ESPN: Pats may have best secondary in the league

Photo from patriots.com

It may sound crazy, but then again, maybe not. According to ESPN, there is a strong cas that the Patriots secondary will overtake the Seattle Seahawks as the best in the league. There are several reasons for this, ESPN reports.

1.) State of the secondaries at the end of last season: The numbers don't lie: the gap between these 2 groups were not as significant as you might think. Seattle held a full 1-yard lead in yards per attempt (6.0 YPA vs. 7.0 YPA), but their vertical YPA (defined as yards per attempt on passes 11 or more yards down field) were nearly identical (10.2 for the Seahawks vs. 10.3 for the Pats). The Patriots held an edge on passes over 20 yards/attempt (10.3 for the Pats, 11.8 for Seattle), but Seattle held a lead of more than 2 percentage points in passes that ended up as interceptions or near interceptions. That's deceptive, though, as the 38 interceptions or near interceptions were equal to the mark put up by the Seattle secondary.
Stats courtesy of ESPN

Personnel Changes: According to ESPN, replacing Aqib Talib with Darrelle Revis will save the Pats about 200 yards and possibly more interceptions than Talib in 2014. But that pales in comparison to the impact Brandon Browner could have. In 2013, he had a lower YPA (6.2) than one Richard Sherman (7.4), and will provide a huge upgrade over Alfonso Dennard (9.3) or Kyle Arrington (9.2), and has nearly as many career INT's (10) as Arrington and Dennard combined (13), according to ESPN. He will serve a 4-game suspension to start the year, but New England's 1st 4 games are against teams (Miami, Minnesota, Oakland, Kansas City) that have issues with the passing game.

As for Seattle, their secondary is undergoing a transition at a couple key spots, right and left cornerback. The main candidate for the former is Brian Maxell, who allowed 5.5 YPA in 2013, but Seattle is hoping he doesn't fall back to his 2012 level of 8.7 YPA. On the other side, Jeremy Lane is the front-runner, but he gave up 131 yards on 15 attempts, which comes out to 8.7 YPA, which could be a problem for Seattle.

Stats courtesy of ESPN

Bottom Line: Seattle has a number of other factors that could allow another team (the Pats) to overtake them: complacency and the Madden Curse to name a couple. Seattle are coming off a decisive Super Bowl win and complacency could come into play during the season, and Richard Sherman is on the cover of Madden, which can impact a player's performance. Both could negatively impact Seattle during the course of the year, and let the Pats surpass them as the best secondary in the NFL.

Twitter- @C_Frederick1016