught us during the bookend years of 2001 and 2007, the Super Bowl is the most glaring example of any given Sunday, the phrase that has come to define the modern NFL.

Before anyone suggests this is all somehow a way to discredit the Patriots for being here, you are badly missing the point. When it comes to the Super Bowl, everyone is lucky. The one possible exception was the Patriots of 2007, a team so motivated and dripping with talent that we all expected them to be here. New England's utter dominance that season made the entire year one rather long and relatively joyless exercise, particularly following a Week 9 victory here in Indianapolis that made something abundantly clear.

The Patriots weren't playing for a championship that season.

They were playing for the right to be called the greatest team ever, perhaps in any sport.

But this year? This year has been different, the questions hanging over the heads of Belichick and Tom Brady from the very beginning. Had the Patriots defense become too passive? Could they win in the playoffs anymore?

Following a work stoppage resolved at the 11th hour, Belichick brought in a cast of veteran players that included Albert Haynesworth, Andre Carter, Mark Anderson and Chad Ochocinco. And then, from the moment Chad Henne and the Miami Dolphins passed for 416 yards against the Patriots in the very first game of the season, many of us started to wonder whether these Patriots were really any different at all.

As it turned out, even as the questions about the defense persisted, the Patriots proved to be different in one area more than any other: competitively. They fell behind at Philadelphia and rallied back. They fell behind at Denver and came back. They fell behind against Miami and Buffalo at home, and they continued to push their way back.

When it was all over, the Pats had secured the top seed in the AFC that earned them a bye, the right to play the inferior Denver Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs and the right to host the AFC Championship Game. Had the Patriots slipped even once during the final weeks of the season, there is every reason to believe they would not be here at all. Instead, Lee Evans dropped a touchdown pass and Billy Cundiff missed a chip shot, and the Patriots now find themselves playing in the fifth Super Bowl of the Belichick era, the seventh in team history.

For anyone over the age of 30, that last number, in particular, was once unfathomable. In some ways, it still is. Anyone who grew up in New England during the `60s, `70s or `80s will tell you that the Patriots were not just a bad franchise during those years, but that they were a laughingstock. To see what they have become now is positively mind-numbing.

Nonetheless, for all of us, this week and this season brings with it an undeniable tingle. We know this team is not nearly as good as the last two Patriots clubs to get this far, and we know the Pats caught some breaks. We also know that championships are not entirely about talent. They are about hard work and character, about resiliency and luck, about being in the right place at the right time and about making the most of the opportunity.

These Patriots have done all of those things.

Maybe that is why now, despite a trip to the Super Bowl that could feel like another spin on some run-of-the-mill carnival ride, the Patriots are making this all feel like some type of fantastic, improbable journey.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

Rob Gronkowski was the elephant in the room to begin with, a 6-foot-6-inch, 265-pound behemoth with cast iron legs, a granite torso and hands made of cashmere. Outside of Tom Brady, there may be no more important player on the Patriots. And yet, as we inch toward Super Bowl XLVI, there has been relatively little discussion or information concerning a man who may be downright unstoppable.

Will Gronkowski be able to play?

And if so, how effectively?

Make of it what you will, but the most significant news about Gronkowski came this morning when his father, Gordy, told a New York television station that his son has a high left ankle sprain suffered during Sunday's AFC Championship victory over the Baltimore Ravens. Earlier in the week, the Herald's Ian Rapaport reported that Gronkowski has "some" ligament damage in the ankle. Some. Precisely how much, of course, is entirely unknown to those of us on the outside, though anyone who saw Gronkowski felled by Ravens safety Bernard Pollard winced when Gronkowski's left ankle folded unnaturally inward, as if breaking the binding of a book.

Given the Patriots' history when it comes to discussing injuries -- and nobody is blaming them for this -- the word "some" is rather worrisome. Anyone who has worked in the media will tell you that bad news often comes in diluted form -- if we get it at all. In these cases, many of us apply to the iceberg theory, which is to say that the majority of the story is still beneath the surface.

Translation: If someone in Foxborough is whispering that there is "some" ligament damage, there is likely to be a good deal more.

Purely for the record, here is what Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick said when asked about Gronkowski yesterday:

Reporter: Do you have any doubt Rob Gronkowski will be ready for the game?

Brady: I have no idea. I'm not sure. I think everyone deals with bumps and bruises this time of year. It's the Super Bowl so we're all trying to get out there and be healthy. It would suck to miss this game. You put all the work in over the course of the entire year and to have the opportunity to play in this game, you know everyone is going to be doing everything they can to be out there.

Reporter: How would you describe the progress of Rob Gronkowski?

Belichick: Good, good.

Reporter: If Rob Gronkowski doesn't practice but does play in the game, how much does that affect what you're able to do on the practice field, or do you just rely on the previous 105 practices? I think he was out there for pretty much all of them.

Belichick: Right, yeah I think he was, yeah. We'll just have to see, you know. Today, he's not going to practice today, so we'll take it day-by-day. I'm not going to try to forecast where things will be 10 days from now. We'll just take it day-by-day.

Not a whole lot of information there, right? Brady referred to "bumps and bruises," but does anyone really believe that those words apply in this case? And when Belichick says nothing more than "good, good," the terse nature of the reply only reinforces the notion that the information is sensitive.

Gronkowski is not just hurt. He's injured. And if his ankle or lower leg is hurt badly enough, you can bet your bottom dollar that his own personal advisers are getting involved to insure that Gronkowski's interests, too, are being protected.

To wit: remember the flap between the Red Sox and Jacoby Ellsbury concerning the broken ribs that sidelined Ellsbury for much of 2010? By the time the matter got settled - and we use that term loosely - Ellsbury was rehabilitating in Arizona and consulting his own medical team. As it turns out, Gronkowski's agent is Drew Rosenhaus, who just happens to be the Boras of the NFL. Rest assured that Rosenhaus is hounding the Patriots (and his client) for information about the injury, on which the outcome of the Super Bowl may very well hinge.

If you regard that last perspective as an overstatement, think of what is at stake here. Drafted in the second round of the 2010 draft, Gronkowski signed a four-year contract for $4.4 million. Since that time, his 28 touchdowns rank second to only Houston running back Arian Foster (30) and Philadelphia running back LeSean McCoy (29). Gronkowski is coming off the single greatest season ever recorded by a tight end and will soon be positioned (if he is not already) for a gargantuan payday.

None of this should interpreted as any type of reflection on Gronkowski, who has proven to be nothing short of a warrior during his time with the Patriots. On Sunday, in fact, Gronkowski even came back on the field of play after a trip to the locker room, though he did not have another reception. But agents will be agents -- particularly ones like Rosenhaus -- and treatment is not always as simple as ice, tape and painkillers.

What if "some" ligament damage is a lot? What if Gronkowski risks tearing his ankle apart and turning a bad injury into something more career-threatening? What if he plays and is not the same player either during or after the Super Bowl?

Is that worth it?

On the outside, of course, we all say the same thing: get him back out there. As Brady said, "it's the Super Bowl." Brady himself can now tell Gronkowski that there are no guarantees of getting back to the biggest game in sports -- even a 14-2 season in 2010 assured the Patriots of nothing -- and that every opportunity must be maximized. Given that reality, we can all sit here and claim with alleged certainty that we would play on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis, but none of us knows what Gronkowski knows or feels.

The good news, at the moment, is that he still has plenty of time to think about it.

And to wait.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

Prince Fielder has gone to Detroit while Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson have landed in Anaheim, all as the Red Sox have been hanging out at the local book swap. That is not meant to be a criticism of Boston's strategy this winter so much as it is a commentary on the new landscape of the American League.

It's a good thing baseball is adding another playoff team this year, folks, because the Red Sox might have missed the postseason again otherwise.

They still might.

Amid the Patriots' march to yet another Super Bowl, some time has passed since we talked baseball. And now, just a few short days after the Red Sox traded their starting shortstop to free up payroll, the Detroit Tigers have secured first baseman Prince Fielder to a whopping nine-year, $214 million dollar contract, giving Detroit - at least in the short term - perhaps the most formidable middle-of-the-order tandem in all of major league baseball.

Make no mistake: what the Tigers have now in Fielder and Miguel Cabrera is pretty darn near what the Red Sox had from 2003 to 2008, when Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz anchored the Boston lineup. During those six seasons, the Red Sox went to four American League Championship Series and won two world titles. They were the best team in the game. Ramirez was traded in the middle of the 2008 season, and the Sox haven't won a playoff game in the three full years without him.

