WI Patriots Win 2008 Super Bowl

John Fredrick Parker

Donor
For our PoD, I'm going with this moment -- just 45 seconds left, in the last quarter at the third down.* What happens if Steve Smith fumbles the ball, or fails to get past the line?

How is Football affected with Tom Brady being compared with the likes of Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana (since this would be his, and Bellichek, et el's, fourth Super Bowl Ring)? And how does the fact that this happens in light of the 2007 Tape Controversy affect things? How are relations between Patriots Fans and the country at large affected? What other changes to NFL culture and lore, or in the country at large, do we see?

(And finally -- how does this scenario rate, dystopia wise? :D)

*Yeah, Tyree gets a lot of speculation, but I think this has more potential, since it would pretty much be the game.
 

Deleted member 14881

How does this affect the 2011 Super Bowl if Welker hadn't dropped it and they would be better than the Steelers, and Niners.
 

Pellegrino

Don't see it as much different other than the 2008 Pats are considered on par with the 85 bears and the 72 Dolphins...at least until Deflategate happens and they turn into Barry Bonds.
 

BubblesAfricano

We Can Never Forget DeflateGate
deflategate-memes-04-550x767.jpg
 
GrayJ12

GrayJ12

Super Bowl XLII:patriots 14-10 Giants
Super Bowl XLIII:Cardnials 38-19 Patriots (Tom Brady is injured with a 16-0 lead late in the second quarter,Patriots goes downhill.)
Super Bowl XLIV:Colts 40-Vikings 21 (Brett Farve is not injured and wins the NFC Championship Game,49-17.Peyton Manning passes for 350 yards and four TD's.Farve passes for 218 yards,1 TD,and 3 INT's.)
Super Bowl XLV:Vikings 25-23 Patriots (Brett Farve leads the comeback in his final game and dives for the game winning touchdown with :09 left. Tom Brady throws a hail mary but misses the hands of Wes Welker.)
Super Bowl XLVI:patriots 24-17 49ers (Alex Smith gets intercepted with 9:14 left in the game with a 17-7 lead,and that changes everything.Brady throws a TD,Pats recover the kick,BenJarvus Green-Ellis gets a 47-yard TD,Pats recover the kick,Brady throws it to Welker to win the championship.)
Super Bowl XLVII:Broncos 31-26 Packers (Peyton haves a 17-3 lead early in the second but it is 23-17 Packers at halftime.Peyton throws a TD to Eric Decker with 7:19 in the game,26-24,Packers.After the kick,the Broncos get the ball back and Peyton fires the game winning touchdown to Andre Caldwell with 1:12 left in the game.Peyton wins MVP with 371 yards and 3 TD's.)
Super Bowl XLVIII:Colts 49-Eagles 35 (After the 28-point comeback against Kansas City,they face Tom Brady and the Patriots.In our timeline,the Pats beat the Colts 44-22.In this timeline,Luck proves lucky.He throws for 409 yards,4 TD's onto a major win against the Pats 52-28.The next week,the Colts trails the Broncos 19-6 at the half.The New Comeback Kid,Andrew Luck,throws for 4 TD's and rushes for one onto a major victory,41-29.In the Super Bowl,the Comeback Colts faced the upstart Eagles. The Eagles put up the early advantage,28-14.The Colts put it to the test and held up the Eagles to a touchdown in the second half.An interception with 2:00 left in the game with the Eagles looking to score sealed the game and the championship for the Colts.Luck won MVP with 389 yards,4 TD's and 1 rushing TD.)

Not only the Patriots winning XLII in this timeline changed history,it changed the NFL forever,changing the game in the upcoming seasons.With Tom Brady injured in Super Bowl XLIII,he missed the 09' season and the Pats went 6-9-1.The next season,they were 14-2,but lost in the last seconds to Brett Farve and the Vikings,with Farve playing in his last game.With the 49ers looking for a 6th championship,the Pats denied them.They made a comeback to win their 5th championship.Spygate led the NFL to suspend Bellichek and Kraft for a season.While the Patriots are a dynasty,there are speculations that the Patriots are using steroids,spying again this time thanks to drones,or to underinflating their footballs.The message remains clear,The Patriots 19-0 season marked a new era in the NFL.
 

