When you think about it for a few minutes, the Patriots could have won three more games.
If Damien Harris doesn’t put the ball down, they beat Miami in Week 1. A well-timed gamble in Week 4 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (a makeable fourth-down play, considering how the Pats were moving the ball) could have resulted in a win. And only a couple of blown defensive plays cost them the Dallas Cowboys game.
So, if things broke differently, we could have been talking about 13-4 and the top seed.
The problem is it wouldn’t have made any difference. The Patriots at their best were a seven-week mirage that made everyone feel great, and harken back to the good old days of 2018, when they won their last Super Bowl (2019, if you want to get technical about it).
The Patriots at their worst ― especially at the end ― were an accurate portrayal of what happens when the bubble bursts.
I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve learned a few things. And one of the most important lessons about sports is that Jerry Reed was right. When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not you’re not. Larger forces come into play, and there isn’t a blasted thing anyone can do when that happens. You just have to ride it out until the good times start rolling again.
Only, in the case of the Patriots, there wasn’t enough time for that to happen. The Buffalo Bills did it the right way. They were awful in November, and corrected course in December.
What’s strange about all of this is that the Patriots, for years, were the poster boys for peaking at the right time. How often did we see them roll right through December en route to a long playoff run? It was a little disconcerting that their timing in this instance was so far off.
So whose fault is it? That’s the next piece in this puzzle. It can’t just be that the glory days ― like all glory days ― have come to an end. The mojo has dried up.
Fans aren’t going to accept that. Not after nearly 20 years of protracted excellence. If you’re a senior in high school, you’ve never seen a truly terrible Patriots team. There are no comparisons with teams from any other era.
But if you’re my age, and saw far too many horrible teams, you have a better perspective. Was Saturday night disappointing? Sure it was. The score notwithstanding, the thoroughness in which the Bills took the Patriots apart was shocking and, frankly, appalling.
But I’m not one of those guys who goes around questioning the effort and commitment of professional athletes. This is all they know. They didn’t get this far because they don’t care.
Does it come down to coaching? Should Bill Belichick find real coaches insead of entrusting important things like defensive schemes to his sons? Or does any of this even matter? How much coaching do you need to block and tackle?
I think what you’re left with is this: The Patriots are still in transition. They brought in a number of new people, and while players like Matthew Judon had their moments (he had lots of them, actually) they were also beyond the left-field fence enough times that it made a difference. Their offensive line got pushed around much too often.
Is this the end of the line for consistent leaders like Devin McCourty and Dont’a Hightower? We only know about the hits that cause them to go down, or leave the game. We don’t know about all the other ones that players just absorb. When is enough enough?
And in fairness to the team, the defensive backfield was pretty chopped up by illness and injury the latter part of the season.
You learn if you’re around sports long enough that you’re never as good as you seem to be when the dice are rolling in your favor, and you’re never as bad as you seem to be when they’re not.
Saturday night was pretty bad. If that wasn’t the bottom, I don’t know what is. But they’ll recover. Remember: Don Shula never won a Super Bowl with Dan Marino. So these simple-minded people who scream about Belichick not being able to win without Tom Brady just don’t get it. That he got the Patriots to the playoffs at all with this team is a pretty significant accomplishment.