With regard to the Red Sox payroll and expenditures this offseason, let's at least try to be fair about this. Estimating their unsettled arbitration cases, Boston's current projected luxury tax payroll rests at about $180 million. That is more than enough to win. The obvious problem is that the Red Sox have nearly as much dead money as the Madoff investors, an escalating problem now that the Sox have decided to operate with some level of frugality concerning the $178 million luxury tax threshold.

Two years ago, the Sox were selling us the idea of run prevention. Now they're trading away their starting shortstop a month before spring training, all so they can save a few million bucks that amount to, what, one or two percent of their payroll?

Yikes.

Meanwhile, the Angels (Pujols and Wilson), Tigers (Fielder), Texas Rangers (Yu Darvish, Joe Nathan) and even New York Yankees (Michael Pineda, Hiroki Kuroda) have made more significant acquisitions than the Red Sox have. Even if you believe that the Red Sox are a better team than the dysfunctional club that went 7-20 en route to a 90-72 finish - and they are - you must admit that the field just got a whole lot tougher. The Red Sox are still a heavyweight - we think - but the 2012 American League now projects to be a Battle Royale like no other in recent memory.

And lest anyone forget, the Tampa Bay Rays, who beat out the Sox last fall for what was then the fourth and final playoff spot, have better pitching than you do.

Let's examine what has happened since the historic September collapse that had us all examining the clubhouse culture at Fenway Park. Josh Beckett has stayed. John Lackey has been lost for the season. Terry Francona has been fired and Jonathan Papelbon was allowed to depart via free agency. The Sox picked up Mark Melancon and Andrew Bailey in a couple of low-cost trades, but the Sox have been chief among those telling us over the last several years that the performance of relievers is difficult to forecast.

Then came the departure of Scutaro, one of the few Sox players who actually played his tail off down the stretch, demonstrating the kind of grit that so few of his teammates did.

Of course, there is still time for the Sox to make changes and acquisitions, be they today or in July. But here's the problem: if the Sox are serious about staying at or near the luxury tax amount of $178 million, what difference does it make? In retrospect, the Sox went into last season with very little payroll flexibility. Now they're doing the same thing. They have had a collection of players who have shown an inability to stay healthy in recent years - Beckett and Kevin Youkilis chief among them - and they seemingly have no interest in further extending themselves financially to build better depth.

In retrospect, the Sox never had any intention of making any acquisition bigger than Bobby Valentine, upon whom there is now a great deal of pressure, particularly at the start of the season. They're locked into Beckett ($17 million per), Lackey ($16.5 million) and Carl Crawford ($20.3 million), the last of whom just had wrist surgery. And we haven't even mentioned Daisuke Matsuzaka ($8.7 million average).

As we all know, the Red Sox have too much talent to have gone 7-20 in September and missed the playoffs. Maybe, as a result, the Sox will play 2012 as if they have something to prove. And maybe Valentine, too, will have a profound impact. But in the wake of a disastrous finish during which the players shamed the uniform - let's not forget this - the Sox look like they've made nothing more than subtle tweaks while spinning their wheels, all as the other primary contenders in the American League have significantly stepped up their games.

In a vacuum, the Red Sox really may be no worse off than they were a year ago at this time, when many of us dubbed them world beaters.

But in the bigger picture, it sure feels like the rest of the league is passing them by.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

All season long, the issues infiltrated the mind as if part of some impossible brain teaser. The Patriots often looked inept against the pass. They didn't beat anybody. They don't run consistently. They can't throw outside the numbers.

And yet, Bill Belichick and his charges find themselves faced with a rather familiar predicament, only the New York Giants now standing between the Patriots and further immortality.

The imperfect season.

Flustered and confounded by a poised Baltimore Ravens defense that held Tom Brady without a touchdown pass in a postseason game for the first time since January 2002 - remember the time? - the Patriots pulled out a 23-20 victory in the AFC Championship yesterday in a game nothing short of thrilling. Maybe the Patriots got a little lucky. Maybe their defense is crystallizing at just the right time. Maybe they are destined to avenge the defeat that took place four years ago in the Arizona desert, where the Giants claimed a 17-14 victory in Super Bowl XLII that brought a devastating end to New England's attempt at an unprecedented 19-0 season.

A victory in two weeks will not rewrite history, but it will at least change it a little.

"It wasn?t always perfect," Patriots coach Bill Belichick fittingly told reporters following his team's win over the Ravens. "But [Patriots players] fought to the final gun and we came out on top."

Indeed, even now, it would be fair to ask the following question: just how have the Patriots pulled this off? During the regular season, the Patriots defense ranked 15th in the league in scoring, 31st in yardage and 28th on third down. The Patriots allowed 4.6 yards per rush (24th) and 13 rushing touchdowns (19th). And they did it all against a schedule stuffed with styrofoam peanuts, tissue paper and bubble wrap.

Until yesterday, in fact, the Patriots had not beaten a single team that finished the 2011 regular season with a winning record.

All together now: So what?

Of course, critics of the Giants would be wise to point out that New York finished the regular season at an astonishingly mediocre 9-7, though there is just one small problem: at the moment, head coach Tom Coughlin has his team playing better than just about anybody. In their last five games - all must-wins - the Giants have a claimed a 29-14 win over the New York Jets and a 31-14 victory over the Dallas Cowboys as well as postseason victories over the Atlanta Falcons (24-2), Green Bay Packers (37-20) and the San Francisco 49ers (20-17, in overtime, in last night's NFC Championship game.) This season, the Giants have toppled the top two seeds in the NFC (the Packers and Niners) as well as the top seed in the AFC (the Patriots), winning all three games on the road.

At their best, the Giants have all the elements to beat any team in football. They can run. They can throw. They have a dominating defensive line that can generate pressure without blitzing, allowing their linebackers and defensive backs to clog passing lanes and make life difficult for opposing quarterbacks.

And they have a coach in Tom Coughlin who has outwitted Belichick before.

But again, as we have learned in the past, all of this is nothing more than meaningless backdrop for a game that will stand on its own in less than two weeks.

If you are a Patriots fan - regardless of whether you embrace this second chance against the Giants - there is suddenly a great deal to feel good about. Ever since that loss to New York in Super Bowl XLII, New England's equilibrium has been disrupted. The Patriots have been skewed too heavily on the offensive side of the ball, too reliant on Brady, with whom almost all of their fortunes rested. For the last four years, New England generally has won the higher-scoring games and lost the lower-scoring ones. They have gone as Brady has gone. Until yesterday, New England had not won a regular-season game in which Brady failed to throw a touchdown pass since 2007, another instructive piece of information.

The last time Brady won a playoff game without throwing a touchdown pass was in 2002, when the Patriots won the Super Bowl. The last time they won any game in which he didn't throw a touchdown pass was in 2007, when they reached the Super Bowl. The obvious lesson is that one man cannot get you to the big game all by himself, no matter how accomplished, no matter how gifted.

Ask Dan Marino about this. Or John Elway. Heck, ask Peyton Manning, whose only Super Bowl championship came during a postseason in which he threw three touchdown passes and seven interceptions over four games while posting an aggregate quarterback rating of 70.5.

For that matter, ask Eli Manning, who now has taken his team to as many Super Bowls as his far more celebrated brother.

All of this brings us back to yesterday and the Patriots' ability to persevere despite, based on rating, the second-worst postseason game of Brady's career. (The other also came against the Ravens, in 2009) What we learned yesterday is that Vince Wilfork might mean as much or more to this Patriots team as Brady does, that Sterling Moore can make a difference, that BenJarvus Green-Ellis has his place, too. We learned that even teams like the Giants need help, most notably in the form of two turnovers by a punt returner (San Francisco's Kyle Williams) who single-handedly undermined the performance of a defense that is downright suffocating.

We learned, quite simply, that you don't need to be perfect to win a Super Bowl.

In fact, in some ways, the imperfect ones can be even more rewarding.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

If history is any indication at all, the AFC Championship almost certainly will go the distance. The New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens have played four times in the last five years, and not a single one produced a relatively easy Patriots victory.

That is why a win on Sunday would mean more to the Patriots than any win they have had in four years.

Here we are again, Boston sports fans, in that tense purgatory between victory and defeat. Remember what this feels like? Whatever the point spread, the outcome is in doubt this time. Beginning on Nov. 21, the Patriots have played a succession of inferior opponents that they absolutely, positively should have beaten, games that lined up on their schedule like a list of menial household chores.

Do the dishes. Fold the laundry. Get groceries. Pick up the dry cleaning. Take out the garbage.