CthulhuFhtagn

Banned
mrbraingrayson said:
Super Bowl XLII:patriots 14-10 Giants
Super Bowl XLIII:Cardnials 38-19 Patriots (Tom Brady is injured with a 16-0 lead late in the second quarter,Patriots goes downhill.)
Super Bowl XLIV:Colts 40-Vikings 21 (Brett Farve is not injured and wins the NFC Championship Game,49-17.Peyton Manning passes for 350 yards and four TD's.Farve passes for 218 yards,1 TD,and 3 INT's.)
Super Bowl XLV:Vikings 25-23 Patriots (Brett Farve leads the comeback in his final game and dives for the game winning touchdown with :09 left. Tom Brady throws a hail mary but misses the hands of Wes Welker.)
Super Bowl XLVI:patriots 24-17 49ers (Alex Smith gets intercepted with 9:14 left in the game with a 17-7 lead,and that changes everything.Brady throws a TD,Pats recover the kick,BenJarvus Green-Ellis gets a 47-yard TD,Pats recover the kick,Brady throws it to Welker to win the championship.)
Super Bowl XLVII:Broncos 31-26 Packers (Peyton haves a 17-3 lead early in the second but it is 23-17 Packers at halftime.Peyton throws a TD to Eric Decker with 7:19 in the game,26-24,Packers.After the kick,the Broncos get the ball back and Peyton fires the game winning touchdown to Andre Caldwell with 1:12 left in the game.Peyton wins MVP with 371 yards and 3 TD's.)
Super Bowl XLVIII:Colts 49-Eagles 35 (After the 28-point comeback against Kansas City,they face Tom Brady and the Patriots.In our timeline,the Pats beat the Colts 44-22.In this timeline,Luck proves lucky.He throws for 409 yards,4 TD's onto a major win against the Pats 52-28.The next week,the Colts trails the Broncos 19-6 at the half.The New Comeback Kid,Andrew Luck,throws for 4 TD's and rushes for one onto a major victory,41-29.In the Super Bowl,the Comeback Colts faced the upstart Eagles. The Eagles put up the early advantage,28-14.The Colts put it to the test and held up the Eagles to a touchdown in the second half.An interception with 2:00 left in the game with the Eagles looking to score sealed the game and the championship for the Colts.Luck won MVP with 389 yards,4 TD's and 1 rushing TD.)

Not only the Patriots winning XLII in this timeline changed history,it changed the NFL forever,changing the game in the upcoming seasons.With Tom Brady injured in Super Bowl XLIII,he missed the 09' season and the Pats went 6-9-1.The next season,they were 14-2,but lost in the last seconds to Brett Farve and the Vikings,with Farve playing in his last game.With the 49ers looking for a 6th championship,the Pats denied them.They made a comeback to win their 5th championship.Spygate led the NFL to suspend Bellichek and Kraft for a season.While the Patriots are a dynasty,there are speculations that the Patriots are using steroids,spying again this time thanks to drones,or to underinflating their footballs.The message remains clear,The Patriots 19-0 season marked a new era in the NFL.
Click to expand...

The most unrealistic part isn't even Brett Favre changing his name to Farve, it's the NFL actually punishing the team that won the Super Bowl with a major suspension.
 

sommerswerd

If they win the Super Bowl in February 2008 and finish off the perfect season, the Patriots complete their transformation into the Yankees of football: every fan either loves them or hates them, with almost no one in between. The ‘72 Dolphins leave our lives forever, although a few of them might take a few Spygate-related potshots before they ride into the sunset. The Giants will still be lauded by most of the media as the determined underdogs who came up just short. With Tom Brady having already acquired a dash of celebrity outside of his football accomplishments, going 19-0 might just push him a step further up on the fame scale, to the point where he becomes a national icon. Relations between Patriot fans and the national public at large become even bitterer, and those deriding the team as cheaters will be even more loud and vocal. This continues all the way through the 2007-08 offseason.

