My Inner Child is a Weakling and a Coward

Last Sunday, the Patriots had a chance to essentially clinch the AFC East. A win would’ve given them a sweep of the Jets. Combined with the Dolphins’ loss at home to the Bills, New England would’ve sat atop the division at 6-1-0 with Miami bringing their 3-game losing streak to Foxborough. Instead, I’ve spent the week enduring pigskin pundits and bobbleheads renewing their love affair with Sexy Rexy and scratching my head over comparisons of Geno Smith to Steve Young.

Seriously?

Will Patriots Nation look back on the loss to the Jets and see it as a turning point in a championship season? Or will it come to be seen as the beginning of the inevitable end of the Belichick-Brady era? A lot depends on today's game.

 

Rex Ryan is a good coach but he will not be going to the Hall of Fame except as a visitor. Bill Belichick will make it to Canton and wear and ill-fitting yellow blazer when it’s all said and done. It’s hard to deny, though, that Ryan got the better of Belichick last Sunday. Belichick’s only human but I can’t help thinking I’ve seen him do more with less. Maybe Belichick is the victim of his own success. Is it reasonable to expect he’d have an answer to the loss of both defensive tackles, their best linebacker and their best cornerback in the space of just two weeks? I know it shouldn’t be and yet that’s exactly what I expected.

Numbers do lie but they are terribly difficult to argue with. The list of extenuating circumstances is extensive but it’s undeniable Tom Brady is on pace for the worst numbers of his Hall of Fame career. New England’s receivers may be on pace for a season record for most drops but it feels like Brady has made more bad decisions and thrown more bad passes in seven games than we’ve seen in the last seven seasons.

Even I have days when I think these things. Everything ends badly (otherwise it wouldn’t end). Can I reasonably exempt the Belichick-Brady era from this apparent truism? Has my confidence that Brady would regress to the mean, the rookies would get it, that Amendola would stay on the field, that Belichick finally had a defense that would dominate; has it all been a complex and fragile rationalization? How much longer can I ignore the facts on the ground while waiting for the facts on the ground to change? Will the facts on the ground, in fact, ever change?

Even I have days when I seemingly forget the Patriots are 5-2-0 and in first place in the AFC East. With a win today, the Patriots would put themselves on pace to finish 12-4-0, a record that should easily capture the division. As a Patriots’ fan, I should know as well as anyone that anything can happen in a single-game elimination tournament. The odds may not be in New England’s favor but a Super Bowl is still ballistically north of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Do you really like the Kansas City Chiefs that much more than the Patriots?

I also know that all it will take is a vintage performance by Brady today against the Dolphins for me to give my whining and weeping inner child a hot fudge sundae with jimmies on top and sit him down in front of my boxed set copy of “The Goonies.” It won’t make my inner child any more courageous or optimistic but it will shut him up for a while.