But now the Ravens are coming, and we all know what Baltimore is capable of. At least we should. In 2007, with New England chasing an undefeated season, the final score was Patriots 27, Ravens 24 in nothing short of a great New England escape. In 2009, the Ravens were seemingly on their way in for a game-winning touchdown when Baltimore wide receiver Mark Clayton dropped a fourth down pass deep in New England territory of an eventual 27-21 Patriots win. Then came Baltimore's 33-14 dismantling of the Patriots in the divisional playoffs at Foxboro. Then came last year's 23-20 New England victory in an overtime game that marked the return of Patriots receiver Deion Branch.

Total cumulative score: Ravens 98, Patriots 91. New England won three of the four games, though all three victories effectively came down to the final possession.

Get the picture? Expect a close one. When these two teams have met, the games have been both competitive and combative, adjectives that would describe any worthwhile competition in just about any sport.

That's why we watch.

As usual, we all have our opinions on how this game will unfold. None of them mean a blasted thing. (For what it's worth, I like the Patriots to the tune of something like 27-23.) Based on recent history, there is every chance that Baltimore running back Ray Rice will rip up the Patriots on the ground as surely as Tom Brady could shred the Ravens through the air. Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco has had his moments as surely as BenJarvus Green-Ellis. Maybe Matt Light will deftly handle Terrell Suggs. Maybe Suggs will abuse him. Maybe the Ravens will get to Brady and maybe they will not, though it is likely that each sideline will make the necessary adjustments so as to keep at least some balance in check.

You see what we're getting at here? Don't be foolish by expecting a blowout on either side. The players and coaches on these teams are simply too good. When the Ravens defeated the Patriots in the playoffs two years ago, New England's receiving corps operated without Wes Welker (injured) and included such luminaries as Sam Aiken, Chris Baker and Julian Edelman.

For the Patriots, all of that makes Sunday's game an opportunity to prove that they are indisputably back, at least close to being the team they were at the beginning of this millennium. In recent years, for one reason or another, they have simply stalled. Brady got hurt. They lost to the Jets. They had a creampuff schedule. Every year has brought some obstacle the Patriots have been unable to overcome, regular season and postseason success failing to align at the same time.

If we're being honest about this, last week's win over the Denver Broncos really did not tell us much. How the Patriots performed was far more worthy of our praise than the outcome, particularly on defense. But we all know that Denver faced the Buffalo Bills in Week 16 and got mercilessly walloped by a 40-14 score, Buffalo's only win in its final nine games.

Is that the Patriots' fault? Of course not. They earned the No. 1 seed because they had no real lapses, finishing 13-3 and earning a favorable draw as a result. Had the Ravens similarly held serve against relative door posts like Jacksonville, Seattle or Tennessee, Sunday's game would be in Baltimore. Instead, it will be played here in New England, where the Patriots can secure their footing among the NFL's truly elite.

Years ago, when the Patriots were winning Super Bowls, New England's ability to perform at the critical moments is what separated the Patriots from everyone else. With time dwindling and broadcaster John Madden calling for the Patriots to take a knee in Super Bowl XXXVI, Brady drove the team down the field and set up Adam Vinatieri's game-winning kick. The Patriots' dynasty was instantly born, New England thumbing its nose at the doubters and second-guessers while winning three Super Bowls in four years.

In the nearly eight years since their last title, the doubt has slowly seeped back toward Foxborough, the Patriots losing to the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship, to the New York Giants in the Super Bowl, to the Ravens and Jets in the earlier rounds of the playoffs. Along the way, we have wondered whether the Patriots can beat the good teams when it matters anymore, wondered whether they can execute when it matters most, wondered if they can reclaim the aura and feeling that made them the most clutch situational team in football.

Only the Ravens now stand between the Patriots and the answer, between New England and a trip to the most celebrated event in sports.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

"This is nothing about ’09 or ’10. This is nothing about last week or last season or last month or 10 years ago. It’s about this week. The clock’s ticking. And every second that goes by, we’re one second closer to getting to that game.”

- Tom Brady during his weekly radio appearance on WEEI

* * *

Tom Brady generally has been at his best when the stakes have been highest, in the fourth quarter, in the final minutes. Maybe he is there now. Maybe Brady is in what amounts to the 2-minute drill of a historic career, one that has him among the greatest ever to play quarterback in the National Football League.

So now Brady is saying what we all have been saying for years – the clock is ticking – an acknowledgment that the incomparable quarterback of the Patriots sees what we all see. The road before him now is a great deal shorter than the one behind. Brady will be 35 at the start of next season, entering the second year of a four-year contract, and he once again has the chance to enter territory where so few have traveled.

With a win this weekend over the Baltimore Ravens at Gillette Stadium, Brady will earn the right to play in a fifth Super Bowl, a total matched in NFL history by only one other quarterback: John Elway. No one ever has played in six. No one has won more than four. If Brady can close his career the way he has closed so many games during his illustrious 12-year career, he could earn his place as the single greatest quarterback ever to play the game.

With more Super Bowl appearances than Elway. With as many (or more) Super Bowl victories than Joe Montana. With more winning on his resume than anybody in the history of the game at a position unlike any other in all of professional sports.

For Brady, it all starts anew this week, with this game against a Ravens team that battered him in the playoffs only two short years ago. In that game, Brady went 23 of 42 for just 154 yards. He threw two touchdowns against three interceptions. He was sacked three times. Brady’s quarterback rating of 49.1 was the lowest he has posted in 20 career postseason games, the statistical nadir of Brady’s existence as the most successful quarterback of his era.

Another season then passed without the Patriots winning a postseason game, and so a little more sand trickled through the hourglass of what has been Brady’s career.

Now 15-5 in his postseason career as a starter, Brady still has a great deal to gain on Saturday. We focus on the winning in professional sports, and maybe we do that to a fault. Trent Dilfer has won as many Super Bowls as Peyton Manning. Dan Marino never won one at all. The real accomplishments sometimes come from merely being in contention, from being in position, from an astonishingly high level of consistency that makes championships an annual goal and expectation.

Five Super Bowls? Think of that. With a win on Sunday, Brady will have played in more Super Bowls than all but nine franchises in NFL history. More than the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings or Chicago Bears. More than the Ravens, New Orleans Saints, New York Jets and San Diego Chargers combined. More than anyone really has the right to play in, particularly during an era of salary caps and parity.

During his time in New England, Brady’s metamorphosis has been extraordinary. He started out as a heady backup quarterback. He became an iconic figure. What the football world has now is a combination of Joe Namath (off the field) and Joe Montana (on it), a blend of looks, talent, intelligence and opportunity that has at once made Brady one of the most successful, identifiable and enviable people in the world. There has been good and bad to come from that. Brady undoubtedly longs for privacy. He is both revered and resented. He is part quarterback and part beau, spending a fair amount of his time as the lesser-known Mr. Bundchen.

On Saturday, against the overmatched Denver Broncos, Brady tied an NFL postseason record with six touchdown passes, five of them coming in a record first half. He threw the ball with conviction. At times, Brady’s focus seemed so great that the ball landed in his receivers hands as if it were a baseball snapping into a catcher’s mitt, the echo of an unmistakable pop all but reverberating throughout Gillette Stadium.

Today, just four days before the AFC Championship Game between the Patriots and Ravens, New England is now bracing for the sixth conference title game of the Brady-Belichick era. As always, Brady will need help if the Patriots are to advance. The beauty of team sports is that no one man can take a team to a championship, particularly in football, and Brady knows this as surely as anyone who ever has stepped behind center.

Now more than ever, in the wake of nearly a four-year span in Foxboro, Brady understands that opportunities like this are still rare.

Brady knows much more than the fact that the clock is ticking.

What he knows, for the first time in a long time again, is that the Patriots have a chance.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

For the moment, at least, there will be no talk of postseason losing streaks, of imbalance on the field, of bad draft classes and organizational decision making. The Patriots are back in the AFC title game for the sixth time in 11 seasons under coach Bill Belichick, and they are there thanks to a thoroughly dominating effort on Saturday night that may have been the team's best performance of the season.

Waiting for the Patriots now are the Baltimore Ravens in what will be a true clash of philosophies and cultures.

Less than 24 hours after the Patriots vaporized the Denver Broncos by a 45-10 score on Saturday night, the Baltimore Ravens defeated the pesky Houston Texans by a 20-13 count yesterday in Baltimore. The best offense in the AFC now meets perhaps the best defense, the Patriots instilled as 7-1/2-point favorites for the right to go to Super Bowl XLVI.

May the best doctrine win.

"I think Bill [Belichick] and [Tom Brady] and them know,'' said Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis, according to The Baltimore Sun. "They know they are going to definitely see a totally different team, just like we know we're going to see a totally different team. We're not the Denver Broncos. We're the Baltimore Ravens, so I think we're both up to the task.