And after that? Well, in 2008, the Patriots, being the defending champions, will be opening up the season on the first Thursday of November instead of the Sunday. That means the NFL schedule-makers won’t be sending the Kansas City Chiefs, who went 4-12 the previous year, to Foxborough for the kickoff game. The Patriots will probably play the Steelers or Jets instead, which means no Bernard Pollard tackle and no Brady knee injury. The Patriots might not be as dominant as they were in 2007, thanks to various injuries and issues with the secondary, but they had a super-easy schedule and would almost certainly have had smooth sailing to another first-round playoff bye. I also think a Patriots team with a healthy Brady would have been favored over any of the real-life 2008 playoff teams; this was a year in which Manning’s Colts lost to San Diego on wild-card weekend and the two alpha dogs of the regular season, Tennessee and the Giants, both blew their divisional-round games at home. So if the Patriots had held the late lead and won the 2007 championship, I think there’s a great chance they would have won it the following year as well.

2009 would have been far less certain. That was one of the Patriots’ worst years defensively under Bill Belichick, due to injuries, the retirements of key contributors like Seau and Bruschi, and the fact that they got less from the previous few years’ drafts than they had earlier in the Belichick era. The likeliest outcome is probably the Saints and Colts playing in the Super Bowl, as actually happened. One really interesting thing to remember from our timeline is that the Colts, at 14-0, pulled their starters and lost in the last two regular-season games after locking up the top AFC seed. Does Bill Polian opt to leave Peyton Manning on the field in this reality to give him a shot at matching Brady’s perfect season? If that happens, and assuming the Colts are still undefeated going into the Super Bowl, sports fans and analysts get to reignite the Tom Brady-Peyton Manning debate, which had previously been dead and buried since Brady has 19-0 and four or five rings to Manning’s one at this point.

As for the Giants, assuming Plaxico Burress still has his legal troubles and doesn’t suit up for them, 2009 will probably be a season of struggle relative to their two previous campaigns. Tom Coughlin still holds onto his job, but without the championship to fall back on there will be much more pressure on him from team ownership. In 2010, if the Giants miss the playoffs again, the axe will probably fall.

Barring a Brady injury, the Patriots would likely have continued to be championship contenders in 2010 and 2011. Provided they make it back to the Super Bowl in 2011 as they did in our reality, they likely won’t be playing the Giants, since Coughlin was fired at the end of the previous year. The Packers, 49ers (assuming they still hire Jim Harbaugh) and Saints all seem like possible opponents. Any of them would provide a tough game for the Patriots, but if New England can pull out a victory here, having also won in 2007 and 2008, it will give them first place in the all-time Super Bowl count, their six Lombardies breaking a tie with San Francisco, Dallas and Pittsburgh.

Victory in Super Bowl XLVI would pretty much cinch whatever heated debate there was remaining among football fans. Yes, Lombardi's Packers and Noll's Steelers and Walsh's 49ers were all brilliant in their day. But as dynasties go, Belichick and Brady's Patriots, with six championships in 11 years and the first perfect season in the history of the salary cap, would be indisputably the greatest of all time.

So for all those booing the results of last night’s game, remember that we might easily have been living in a reality in which things are even worse, if Smith had fumbled that pass or Tyree hadn’t made that catch in February of 2008.
 

AltSptHst

sommerswerd said:
If they win the Super Bowl in February 2008 and finish off the perfect season, the Patriots complete their transformation into the Yankees of football: every fan either loves them or hates them, with almost no one in between. The ‘72 Dolphins leave our lives forever, although a few of them might take a few Spygate-related potshots before they ride into the sunset. The Giants will still be lauded by most of the media as the determined underdogs who came up just short. With Tom Brady having already acquired a dash of celebrity outside of his football accomplishments, going 19-0 might just push him a step further up on the fame scale, to the point where he becomes a national icon. Relations between Patriot fans and the national public at large become even bitterer, and those deriding the team as cheaters will be even more loud and vocal. This continues all the way through the 2007-08 offseason.

