It's never a good sign when you're thinking, if they're losing this one, then maybe they should just tank; maybe a Top 5 draft pick would be worth the confusion, sadness, and pain I'm feeling right now.
I know, I know. Twenty years of unprecedented, sustained success I need to get over myself but this regressing to the mean stuff, I mean, am I going to get nineteen more years of this?
Don't answer that question.
Because today, my glass is half full of the Patriots winning a game they played badly enough to lose. New England had four backups start on the offensive line and Mac Jones lived to tell the tale. Somehow (okay, turnovers) the Patriots only punted once in this game. That's generally speaking, a good thing. It's hard to resist the what if's in this one, too. The Jakobi Meyers drop. (But it's a good sign I'm already as shocked by a Meyers drop as I was when Julian Edelman dropped a pass, isn't it?) The Damien Harris fumble at the goal line. (The second time this season. Yikes!) Those two gaffes probably cost the offense 10 points on the scoreboard and me two years on the actuarial chart.
And while that half glass of victory tastes as hot and sweet as a cappuccino, I am bewildered by how the Patriots defense, a unit that largely held Tom Brady in check, could turn around and make rookie Davis Mills look like, well, a young Tom Brady. Wasn't Mac Jones supposed to be the rookie QB throwing for 300 yards and 3 TD in this one, while Mills was put in a straitjacket by the Amazing Hoodini?
Sports can be so inexplicably confusing sometimes.
What happens next? I have no idea. If you think you know, you don't. I don't even think Belichick knows and if he doesn't I know you definitely do not. Perhaps the 2021 New England Patriots are an experiment in unpredictability; a living, breathing, pigskin Monte Carlo simulation. It would explain a lot.
Could the Patriots get their first home win of the 2021 season by beating the resurgent Dallas Cowboys and their top ranked offense this Sunday? In a year that's been all about the crazy, that sounds crazy enough that it just might happen.
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