"I think all we have to do is be the team that we are. We don't take the game from this week into next week. There's a 24-hour rule -- win, lose or draw. You're going to see a totally different Ravens team next week because we're going to be playing a totally different team in the Patriots. That's just the way the playoffs are."

In this modern-day NFL, of course, that is the way football is. The game changes week-to-week. No two games are ever connected. Just ask the New Orleans Saints. Or, for that matter, the Green Bay Packers.

Under the circumstances, this is particularly good news for the Patriots, who turned in the kind of defensive outing on Saturday night that fans have been waiting for all year. (At least since Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Tyler Palko passed for 230 yards against New England in Week 11.) The Patriots spent the large majority of the regular season running into one another on the defensive side of the ball, often making even ordinary quarterbacks look like a collection of surgeons and gunslingers.

But on Saturday? On Saturday, albeit against the erratic Tim Tebow, the Patriots looked rather, well, ferocious. New England's only real blip in the game came after a poorly executed throw by Tom Brady in the first quarter, after which the Patriots allowed a 24-yard touchdown drive. Excluding that, the Patriots allowed only 96 yards of offense during a first half in which they built an insurmountable 35-7 lead.

Following that score, which made the score 14-7, the Broncos managed just 29 yards on their next six possessions and never once crossed the 50-yard line. By the time the Broncos again saw the other side of the equator, their season had been scorched.

Now here's the obvious question:

Can the Patriots do something remotely as impressive to quarterback Joe Flacco and the Ravens? Will they need to? Can Baltimore slow down Brady, who will never be compared with T.J. Yates? Can the Patriots run on the Ravens the way Arian Foster did? Won't Baltimore running back Ray Rice be far more of a factor in this game than he was yesterday? Is there any real reason to compare this game with Baltimore's last postseason trip to Foxboro, a 33-14 Ravens victory in which the Patriots got steamrolled?

Again, for the moment, let's all agree on what the NFL playoffs have told us thus far: offense is as important as ever, but defense is hardly irrelevant. Of the top three offenses in the NFL this season, two (the Packers and Saints) were eliminated from the playoffs over the weekend while allowing a combined 73 points. New Orleans twice had the lead with fewer than two minutes to play and allowed a pair of touchdowns to a San Francisco offense that is hardly prolific. The Packers got their faces pushed in by a New York Giants club currently playing better defense than perhaps any other team in the league.

In their last four games, the Giants have allowed 12.5 points per game to the New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers. During the regular season, those clubs ranked a respective 13th, 15th, 7th and first in the NFL in points per game.

The conclusion? Though hardly impossible, the Patriots are not likely to put up 45 points against the Ravens. They will need to stop Rice. They will need to mess with Flacco. And if the Patriots are able to do both, all while Brady performs at a level we have grown accustomed to seeing over the last 11 years, then the Patriots will be boarding plane in roughly two weeks with a single destination in mind.

Indianapolis.

And they won't be going to visit the Colts.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe columnist

Beyond tomorrow night's meeting with the Denver Broncos, the question remains: Can the Patriots win a Super Bowl with a team that is disproportionately reliant on both a quarterback and a high-flying offense?

And for that matter, can anyone?

So begins the Patriots' latest quest for the Super Bowl championship, a potential fourth title during the marriage of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. What we all want to believe is that those two men alone are enough. But if the Patriots are to win another championship in these next few weeks, they will have to do so in a manner with which they have not yet succeeded.

Or, perhaps, with a complete break from how they have performed thus far.

Statistics are for losers, as Belichick has often told us, so let's forgo any discussion here about the yardage the Patriots have allowed through the air, about turnover differential, about yards per rush or quarterback rating. Let's focus on the one thing that we all agree matters: scoring. In the Belichick era, only once have the Patriots finished the regular season with a defense ranked sixth or better (basically the top 20 percent) and failed to reach at least the AFC title game, that coming in the 2009 campaign that was Brady's first in the wake of knee surgery.

Of course, that was the year of fourth-and-2 at Indianapolis, after which the Patriots effectively became the 2011 New York Jets, their locker room deteriorating to the point of mutiny. That Patriots club finished sixth in the league in scoring offense and fifth in the league in scoring defense, but nonetheless ended up as Route 1 road pizza after the Baltimore Ravens ran them over in January.

To that end, here is where the Patriots have ranked in scoring offense and scoring defense during the regular season since the start of their golden era in 2001:

Maybe you glean something from that list. Maybe you don't. For every Patriots team that has failed (and we use that term very loosely) during the Brady-Belichick era, there is an explanation or excuse. By the time the 2006 Patriots faced Indianapolis in the AFC title game, for example, their second-ranked defense was battered and decimated. The 2007 club should have won the Super Bowl. The 2009 team lacked heart and character, blowing out bad teams like Tennessee (59-0) and Tampa Bay (35-7) while getting trampled by New Orleans (38-17).

In that latter scenario, you come out with a 2-1 record and a point differential of plus-66, but are you really that good?

What that list does tell us, if anything is that the Patriots have never reached the AFC title game with anything worse than a defense that ranked in the top six in the league in scoring, a trend that is likely to end following tomorrow night's affair against the heavy prohibitive underdog Broncos. And what it tells us, too, is that the Patriots have been able to protect a mediocre (at times) offense with a well-above average defense far more effectively than they have been able to do to the other way around.

NFL history, too, has shown us that you are more likely to win with a dominating defense than a dominating offense, for whatever reason. In 2008, for instance, the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl with an offense that ranked 20th in scoring. The 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers ranked 18th in scoring offense, the 2000 Baltimore Ravens 14th. Those clubs were every bit as stifling defensively during the playoffs as they were during the regular season, meaning the formula never really changed.

So, which teams have won with offense? The 2009 New Orleans Saints are the most obvious example, though it is important to remember that they were a domed team that played the entire postseason at home before facing the Indianapolis Colts (another domed team) in a Super Bowl played in Miami (Even then, the biggest play of the game was a defensive play). The 2006 Colts possessed a historically bad defense during the regular season, but Indianapolis was shockingly better during the playoffs, holding opponents to eight, six and 17 points in three of its four playoff games.

And before anyone suggests that Peyton Manning somehow protected those Indianapolis outfits, he didn't. In four postseason games that year, Manning had individual game ratings of 71.9, 39.6, 79.1 and 81.8. His overall rating was 70.5. He threw three touchdowns and seven interceptions. He had no more than one touchdown pass in any game.

That Colts team, without question, is perhaps the greatest hope for these Patriots, who seem as flawed defensively as any team during the Belichick era. But does that mean New England cannot play good defense when it counts? Certainly, time will tell. In New England last's two big wins -- at the New York Jets on Nov. 13 and against the Broncos last month -- New England totaled nine sacks and forced six turnovers. Neither the Jets nor the Broncos really qualifies as anything more than an average offensive team, but the Patriots defense made at least enough of a contribution in those affairs to help affect the outcome.

Starting tomorrow night, can the Patriots do the same? We will soon find out.

Based on recent history, after all, their chances at a championship may very well depend on it.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe columnist

The legend of Tim Tebow grows, only fueled by the happenings on Sunday in the Mile High City. But in his private moments this week, Patriots coach Bill Belichick is likely scoffing at what the Pittsburgh Steelers did to themselves, too.

It seems impossible to think Belichick will make the same mistake.

The NFL being the NFL, there is still the chance the Broncos will stun the Patriots and the football world on Saturday night by upsetting the Patriots at Gillette Stadium. But it is not likely. If the Broncos do somehow manage to pull off the seemingly impossible - the Patriots are overwhelming favorites - they will likely have to do it in far different fashion than the manner in which they beat the Steelers, at least on the offensive side of the ball.

Belichick, after all, is not likely to leave a makeshift New England secondary in 1-on-1 coverage the way the Steelers did, even if he refuses to say so.

"You know, each team plays their own defensive scheme against them, whether it’s Buffalo or Kansas City or Pittsburgh or whoever it is," Belichick told reporters yesterday when asked if Pittsburgh's defensive approach against the Broncos was at all revealing. "We have our scheme. We’ll take some things from each game that we’ve seen and try to apply it to what we do. We’re not them, they’re not us, we have different players - same thing with Kansas City, Buffalo and all that. There’s certainly a lot to be learned but at the same time, we have our own matchups and we’re different from everybody else."

Translation: We're not going to play it the way the Steelers did, but we wouldn't have done that anyway ... Oh, and the Steelers were dumb.

Check that.

The Steelers were downright astonishingly and historically stupid.