And after that? Well, in 2008, the Patriots, being the defending champions, will be opening up the season on the first Thursday of November instead of the Sunday. That means the NFL schedule-makers won’t be sending the Kansas City Chiefs, who went 4-12 the previous year, to Foxborough for the kickoff game. The Patriots will probably play the Steelers or Jets instead, which means no Bernard Pollard tackle and no Brady knee injury. The Patriots might not be as dominant as they were in 2007, thanks to various injuries and issues with the secondary, but they had a super-easy schedule and would almost certainly have had smooth sailing to another first-round playoff bye. I also think a Patriots team with a healthy Brady would have been favored over any of the real-life 2008 playoff teams; this was a year in which Manning’s Colts lost to San Diego on wild-card weekend and the two alpha dogs of the regular season, Tennessee and the Giants, both blew their divisional-round games at home. So if the Patriots had held the late lead and won the 2007 championship, I think there’s a great chance they would have won it the following year as well.

2009 would have been far less certain. That was one of the Patriots’ worst years defensively under Bill Belichick, due to injuries, the retirements of key contributors like Seau and Bruschi, and the fact that they got less from the previous few years’ drafts than they had earlier in the Belichick era. The likeliest outcome is probably the Saints and Colts playing in the Super Bowl, as actually happened. One really interesting thing to remember from our timeline is that the Colts, at 14-0, pulled their starters and lost in the last two regular-season games after locking up the top AFC seed. Does Bill Polian opt to leave Peyton Manning on the field in this reality to give him a shot at matching Brady’s perfect season? If that happens, and assuming the Colts are still undefeated going into the Super Bowl, sports fans and analysts get to reignite the Tom Brady-Peyton Manning debate, which had previously been dead and buried since Brady has 19-0 and four or five rings to Manning’s one at this point.

As for the Giants, assuming Plaxico Burress still has his legal troubles and doesn’t suit up for them, 2009 will probably be a season of struggle relative to their two previous campaigns. Tom Coughlin still holds onto his job, but without the championship to fall back on there will be much more pressure on him from team ownership. In 2010, if the Giants miss the playoffs again, the axe will probably fall.

Barring a Brady injury, the Patriots would likely have continued to be championship contenders in 2010 and 2011. Provided they make it back to the Super Bowl in 2011 as they did in our reality, they likely won’t be playing the Giants, since Coughlin was fired at the end of the previous year. The Packers, 49ers (assuming they still hire Jim Harbaugh) and Saints all seem like possible opponents. Any of them would provide a tough game for the Patriots, but if New England can pull out a victory here, having also won in 2007 and 2008, it will give them first place in the all-time Super Bowl count, their six Lombardies breaking a tie with San Francisco, Dallas and Pittsburgh.

Victory in Super Bowl XLVI would pretty much cinch whatever heated debate there was remaining among football fans. Yes, Lombardi's Packers and Noll's Steelers and Walsh's 49ers were all brilliant in their day. But as dynasties go, Belichick and Brady's Patriots, with six championships in 11 years and the first perfect season in the history of the salary cap, would be indisputably the greatest of all time.

So for all those booing the results of last night’s game, remember that we might easily have been living in a reality in which things are even worse, if Smith had fumbled that pass or Tyree hadn’t made that catch in February of 2008.
Click to expand...

If the Pats win in 2008, McDaniels may not have been hired in Denver because the Broncos may not wait for him. So, instead, they hire Steve Spagnuolo (Giants DC) as their new head coach.

In OTL, Steve was unsuccessful with the Rams, but in Denver, he has an epic offense. All he needs to do is re-vamp their defense.

