Pigskin Drama

So, who starts the game at QB for the Patriots in their Monday night game with da Bears?

Will the Patriots zig? Or will they Zappe?

If McCorkle starts, will he be rusty? Will Belichick have a short leash? What does that even mean? Down by 14 in the 2nd quarter? Trailing by 2 in the 4th? If Mac Jones lights it up on the big Monday night stage do we ever hear Bailey Zappe's name again? What does that even mean? 400 yards and 4 TD? If Mac Jones struggles and Bailey Zappe pulls out the win with a last second TD pass, then what? 

Just asking for a friend: Winning the game is important, isn't it?

Listening to the local pigskin pundits and bobbleheads this past week simultaneously try to create and dispel a QB controversy for Bill Belichick and the Patriots has been exhausting. You'd think the matter-antimatter mix in the Jeffries Tubes had gone out of balance and the Enterprise and all of New England was being swallowed up by the resulting black hole, an interstellar disaster from which only one QB on Earth can save us - Mac Jones or Bailey Zappe - but… Nobody knows which one!

Obviously, I'm not a physicist. 

I didn't buy the "Mac Jones had an attitude problem and needed to be put in his place" narrative even before I found out it was a catfishing expedition, but given the way misinformation works, if you were the kind of person inclined to believe Mac thought he was all that and a bag of chips, well, you probably still do. Your brain has built a little pillow fort around a crying Mac Jones baby in a dirty diaper. I don't know what to say to you other than, yeah, that Nigerian Prince sounds totes real to me, bud. Why don't you give me the cash and I'll make sure he gets it. Cool? Cool,

I suppose if there's an upside to all this captions auto-generated nonsense, it's that we had a week off from trading all of the Patriots depth pieces (Nelson Agholor, Kendrick Bourne, Damien Harris, Isaiah Wynn). Like it's a bad thing to have enough good players to deal with the reality of playing NFL football. People get hurt doing it on the regular. Depth pieces are good to have.

Meanwhile, there's actual football still to be played and I hate to say it, but this one is starting to feel like a classic trap game.

The Patriots would love to win the game that moves Bill Belichick past George Halas against the very team that Halas coached, the Chicago Bears, and maybe they're putting a little extra pressure on themselves to make plays instead of (checks notes) just doing their job. They've started to find themselves and they're feeling pretty good about getting back to .500, perhaps forgetting their two-game winning streak came to them courtesy of the eternally tragic Detroit Lions and their AFC doppelganger, the Cleveland Browns. Maybe, in fact, the Patriots are feeling a little too good about themselves. The Bears are tragic on offense but their defense is actually pretty good. Or okay good.

Above average. 

Look at the bones!

Add to that the fact that there will be just enough weather tonight to impact the game; the kind of early New England fall rain that can produce an ill-timed fumble, the kind of weather that can keep an underdog in the game, and give them a chance to pull off the upset if the Patriots do not take care of their business.

On the other hand, we all know Belichick controls the weather with his Illudium Q-36 Millibar Modulator. The Patriots probably haven't touched a dry football all week in practice. And the Bears aren't good, except on defense. 

Well, except against the run, where the Patriots are actually pretty good.

Which means we're probably not done with the McCorkle-Zappe debate as this looks like a game where whoever plays QB is going to spend most of the game handing the football to Rhamondre Stevenson and Damien Harris. And Tyquan Thornton on the jet sweep. 

Football is cruel, sometimes.

I just hope it isn't tonight.

Go Pats!