Professional football is obviously a detailed, complex game, but even in the most simplistic terms, what the Steelers did against the Broncos Sunday made no sense and reeked of arrogance. Against an inaccurate and inconsistent quarterback who sometimes looks as if he's playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, the Steelers left themselves vulnerable to the big play. Rather than make Tebow surgically maneuver his way down the field - something he has not proven he can do - the Steelers allowed Tebow to play a risk-reward game that Tebow exploited to the max.

Think about it: Tebow completed fewer than 50 percent of his passes - 47.6 percent, to be precise - but still threw for 316 yards while averaging 31.6 yards per completion. In basketball parlance, the Steelers packed the paint against someone whose only chance was to hit 3-pointers, which Tebow did.

Dumb.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

As we all know, statistics can be deceiving and are easily manipulated in any argument, but they're worth discussing here. For example, on all throws that traveled more than 40 yards in the air this season, the overall completion percentage in the NFL was 23.3 percent. On 257 attempts - an average of just eight per team, or one every two games - quarterbacks threw 23 touchdowns and 25 interceptions for an overall rating of 69.4. The bottom line is that the deep ball is generally an absurdly low-percentage and inefficient throw, even for someone like Tom Brady, who was 1 for 8 on such attempts.

The only team that was better than 50 percent on long throws during the regular season? The Cleveland Browns, who went 1 for 1.

Before Sunday, during his time as a starter, Tebow was 0 for 5 on throws of more than 40 yards. Most everybody(end) has a poor percentage on the long throws, which is why they are rarely attempted. Nonetheless, Tebow went 1 for 1 on such attempts Sunday, completing a 51-yard strike to Demaryius Thomas early in the second quarter (with the Steelers holding a 6-0 edge) because the Steelers left Ike Taylor isolated against Thomas on the left sideline.

Even then, Denver still had the ball on only the Pittsburgh 31-yard line. The Steelers could have stiffened and held the Broncos to a field goal. Instead, the Steelers went right back to the same defense, allowing a 30-yard strike from Tebow to Eddie Royal (in man coverage) two plays later, giving Denver a 7-6 lead.

After that, the Steelers kept making the same mistake over and over again, particularly on the intermediate routes where only the great quarterbacks make their money. In the process, they turned Tebow from a mediocre quarterback (at best) to a world-beater.

For what it's worth, here are Tebow's passer ratings on throws of different lengths both for his time as a starter and Sunday's win over the Steelers:

	Season	Sunday
1-10 yards	68.7	28.6
11-20 yards	74.5	129.5
21-30 yards	84.1	156.3
31-40 yards	78.9	39.6

Staggering, right? On throws from 11-30 yards against the Steelers on Sunday, Tebow performed (at least statistically) like Peyton Manning. So was that because Tebow learned to read defenses and developed uncanny accuracy between Week 17 and the playoffs? Or was it because the Steelers played illogically aggressive defense that left their corners on an island (especially Taylor) and allowed Denver receivers to run wild after the catch?

Go back and look at Tebow's 80-yard, game-winning throw to Thomas in overtime. The line of scrimmage is the Denver 20-yard line. Thomas catches the ball at about the 38- or 39-yard line. By leaving Taylor in 1-on-1 coverage - with no help in the middle of the field - all Tebow had to do was complete an 18- or 19-yard pass (against man coverage) to get an 80-yard touchdown. Had the Steelers just played zone, they likely would have given up an incompletion - or maybe a 5-yard run.

During the regular season, after all, Tebow's overall completion percentage of 46.5 ranked 34th among 34 qualifying NFL quarterbacks. Nice move, Mike Tomlin. You too, Dick LeBeau. Instead of letting Tebow fire the ball into the ground (or at your defenders) by playing a more crowded zone - particularly in an age when man-to-man defense is becoming virtually impossible - you opted to reward him with big gains for easier throws.

Knuckleheads.

Say this for Belichick: seemingly settled on playing a more aggressive, attacking defense this season that was intent on getting after the quarterback and relying on the coverage skills of Devin McCourty, he scrapped the plan early. Belichick decided right then and there that his defensive backs couldn't cover. The Patriots may not win a championship this year because their defense remains suspect against above-average quarterback play, but they also weren't going to win 13 games during the regular season with McCourty repeatedly getting beaten over the top.

So Belichick went to Plan B, in which he asked the Patriots to sit back against a succession of second-rate quarterbacks from Tyler Palko, Vince Young and Dan Orlovsky to Rex Grossman, Matt Moore and, yes, Tebow.

Which is why Belichick will do the same thing Saturday night, sacrificing the run and challenging Tebow to keep up with Brady by staying on the ground.

Even with a hobbled Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback, that is something the Steelers should have been able to figure out.

"He showed he's a quarterback in the NFL, case closed. They say he couldn't throw. They said we wouldn't be able to run the ball on them. We did that. I wonder what they're going to say next week."
- Denver Broncos running back Willis McGahee, commenting on the play of teammate and quarterback Tim Tebow following yesterday's playoff upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

The Patriots, presumably, will not make the same mistake the Pittsburgh Steelers made, which is to say the Patriots will not dare the Denver Broncos to throw the ball deep. Bill Belichick is far more likely to make the Broncos methodically drive down the field, asking Tebow to demonstrate the one thing he still has failed to show.

Consistency.

And so, the road to Indianapolis just became a little clearer, New England no longer required to deal with Pittsburgh this postseason as the pieces continue falling neatly into place. There is hardly any shame in that. On Saturday night, the Patriots seemed destined to face both the Steelers and Baltimore Ravens if they are to return to the Super Bowl this year. Now the Steelers are out of the picture, felled by a poorly conceived game plan and a young, unrelenting quarterback who continues to leave doubters in his wake.

Say this for the irresistible Mr. Tebow: the Steelers dared him to beat them deep - and beat them he did. Prior to yesterday, the mighty Pittsburgh defense had surrendered two pass plays all season of at least 40 yards. Yesterday, the Steelers allowed four, culminating in an 80-yard strike from Tebow to Demaryius Thomas that ended Pittsburgh's season on the first play of overtime.

In fact, Tebow's gains through the air yesterday looked a little like a Powerball ticket: 21, 51, 30, 58, 6, 40, 13, 6, 15, 80. Add in a 32-yard interference penalty on the human top known as Ike Taylor and Tebow's 316-yard passing day actually becomes a 348-yard performance, no matter Tebow's completion percentage or throwing mechanics.

Indeed, with those numbers, the Broncos hit the lottery.

Jackpot.

The Patriots will be a far more complicated challenge for the Broncos, if for no other reason than a New England offense guided by Tom Brady. The Patriots scored 41 points in a victory at Denver last month and are not likely to stall the way the Steelers did yesterday. Tom Brady's left shoulder aside, he is far healthier than Ben Roethlisberger is, which is why New England has been installed as the favorite by 13 1/2 points, give or take.

Let's say that again: depending on the specific oddsmaker, the Patriots are bigger favorites in this game than they have been in any postseason affair since Super Bowl XLII. They are clearly the superior team. Add in the fact that New England is playing at home coming off a bye, and the Patriots should absolutely, positively be hosting the AFC Championship game in Foxborough on Jan. 22.

If that's presumptuous, so be it. The Patriots went 13-3 this season and were the No. 1 seed in the conference. The Broncos went 8-8, the worst record among all playoff participants. Were it not for the fact that Denver plays in the anemic AFC West, the Broncos would have been home watching yesterday.

If you believe in earning your way to the playoffs, maybe they should have been.

Of course, we all know the story line with this Patriots team, which seems (on paper) terribly imbalanced. This year, especially, New England was borderline historic on both sides of the ball. (One good, one bad.) Since the start of the 2008 season, the Patriots have really been no more effective or successful than the Atlanta Falcons, who have basically averaged 11 wins per season. Both teams went 0-2 in the postseason right up until yesterday, when the Falcons threw up on themselves yet again while managing two points - yes, two - in a 24-2 defeat at the hands of the New York Giants.

That made Atlanta 0-3 in the playoffs under quarterback Matt Ryan, a 6-foot-5, 225-pound NFL prototype who now has one fewer postseason victory on his resume than the unconventional Tebow does.

In New England, once again, the standards have long been different. Due to the success they shared together in the early part of this millennium, Belichick and Brady are regarded as failures if they end up with anything less than a championship. They wouldn't be who they are if they didn't regard themselves the same way. Now the Patriots are set to begin the postseason anew with what looks like a seeming layup, a relatively mediocre Denver team that just upended one of the two remaining clubs to defeat the Patriots this year.

In the NFL this January, the field is now down to eight.

The Steelers are dead.

