Pigskin Regrets

 Regrets, I've had a few, but unlike Frankie, Imma gonna mention them.

It's as if all of us in Patriots Nation have woken up in 2023. Admittedly, that's going to happen soon enough but what I mean is the local pigskin pundits and bobbleheads seem to have already moved on to next season. As in, this season is over. Done. Dusted. Of the "we shall speak no more of it" variety. The fear among New England fans now is that the Pats might somehow win their last two games and make the playoffs and that sniff at success might keep the Patriots and Belichick from making the changes all of us on the couch can plainly see need to be made. 

Here's the thing.

I'm still fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing when it comes to this 2022 edition of the New England Patriots.

For your consideration…

Miami is 8-7-0 with a -5 point differential. 

New England is 7-8-0 with a +27 point differential.

Given that Buffalo has a +157 point differential (context is always important), I'm not trying to say the Patriots should be a playoff lock based on point differential alone but it does seem like the Patriots should be the 8-7-0 team in this arguably small, cherry-picked data sample.

Perhaps more regrettably important is that the Patriots have lost 5 winnable games already: Green Bay (in OT), Chicago (seriously, how did the Pats lose to the Bears let alone badly and at home), Minnesota (7 points), Las Vegas (WTAF), and Cincinnati (is "forward progress" not a thing in the NFL any more?). 

As far as "wait till next year" goes, I am seriously not going to miss the NFC North in 2023.

Okay, end of the year lists are all the rage in late December so my "Top 5 Games the Patriots Should Have/Could Have Won" is on trend but yes, this is the worst kind of solipsistic sports fan's revisionist history. Life is unfair. That isn't headline news. They lost. Move on.

Still, what would we be saying about a Patriots team that was 10-5-0 (assuming they won 3 of those 5 games)? I'm guessing we'd be saying things like…

Not as good as the Bills… Or Chiefs… Or Bengals.

Good but not elite… See list above, and why bother adding NFC teams when the Patriots are…

Probably one and done in the playoffs… by 30+ points.

We could say the same about a 9-8-0 team that slips into that last Wild Card spot on a tiebreaker, couldn't we?

Go Pats!