So, he brings in Dawkins, Renaldo Hill, and Andre Goodman in FA to shore up the secondary, and drafts Brian Orakpo in the first round (12th overall), Terrance Knighton in the second round, and Lardarius Webb in Round 3.

He also gets rid of all of the bad defensive players that Shanahan brought in, like DT DeWayne Robertson, LB's Niko Koutovides and Nate Webster, CB Dre' Bly, and safeties Marquand Manuel and Marlon McCree.

In 2009, the Broncos finish behind SD in the West, make the playoffs, and lose to the Patriots in the first round.

In the offseason, TE Tony Scheffler and RB Peyton Hillis are kept after good seasons, but WR Brandon Marshall is traded because he became a problem. Miami ponies up 2 second rounders for him as in OTL.

In the 2010 draft, Denver (picking 22nd) takes WR Dez Bryant in the first round to replace Marshall. Then, he drafts guys like DT Lamarr Houston, RB Ben Tate, C J.D. Walton, and WR Eric Decker in the next few rounds.

Denver wins the West in 2010 with a 12-4 record, beats Pittsburgh in the divisional round, and the Jets in the AFC Title Game. However, in the SB, Cutler ends up missing the last quarter with an injury, and the Packers win.

Cutler is reviled on Twitter and other media outlets because he didn't come back into the game. However, Bronco players stick up for him, and say that he couldn't return because of the injury.

Even so, the next few years go downhill. Denver makes the playoffs due to a weak division, but Jay fails to win a playoff game, and has another incident on the sideline when Dez Bryant gets in his face about his lackadaisical attitude.

After the 2012 season, John Elway is brought in as GM. He gives Spagnuolo one more chance, but he trades Cutler to the Jets for two #1 draft picks and two #2's.

Then, after a 7-9 2013 season, Spagnuolo is let go, Gary Kubiak is brought in, and Elway makes a move to draft Blake Bortles in Round 1. They also bring in Kyle Orton to QB in the meantime.
 

sommerswerd

If the Pats win in 2008, McDaniels may not have been hired in Denver because the Broncos may not wait for him.
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I'd thought about that as I was posting - I wonder where McDaniels goes, then? As the architect of a record-setting offense, he's going to be one of the most in-demand head coaching candidates in recent NFL history. Maybe he ends up in Kansas City under Scott Pioli, who'd just been hired that January.

In this scenario there's also no trade for Matt Cassel, since he's still an unproven backup who's only thrown a few dozen NFL passes during garbage time. Assuming the Chiefs land a top-five pick in the 2009 draft like they did in "real life," they may bring in different USC alumnus to be their quarterback of the future: Mark Sanchez. With Sanchez in Kansas City, Favre moving to Minnesota and Cutler still in Denver, the Jets and Bears are both going to be searching for quarterbacks in 2009, and possibly longer than that.
 

AltSptHst

sommerswerd said:
I'd thought about that as I was posting - I wonder where McDaniels goes, then? As the architect of a record-setting offense, he's going to be one of the most in-demand head coaching candidates in recent NFL history. Maybe he ends up in Kansas City under Scott Pioli, who'd just been hired that January.

In this scenario there's also no trade for Matt Cassel, since he's still an unproven backup who's only thrown a few dozen NFL passes during garbage time. Assuming the Chiefs land a top-five pick in the 2009 draft like they did in "real life," they may bring in different USC alumnus to be their quarterback of the future: Mark Sanchez. With Sanchez in Kansas City, Favre moving to Minnesota and Cutler still in Denver, the Jets and Bears are both going to be searching for quarterbacks in 2009, and possibly longer than that.
Click to expand...

One of those teams may have drafted Josh Freeman. I am guessing that it's the Jets, and then the Bears stick with Orton, who was decent in 2008 (2,972 passing yards, 18 TD's, 12 INT), and would go on to put up good numbers in Denver.

Freeman is more talented than Sanchez, and he may have done better early on than Mark did with the support of the ground game. However, he may also have had the same meltdown the last few years that he did in Tampa, and the Jets would probably still be where they are today.
 
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