And the ball, quite literally, is about to be placed squarely in the Patriots' hands.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

Despite not having won a playoff game since January 2008, the Patriots will be a second-round playoff participant for the second consecutive year this season. Let's give them credit for that much. The NFL bye is, in fact, a first-round playoff victory, a reward that allows the Patriots the right to stand by and watch others fight for their lives this weekend.

With that in mind, here is a look at the four NFL playoff games scheduled this weekend with particular attention placed on the Patriots' obvious interests:

SATURDAY
The matchup:Cincinnati (9-7) at Houston (10-6), 4:30 p.m.

The line: Houston by 3.

Impact on the Patriots: If Cincinnati wins, the Patriots are assured of facing the Bengals in the divisional round next weekend. If Houston wins, New England is guaranteed the winner of Sunday's game between Pittsburgh and Denver (with Houston traveling to Baltimore in the divisional round).

Overview: The fact that Vegas odds-makers have placed this line at three points should tell you plenty when you consider that home-field advantage is allegedly worth three points. Effectively, the gambling world sees this game as a dead heat - which it may very well be. The Texans and Bengals played in Week 14 at Cincinnati, Houston emerging as a 20-19 winner on a last-second touchdown pass from T.J. Yates.

Houston looked like as legitimate a threat as anyone else in the AFC this season until it lost both defensive lineman Mario Williams and quarterback Matt Schaub to season-ending injuries, which makes running back Arian Foster an obvious focus entering this game. If the Texans can run this weekend, the Bengals are likely cooked. (Cincinnati had one of the better run defenses in the NFL this year, allowing just 3.9 yards per rush (sixth).) But if the game ends up in the hands of the two rookie quarterbacks - Yates and Andy Dalton - we could very well the same kind of nip-and-tuck affair that took place in Week 14.

For the Patriots, the indisputable, one of the better scenarios would start with a Cincinnati win. If that happens, the Patriots immediately would know their first-round opponent while creating the likelihood that Pittsburgh would travel to Baltimore for the divisional round. That would ensure tha Pats facing only the Ravens or the Steelers -- and not both -- on the road to the Super Bowl.

SATURDAY
The matchup: Detroit (10-6) at New Orleans (13-3), 8 p.m.

The line: New Orleans by 10 1/2.

Impact on the Patriots: If you're really thinking big, the Patriots' obvious concerns in the NFC come down to one thing: the best possible matchup in the Super Bowl. And while Drew Brees is a good quarterback wherever he plays, the simple truth is that he is otherworldly indoors. With this year's Super Bowl scheduled for Lucas Oil Stadium (indoors) in Indianapolis, you should be rooting for the Lions.

Overview: Everything in this game points to a shootout at the Superdome, where the Saints were 8-0 and averaged an NFL-best 41.1 points per game at home this year. (That is not a misprint.) New Orleans defeated the Lions by a 31-17 score at the dome in Week 13, with quarterbacks Brees and Matthew Stafford (both 5,000-yard passers with 40+ touchdown passes) combining for 750 yards in the air.

That said, the point spread for this game seems a little high. If the Saints win, New Orleans is guaranteed a trip to San Francisco in the divisional round. If the Lions win, Detroit will go to Green Bay. Regardless, the NFC has the far deeper field in these playoffs, with five of the six conference participants ranking in the top 10 of the league in points scored. (The San Francisco 49ers were 11th).

For the Patriots, determining a best-possible matchup in the Super Bowl is tricky. Do the Pats want a shootout, making matchups with Green Bay and New Orleans most desirable? Or do they want a pairing with a defense-first team like the Niners? Regardless, nobody should want to face Brees in a dome, where he threw 37 touchdown passes against eight interceptions this year while posting a rating of 118.7.

SUNDAY
The matchup: Atlanta (10-6) at NY Giants (9-7), 1 p.m.

The line: New York by 3.

Impact on the Patriots: Deep down, given the outcome of Super Bowl XLII four years ago, every Patriots fan would love another crack at the Giants in the big game. That said, New York is the only NFC team the Patriots faced this year -- and the Giants ended the Patriots' home winning streak in the process. Tough call here, particularly when one considers the potential impact the Giants could have on the field. (More on this in a moment.)

Overview: On paper, at least, the Falcons have the better defense, having allowed fewer points per game while being more stingy against both the run and the pass. Assuming health, both clubs have fairly balanced offenses, though Eli Manning seemed to jump to the next level this year, giving the Giants a more explosive passing attack.

All of this is why the Vegas odd-smakers have seemingly declared this game as much of a draw as the Bengals-Texans tilt.

That said, the Giants can be scary-good when at their best. New York's defensive line can create major problems for opposing teams, something evident in the Week 17 beating of the Dallas Cowboys. If the Saints defeat the Lions, a New York victory would send the Giants to Green Bay - and there may be no team in the NFC more equipped to upend the Packers. Green Bay defeated the Giants by a 38-35 score in Week 13, but it was basically Green bay's toughest test of the year.

Translation: If you want the Packers out, the Giants may be your best bet.

SUNDAY
The matchup: Pittsburgh (12-4) at Denver (8-8), 4:30 p.m.

The line: Pittsburgh by 8 1/2.

Impact on the Patriots: Again, by the time this game kicks off, the Patriots already may have their answer. Still, in the dreamiest of dream scenarios, the Patriots could get to the Super Bowl by facing both Denver (in the divisional round) and Houston (in the AFC Championship). But is there really any shot of that happening?

Overview: Ben Roethlisberger is banged up and the Steelers are without running back Rashard Mendaenhall -- and yet Pittsburgh is still favored by more than a touchdown on the road. The obvious reason is the inept Denver offense, which ranked just 25th in the NFL in scoring and managed just 18.5 points per game with Tim Tebow at quarterback.

Here's the problem: in the last month, with Roethlisberger at quarterback, the Steelers scored just 30 points in three games. The Steelers should be able to beat the Broncos on the strength of their defense alone -- with almost anyone at quarterback -- but the Steelers offense has been very shaky in recent weeks.

While we've spelled out the best-case scenarios for the Patriots, the worst-case scenario, too, is obvious. New England's toughest road to the Super Bowl includes games against Pittsburgh and Baltimore, a scenario that would start to develop with victories by the Texans and Steelers this weekend. And if Pittsburgh can win while keeping Denver away from Roethlisberger, the Steelers could pose a significant threat to the patriots in the divisional round next weekend.

During the regular season, of course, the Steelers defeated the Patriots at Heinz Field in a 25-17 game that was hardly so close.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Staff

Today we'll go around the horn and take a look at each of Boston's four major pro teams.

If and when the Red Sox have difficulty closing games this year, the first question we will all ask will inevitably concern Jonathan Papelbon. In the interim, let's give the Red Sox credit for adhering to their philosophy.

The Keith Foulke signing helped win the Red Sox a World Series, of course, but his three-year, $20.75-million contract remains the last long-term deal the Sox have awarded to their closer (unless you count Bobby Jenks). Papelbon operated on a series of one-year contracts with the Red Sox, earning roughly $27.5 million over his final three years in Boston. But that is hardly the equivalent of a three-year, $27.5 million contract because the Red Sox never, ever exposed themselves to long-term risk at the position, no matter how much they were willing to pay Papelbon in any one season.

So it is now with Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon, who appear to be the closer and primary set-up man, in that order, in Bobby Valentine's inaugural bullpen. Bailey is eligible for arbitration this offseason and Melancon is not; combined, they are not likely to earn more than $3 million. Even if you believe the Red Sox erred by letting Papelbon go - and some of us believe they did - replacing him with Bailey and Melancon at least makes financial sense, particularly when examining the Red Sox' investment history at closer.

If they had signed someone like Ryan Madson to a three- or four-year contract, after all, wouldn't the Sox have been far better off just giving a little more to retain Papelbon?

That said, the Red Sox have operated like a small-market team this offseason, which is fine. Overall, they are spending enough money to win. Bailey, Melancon, Ryan Sweeney (who is underrated) and everyone from Carlos Silva to Brandon Duckworth address some of the concerns the Red Sox had with regard to pitching depth and bullpen help, Sweeney remaining as a serviceable replacement until Ryan Kalish is ready to come back.

Could the Sox still use a righthanded-hitting outfielder? Absolutely. But after spending an official $189.4 million in luxury tax dollars last year - and those are the only dollars that should matter to fans - the Sox are at roughly $175 million entering a season with a $178 million threshold. They seem intent on remaining below the tax line.

The point?

Barring a major trade or maneuver that creates payroll space, what you see now basically might be all you get you get.

Unless Greg Stiemsma is indeed the next Bill Russell, the Celtics may be worse than many of us thought. Entering this season, the Celtics looked like a second-round playoff team, just as they were a year ago. But after the first six games, one cannot help but wonder if they have slipped even further down the ladder, closer to the middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference.

