Which team was worse: 2009 or 2013?

[everlong]

General consensus is that the 2002 squad is the worst because it's the only one with Belichick/Brady that failed to make the playoffs. However, I'm not including it because it was only year 2 of the era.

The 2009 team saw Brady return from his ACL tear the year prior and although he was a little up and down due to rust, it was an overall successful return. The main problem, however, was the defense. Due to the retirements of staple players of the unit (Bruschi, Harrison, Vrabel), the defense lacked leadership and saw subpar players such as Gary Guyton see playtime. Blown leads and seeing supbar quarterbacks have career days were common.

The 2013 team, on the other hand, saw a huge overhaul on offense. With Gronk, Hernandez, Welker, Woodhead and Lloyd out of the picture, the offense lost nearly 80% of 2012 production and Brady's only weapon was Edelman.

[tonyto36]

Well it depends through what lens you're viewing it through.  To start the year the 2013 Patriots had a lot more talent but were just held together with duck tape by the end of the year.  If we're talking about pure talent, I think 2013 wins.  If we're talking about a playoff matchup, I think the 2009 team wins.   The 2009 Ravens game was a disaster, but the team played worse than it should have, even without Welker.  Brady had a really bad game.  Flacco was playing one leg IIRC and threw for like 80 yards.   The game just got out of hand way too fast and we couldn't recover and it put Brady and the offense in a horrible spot that kept getting worse.

[mission27]

That’s tough.

The 2009 team had the players to be great.  Remember that one of two full Brady Moss years.  We won a game 59-0.  But they never really played consistently.

The 2013 ream was probably all around better but the injuries killed us in the end.  Still think if we had Talib in the AFCCG we win the SB that year.