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The Patriots 23-16 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs was a strange, disjointed game, full of high’s and low’s, great plays and disastrous ones. At one point in the second quarter the Pats were being so thoroughly out-played that I sadly whispered to myself that the dynasty was finally over. But then in the fourth quarter, with the Patriots putting together one final drive to tie the game, I asked myself whether they could actually pull out a victory in spite themselves and the referees.
Alas, they fell one play short, leaving us with the same questions we’ve been asking ourselves since the schedule stopped pitting them against NFL teams that wouldn’t stand a chance against LSU: Will the defense find a way to hold on for 48 minutes against guys like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson? Will the offense ever find a way to score against top tier teams? Are the Patriots capable of overcoming their many limitations and rediscovering that Belichick-Brady magic for one more season?
While hoping that the answers are yes, I can’t help but facing the facts, the ones that tell me no. The first scary fact is that against Kansas City, Sony Michel had five carries for a grand total of eight yards. Against Baltimore, the other AFC team most likely to stand in the way of the Pats, he had 18. When your offensive line isn’t opening up holes, and when your lead back isn’t making yardage on his own, that makes your offense pretty predictable—Brady drops back to pass, again. Very simply, it means that TB12 will be under constant pressure when the defense knows 1) that they don’t have to fear the run, and 2) that they don’t really have to fear the Patriots receivers either.
On defense, Bill has always made his reputation by taking away the other team’s main weapon and making opponents try to beat them with their B-list cast of characters. This year, a daring new version of Bill, with a secondary that he can finally trust, has wreaked havoc among the cellar dwellers of the league by putting immense pressure on young, nervous, and incompetent quarterbacks, causing numerous interceptions and fumbles.
But the same defense that drove Sam Darnold and Josh Allen crazy hasn’t had the same luck with more talented quarterbacks who sit behind better O-lines with a greater assortment of weapons. If the plan for the playoffs is to have the defense hold opponents under 20 points because it’s unlikely that the Pats offense will be competitive if the game becomes anything close to a shootout, then we’ve got real problems.
So for me the choice comes down to wallowing in the Pats deficiencies—so easy to do—or telling myself that the Pats strategy is to play rope-a-dope and make other teams overconfident against them. I keep on telling myself that if Bill hadn’t foolishly thrown his challenge flag contesting the bad spot for a Chiefs first down and lost his ability to challenge later in the game, he would have had two key calls overturned: the N’Keal Harry touchdown that wasn’t, and the interference call that wasn’t made on the Phillip Dorsett pass. The former was a TD as clear as day on replay and the latter was exactly the sort of non-call mugging that the new rule was put in place to do away with. We would have come away with our usual “It wasn’t pretty, but it was a win,” although this time it was not to be.
But as long as Bill is still capable of strategizing, and Tom Brady still capable of slinging, and Julian Edelman capable of reeling in eight passes a game even though quadruple covered, we always have hope. We look forward to next week (seems like “On to Cincinnati” is the Patriots typical war cry after a loss to the Chiefs) as the litmus test for determining whether we’ve got a group of contenders or pretenders. Will the Patriots return to their routine of destroy-the-bottom-dwellers or have our boys from Foxborough sunk to the level of struggling against all comers.