Admittedly, the Celtics were without Paul Pierce in their first three games, but their three wins are against Washington (twice) and Detroit, two of the worst teams in the league. By contrast, the Celtics' three losses have come against Miami, New York and New Orleans, the last of which was most alarming given the departure of Chris Paul.

In those three games, the Celtics allowed an average of 106 points per contest, a figure that would rank 29th in the league; as it is, with three games against the impotent Wizards and Pistons, the Celtics rank 20th in scoring defense. The Knicks, Heat and Hornets shot a combined 49.6 percent from the field against the Celtics, which is not much worse than what Rajon Rondo shot last season from the free-throw line (58.6 percent).

In many ways, all of this comes back to Kevin Garnett, who has lost more than a step since arriving in Boston. When Garnett got here, he had led the NBA in rebounding four years in a row; his rebounding average has basically been cut in half. Garnett's length and athleticism allowed him to play well above the rim, particularly at the defensive end, and we all know the value he possessed as the 2007-08 NBA defensive player of the Year.

Back then, he was the one being compared with Russell.

But now? Relatively speaking, the Celtics' interior defense stinks. The Celtics should win tonight's game against the New Jersey Nets, but the next six games on the schedule come against Indiana (twice), Dallas, Chicago and Oklahoma City. How the Celtics fare in those contests should give us a fairly clear picture of just how far the Celtics have fallen since Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals, the night the window officially closed.

With all due respect to Henrik Sedin, he just doesn't get it. Following a 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings over the weekend, the Canucks forward was asked about the physical play of Kings defenseman Drew Doughty and answered with this:

"You know what? I'm pretty tired of that question. We won the President's Trophy last year, we went to the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Final. We didn't lose the final because we were pushed around, we lost because we couldn't score."

Well, uh, doesn't one lead to the other?

As we all know, the Canucks are scheduled to arrive at the TD Garden on Saturday, where they will face the Bruins for the first time since last spring's epic seven-game series. In their three trips to the Garden during the Stanley Cup finals, the Canucks were outscored 17-3. In the last two of those contests - Games 4 and 6 - Vancouver goaltender Roberto Luongo was shamefully pulled from the game. The Canucks have been answering questions about their toughness ever since, which brings obvious interest to Saturday's matinee.

Consider: slightly more than a year ago at this time, the Bruins were the ones who were having their makeup questioned following a historic collapse against the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2010 playoffs. The first time the Bruins went into Philadelphia last season, the Bruins won, 3-0. The game was one of many "statement" games by the Bruins during the regular season, laying the groundwork for the Bruins' retaliatory sweep of the Flyers last spring and their victory over the Canucks.

Since their wretched 3-7 start, the Bruins are a sterling 21-3-1, amassing 43 of a possible 50 points. Vancouver similarly has overcome a slow start. Saturday's affair comes at roughly the midpoint of this season, and it certainly would benefit the Bruins to keep the Canucks under their collective thumbs, particularly on the TD Garden ice.

But what would it say about the Canucks if Vancouver gets its doors blown off again?

We all agree that the NFL has become glorified arena ball, and the question remains as to whether a team can truly win a championship based solely on the passing game. Many Patriots followers point to the 2009 New Orleans Saints as evidence that the Patriots can succeed this postseason, but the better comparison might be the 2006 Indianapolis Colts.

That year, after all, the Colts ranked 23d in the league in scoring defense, 21st in total defense (yardage) and a historically bad 32d in rushing defense. Indianapolis' passing defense, based on defensive passer rating, was a mediocre 15th.

And then, come playoff time, things completely and inexplicably flipped, the Colts allowing just 16.2 points per game, second-best to the Baltimore Ravens, whom Indianapolis defeated - on the road - in the postseason.

Here's the other thing: unlike the 2009 Saints or, for that matter, the 1999 St. Louis Rams, Indianapolis had to venture outdoors to get to the Super Bowl. For all the optimistic analogies made between this Patriots team and the 2009 Saints, New Orleans played exclusively indoors to reach the Super Bowl. (Ditto for the 1999 Rams.) The only truly pass-happy team to win the Super Bowl while venturing outdoors in recent years is last year's Green Bay Packers, who also ranked second in the NFL in scoring defense and fifth in total defense.

Does that mean the Patriots cannot win it all this year?

Hardly.

But it suggests that things would have to change dramatically on the defensive side of the ball.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Staff

What is at stake now, at least to some degree, is the identity of your New England Patriots. Over the last four regular seasons, the Patriots have won more games than any team in the NFL. And yet, despite that, New England does not possess a single postseason victory.

Beginning on that fateful night in the Arizona desert, in fact, the Patriots seemingly have gone from the Team of the Decade and the model organization in all of professional sports to paper tigers - and in one fell swoop.

In the words of Captain Jack Ross, the Marine prosecutor played by Kevin Bacon in "A Few Good Men": These are the undisputed facts of the case.

Whether all of that changes this month remains to be seen, particularly following a regular season in which the Patriots went an impressive 13-3 and once again established themselves as the top seed in the AFC. Like last season, when New England finished 14-2, the Patriots won their last eight games while lighting up the scoreboard (36.4 points per game) as if they were in Times Square. Quarterback Tom Brady was borderline superhuman along the way, amassing 19 touchdown passes against just two interceptions.

And yet, because of last year, the Patriots had relatively little to gain during the regular season. Short of another 16-0 record or a dramatic improvement by the defense - neither of which occurred - there was going to be relatively little to take place during this regular season to make us feel better about the Patriots' chances for another Super Bowl title.

As a matter of perspective, here are the six NFL teams to have won 40 or more regular season games over the last four years:

New England 48-16
New Orleans 45-19
Pittsburgh 45-19
Baltimore 44-20
Atlanta 43-21
Green Bay 42-22

Of those six clubs, three have won Super Bowls during the same span: the Packers, Saints and Steelers. The Ravens have won at least one playoff game in each of the last three seasons, going a combined 4-3 and once reaching the AFC title game. And then there are the Patriots and Falcons, who have gone winless in the postseason.

Think of that. When you get right down to it, the only difference between the Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons over the last four years has been an average of roughly one win per regular season.

Now there's a measuring stick for you. Bill Walsh's 49ers. Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys. Mike Smith's Falcons.

Yippee.

All of that brings us back to the here and now, to the Jan. 14 game that will take place between the Patriots and Cincinnati Bengals, Steelers, or Denver Broncos. A victory will put New England in the AFC Championship Game. A loss will cement the Patriots' place as a phantom contender. The standards in New England are admittedly different (and completely out of balance) since the Patriots won three Super Bowls in the early part of this millennium, but there is no disputing the fact that the last three Patriots seasons have ended in extraordinarily disappointing fashion.

The defeat to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII? Oh, it was an obvious killer, the Patriots coming within a whisker of immortality. But in 2008, 2009 and 2010, the Patriots' postseason balloon never ever got off the ground.

With regard to this regular season, let's give the Patriots their due. Winning 13 games in any NFL season is a difficult trick, particularly with a defense ranked 31st in the league in yardage, 31st in pass defense, 28th in third down efficiency, 24th in average rushing yards per attempt. Head coach Bill Belichick went into this season with designs of a more aggressive, pressure defense, but was forced to abort the plan early due to the relative ineptitude of his secondary.

To his credit, Belichick adjusted on the fly. (The personnel decisions are another matter, but that is a story for another time.) Belichick cut out potential bad seeds and/or disruptions with Albert Haynesworth and Leigh Bodden, investing in a more coachable and hard-working group that includes an array of undrafted free agents and castoffs. The Patriots have played hard and demonstrated commendable grit, coming back from deficits against Philadelphia, Denver, Miami and Buffalo, the first two of those games on the road.

As Bill Parcells long ago taught us, you are what your record says you are.

At least during the regular season.

So where does this all go from here? Excellent question. Belichick and Brady still have some quality time left together, which makes the last few years all the more frustrating. Too often, it has felt as if the Patriots have been spinning their wheels, unable to support a Hall of Fame coach and a Hall of Fame quarterback with a legitimate supporting cast. In the aftermath of the lockout, there is every chance that the rest of the league has slipped back to the Patriots this year more than the Patriots have ascended to the next level, though that is largely irrelevant so long as the Pats end up where we want them to be.

And so where, exactly, is that? The Super Bowl is an obvious choice. But more than winning another title - the fourth of the Belichick-Brady era - what is more important for the Patriots this postseason is to show growth again, to get to the AFC title game at a minimum, to show that they belong right there with New Orleans, Green Bay, Pittsburgh and Baltimore among the truly elite teams in the current NFL.

