The offense had Brady, Welker, Hernandez, Lloyd, Ridley/Vereen/Woodhead and a bunch of good blockers. It's not like they were woefully undermanned. They just didn't perform.
As for the defense, its seriously plus players this season were in some order Wilfork, Mayo, McCourty, Talib, Ninkovich, and Jones. Jones was dinged up the latter part of the season, and irrelevant tonight. Talib was out of the game early. Hightower looks reasonably likely to join the list of excellent players soon. So there's hope -- but by the end of next postseason, 1 or 2 of those guys will likely be unavailable again.