Anti-Dynasty #19: 1967-1975 Boston/New England Patriots

Peak Anti-Dynasty Points: 58
Record: 37-88-1 (.298)
Average DVOA: -18.7%
Bottom-Five DVOA: -30.8%
One last-place finish in the AFL, Four last-place finishes in the AFL/AFC East
Head Coaches: Mike Holovak, Clive Rush, John Mazur, Phil Bengtson, Chuck Fairbanks
Key Players: QB Jim Plunkett, RB Carl Garrett, FB Jim Nance, WR Randy Vataha, OT Tom Neville, OG Len St. Jean, C Jon Morris, DT Houston Antwine, DT Jim Lee Hunt, DT Julius Adams, S Don Webb
Z-Score: 2.49

Another team, another relocation, albeit this one in the same state. Counting franchise relocations is more complicated than it first appears—do you count the Cardinals moving from Tempe to Glendale?—but the Anti-Dynasty project is a great way to visit them.

By my count, you have 20 cases which I'd call significant moves, changing metro markets entirely, most recently the Raiders moving to Las Vegas. Then you have 12 cases where significant parts of a franchise moved, but broke continuity with the original team, like when the Browns became the Ravens. You have 12 NFL teams that merged, either temporarily or permanently—sometimes with other NFL teams, like the various World War II mergers, and sometimes with defunct teams from the AAFC or 1920s AFL. And then you have 28 cases like these Patriots, who moved from Fenway to Chestnut Hill to Allston and finally out of Boston altogether between 1969 and 1971. That's 72 cases of significant relocation, and at least 28 of them are related to teams on this countdown. If you look at just the post-war era, you're talking 22 out of 46. If you're relocating, there's a very good chance that your team is pretty darn bad.

This Patriots move, like so many of those others, was about money—but it was from an external source pushing in rather than the team just looking to maximize their profits. One of the promises the NFL made to Congress when merging with the AFL was that the combined league would continue to grow, including having every team play in a stadium with at least 50,000 seats. Well, Nickerson Field, Fenway Park, Alumni Stadium, and Harvard Stadium all fall short of those benchmarks, and the Patriots couldn't get a deal done anywhere in the city to build a stadium large enough to meet NFL requirements. So after considering offers from Salem, Birmingham, and Jacksonville, the Patriots opted to move to Foxboro because of one important fact: the city offered the land for free. And thus, the Boston Patriots became the Bay State Patriots … for about two weeks before the league told them no, that name was dumb. And thus, the Boston Patriots became the New England Patriots we all know and tolerate today.

While we're counting things, there have been 55 teams since 1950 with a DVOA (either estimated or real) of -35.0% or worse. You're looking at three of them—the Patriots pulled the feat off in 1968, 1970, and 1975. Add in a couple Patriots seasons we’ll get to tomorrow, and New England “boasts” five years below the -35% mark, the all-time record. Before Bill Belichick, or at the very least before Bill Parcells, the Patriots were a terrible franchise. Maybe they couldn't match the Buccaneers or Saints for long-term, sustained misery, but they could hit the low notes like nobody's business.

The 1968 Patriots were just an old AFL team in a modern AFL world. The quality of play rose throughout the AFL's life as they added talent to the league, and the 1968 Patriots were basically just the remnants of the 1963 Patriots who had reached the AFL title game, only five years older, minus several star players, and without reinforcements to replenish the roster. The departure of Babe Parilli in particular hurt, with Boston putting up an estimated passing DVOA of -39.3%. The 1970 Patriots didn't even sign their starting quarterback, Joe Kapp, until October 2—a bold strategy when the season began on September 20. Their passing DVOA, too, was less than -35%, but they were also joined by the collapse of the defense—they were dead last in both points scored and points allowed. It's probably a coincidence that head coach Clive Rush developed an irregular heartbeat while watching the Patriots get pasted by scores of 45-10 and 31-0 and then had to leave the team. Probably.

The bad passing and terrible record at least ended up with the Patriots drafting Jim Plunkett. Plunkett wouldn't develop into a consistently good passer until he joined the Raiders in his thirties, but he did provide New England with a regular bad passing attack and not a disaster. Sadly, the pass defense collapsed in 1972, resulting in the second-worst point-differential in the 14-game era at -254. They went 3-11, with eight losses coming by at least three touchdowns, and two wins of the wins being one-point nailbiters. Not many teams are fortunate to win three games, but these Pats certainly counted. The next year, Chuck Fairbanks was brought in to coach the team and gradual solid drafting brought in players such as John Hannah, Steve Grogan, Sam Cunningham, and Mike Haynes. They surprisingly made the playoffs in 1976 and remained in contention for the rest of the decade and into the mid-1980s, only for things to crash down again in a story we’ll get to soon enough.

All those years of failure makes you begrudge their two decades of modern-day success a little less, as well as the super-short recovery time before reaching the Super Bowl once more, don’t they? What's that? They don't? Well, OK, fair enough.