Season's Greeting

A glorious Sunday before Christmas in New England. A milky sun, unseasonably warm temperatures, and the New England Patriots are the AFC East Champions for the eleventeenth time in a row.

Nobody's Perfect

"And that might not have been a loss if not for a New England touchdown on special teams as well as the second-half departure of Bills quarterback Josh Allen."

• Bleacher Report's Week 16 Expert Consensus NFL Picks

Where to begin?

History Rhymes Again

A disappointing loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. A cheating controversy involving videotape. We're on to Cincinnati.

Wait-What?

If you built a time machine and traveled back in time, would you know you built a time machine in the future?

I Was Told There'd Be No Math

We are like one of those intergalactic cultures that Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise visited, where all knowledge of technology has been lost; the forgotten magic of the ancient ones. The server rooms have become dusty churches where the green-skinned, miniskirt-clad tribal women of today perform the ritual of the reboot without any underlying understanding of what it once meant. Their fear of these remnants of solid state technology and it's strange binary math has cost the lives of many of whatever passes for goats on this distant planet, offered in sacrifice to these machines in the ghost. 

NFL fans are like these sexy alien women in their love of Captain Kirk and their fear of the existential threat of… mathematical elimination.

Making It Up As They Go

There's a dark subtext to seeing the Patriots set the record with their 17th consecutive season winning 10 games (or more, of course). I mean… That can't go on forever. Right? 

It doesn't help that the consensus amongst pigskin pundits and bobbleheads seems to be that this is the worst 10-1-0 team in NFL history. Wounded. Living off their rep and a soft schedule. No longer Super Bowl contenders. (Can you say a more hurtful thing about the Patriots?) Is that The Cliff photobombing Tom Brady's Instagram posts? 

If there's an upside, it's that Bill Belichick is some kind of pigskin alchemist who can transform doubt into blocked punts. 

Winning Football

The first thing I read the morning after the Patriots storm-addled 13-9 win over the Cowboys in Foxborough was pretty much what I expected. Patriots Finally Have Reason to Be Concerned About Tom Brady and the Offense, according to Brad Gagnon on Bleacher Report.

To which I say...

Finally?

The Repeatable Experience

We've seen this movie before, haven't we? Underperforming in the regular season, featuring a blowout loss that has pigskin pundits questioning Tom Brady and the Patriots' Super Bowl bona fides? Check. Controversy? I'd say the endless Antonio Brown saga qualifies. A rash of injuries that seems to target a single position group? Well, we haven't gotten to the point where wide receivers are playing defensive back but I might be close to asking if any of the defensive backs played wide receiver in college… or high school… or pee wee football. 

Yeah. We've seen this movie before and we know how it ends.