And to prove that they really are not at all anything like the Atlanta Falcons.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Staff

The No. 1 seed in the AFC entirely in their grasp, the Patriots return to the field tomorrow against the Miami Dolphins. The Houston Texans already have lost again. The Pittsburgh Steelers are likely to be without Ben Roethlisberger. Seemingly nothing stands between New England and a divisional playoff date at Foxboro on the weekend of Jan. 15.

Which brings us to this:

Is this game with Miami causing anyone at least a little anxiety?

Don't look now, folks, but the Miami Dolphins are not the complete doormat on which the Patriots wiped their feet in a season-opening, 38-24 win. Miami quarterback Chad Henne passed for a whopping 416 yards in that game - the concerns about the Patriots defense this year have been there from the start - but the greater mismatch that night was between the Patriots offense and a Miami defense was supposed to be among the better units in the league.

Know what has happened since? During a season that began with an 0-7 start and led to the dismissal of head coach Tony Sparano, Miami has begun playing like far more people expected, steadily improving to the point where the Dolphins now have allowed fewer points per game (on average) than all but four teams in the league.

Let's say that again.

For the season, Miami ranks No. 5 in the league in scoring defense. And since Nov. 1, Miami's average of 14.1 points allowed per game ranks behind only the San Francisco 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers in all of football.

Admittedly, with the Patriots, defense has been a far greater problem and concern this year, which makes the Miami game worth watching on multiple levels. Buoyed by the brilliance of Tom Brady - QB12 has 15 touchdown passes and just one interception in his last six games - the Patriots have been able to make up for any and all defensive deficiencies. The Patriots now have scored 30 or more points in 19 of their last 22 regular season; in those contents, they are a sterling 18-1 (the only loss came at Buffalo this year).

By contrast, in the other three games - all played this season - the Patriots are 1-2. They lost at Pittsburgh. They lost to the New York Giants. Their only victory came against the Dallas Cowboys, an affair in which Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett foolishly put the ball back in Brady's hands with 2:31 play.

All of this brings us back to the Dolphins, who will be the last above-average defense New England will face until the postseason.

Here's the point: when factoring in New England's last three playoff losses with its three toughest games this year - the Steelers, Cowboys and Giants - the formula for beating New England seems clear. The Patriots rarely win a game with their defense, plain and simple, which suggests that any and all discussion about the Patriots' Super Bowl chances should not focus solely on the New England defense.

It should focus on the opposing defense, too.

As such, here's the question we all have to ask ourselves as the Patriots approach the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs: what do you believe in? Do you believe New England can win with offense, the way New Orleans did in 2009? Or do you believe in at least some representative measure of defense, as most traditionalists would argue? Of the four participants in last year's conference championship games, all four ranked among the top six in the NFL in scoring defense. A year earlier, Super Bowl participants Indianapolis and New Orleans ranked a respective eighth and 20th.

Last year, when the Patriots lost to the Jets in the divisional round, much was made of the underperformance of the New England offense despite the fact that the Jets had one of the best defenses in the league. Does that make any sense at all? A year prior, Baltimore's strength was similarly its defense. And yet, everyone reacted with surprise when the Ravens battered Brady and rolled to a 31-14 win.

The reason we all did that, perhaps, is because we knew the Patriots did not have a championship-caliber defense. Presumably, we all know the same now. And so in that respect, the question becomes not whether New England can stop anyone at a critical juncture - they can't - but whether the Patriots can score enough to keep their defense out of critical situations.

The Dolphins, of course, will not be participating in the postseason this year. But in the modern NFL, their defense qualifies as well above average, which presents a good challenge for the Patriots this week. Unlike Week 17 opponent Buffalo, which ranks 27th in the league in scoring defense, the Dolphins of today (unlike the Miami team of Week 1) should present at least some challenge to a New England offense that has averaged 35.8 points per game, albeit against a succession of teams that currently rank 21st (the Jets), 22nd (Chiefs), 19th (Eagles), 30th (Colts), 16th (Redskins) and 24th (Broncos) in scoring defense.

What that tells us, it seems, is that the Patriots can shred a mediocre or poor defense.

What we still do not know, entering Miami, is whether the Patriots can shred a good one, at least well enough.

By Tony Massarotti, Globe Columnist

Catching up on the little things while pointing out that precisely one year remains on the Mayan calendar...

We have become indisputably spoiled here during the Golden Age of Boston sports, but let's give the Patriots credit for currently possessing the best record in the AFC. New England has deficiencies, to be sure, but the Patriots almost never lose a game they should win. Meanwhile, the Baltimore Ravens have dropped games to Seattle, Jacksonville, Tennessee and San Diego, none of which possesses a winning record.

But I still wouldn't want to play the Ravens in the playoffs.

-- Don't look now, but the Bruins have killed off 36 of their opponents' last 37 power plays and 44 of the last 46. The Bruins rank second in the league in goals per game while having allowed the fewest, and they rank third on the penalty kill, an improving 11th on the power play. About the only thing the Bruins have not done this season is score a shorthanded goal, leaving them as the only team in the NHL without such a tally.

So much for that Cup hangover, eh?

-- Celtics coach Doc Rivers recently acknowledged that the Celtics' window of opportunity is "closing," but let's not kid ourselves. The window is closed. The Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat now rule the Eastern Conference -- not necessarily in that order -- and the only question now is how much worse things are going to get before they get better.

And for how long.

-- This is some very rough math, but when adding in the estimated salaries for their arbitration players, including David Ortiz, the Red Sox' currently have a luxury tax payroll in the areas of $175 million. The luxury tax is at $178 million. While that still leaves some room for the Sox to pick up some low-risk, high-reward pitching, a greater question remains.

Are the Sox going to have any flexibility to add during the season, specifically at the trading deadline?

Or are they destined for another list of midseason options that includes dollar-menu buys like Erik Bedard?

-- For those getting amped up about the Patriots' latest run of victories, just remember: in the two previous seasons in which Tom Brady has thrown 35 or more touchdown passes, the Patriots have not won the Super Bowl thanks largely to deficiencies on the other side of the ball.

Which is to say that the Patriots were not balanced enough then and they may not be balanced enough now.

-- Can someone please explain what the Montreal Canadiens saw in Tomas Kaberle?

And for the sake of the close-minded Canadians following, please put the explanation in French.

When the NBA owners locked out the players, did it occur to league owners that the league's collective bargaining agreement needed serious reform and not just a redistribution of revenues? So Chris Paul ended up with the Los Angeles Clippers instead of the Los Angeles Lakers. Fine. But what the NBA needs is a real, honest-to-goodness salary cap free of exceptions and loopholes.

Simply put, the star players in that league have way too much power.

In the NFL, on the other hand, the players don't have enough.

-- Of the pitchers that have come to the major leagues from Japan, how many have been legitimately worth the money? With that in mind, why would the Texas Rangers or Toronto Blue Jays (or anyone else) bid $50 million or more for the right to merely negotiate with Yu Darvish?

And if people suggest that those of us in Boston are tainted (or scarred) by the entire Daisuke Matsuzaka affair, they would be right.

We are.

-- The Baltimore Orioles' pursuit of Prince Fielder is interesting, if for no other reason than Fielder possesses the same "body type" as Mo Vaughn, whom Dan Duquette ushered from Boston 13 years ago. Under new general manager Duquette, the Orioles are in a far different position now than the Red Sox were under Duquette then, but Baltimore is going nowhere unless the Orioles significantly upgrade their pitching in the coming years.

In the interim, Fielder would certainly help ticket sales and boost television ratings. And for what it's worth, Duquette's last two major free agent signings with the Red Sox worked out quite well, bringing Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon to Boston.

-- Hall of Fame ballot came in the mail last week. Could reveal which names were checked, but would then have to kill you.

-- First it was Penn State. Then it was Syracuse. Now it's Bill Conlin, the former sportswriter for the Philadelphia Daily News. Anyone else get the feeling that this is all merely the tip of the iceberg in an exploding national scandal?

-- Hey look! Chad Ochocinco caught a touchdown!

-- Since being pulled following the second period of the Bruins' eventual 5-3 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets, Tim Thomas is 3-0 with a 1.33 goals against average and a .965 save percentage. Meanwhile, Tuukka Rask did not allow a goal in four periods.

Shouldn't Claude Julien get some of the credit for that?

-- At this time of year, it is always worth remembering that we live in the greatest sports town in America, that we are truly among the most privileged sports followers in the world, and that the bad times here are never as bad as the bad times in many other places.

Like Cleveland, for example.