The clock has struck midnight for almost every NFL team in this season of humbling parity.
Just not the Patriots.
If anything, New England is the team who slept through their alarm, in Week 1, with a loss against the Raiders that looks truly bizarre as they head into the bye week with a league-best 11-2 record.
The New York Giants had a handful of reasons to believe they could walk into Gillette Stadium and upset Mike Vrabel’s upstart team. The Giants had first-round pick Jaxson Dart back, healthy, under center. They had just rid themselves of defensive coordinator Shane Bowen in hopes of a fresh look. Outside linebacker Brian Burns scouted Patriots quarterback Drake Maye before Thanksgiving and found him, “maybe a little too poised.” The Giants had a way of hanging around against good teams – they just tended to lose.
And New England entered the game with back-to-back one-score fourth quarters against the Jets and Bengals and without left tackle Will Campbell, left guard Jared Wilson, and defensive end Milton Williams. They also got assigned the dreaded late bye week for the second straight year.
Prime time games also have a way of getting zany, don’t they? Sure enough, Monday night delivered its own amusements: Christian Ellis took Jaxson Dart off his feet, (legally), igniting one of many dustups between the Giants offense and Patriots’ defense. Giants kicker Younghoe Koo brutally mistimed his footwork in a routine field goal attempt and shanked the front of his cleat like a TaylorMade driver.
But the story remains that the Patriots keep playing at a much higher level than their opponents, on Sundays, Thursday, and now, Monday. That reality is what's ultimately more important than their failure to score a touchdown in the second half of Monday's game, or their ongoing red zone blah's.
New England came out with their hair on fire against the Giants, and that was by design.
"Coming out there with juice and being aggressive, we had a good talk about being aggressive," Diggs said after the game. "All plays can be aggressive, run plays, pass plays, just be aggressive and everybody do their part. Balance."
To quote Mark Wahlberg in ‘The Departed,’ (sorry, but he was great in that role), they’re the guys who do their jobs.
The Patriots blew out the Giants 33-15 a day after the McVay-Stafford-led Rams stumbled against the 7-6 Panthers, the roster-stacked but fun-as-paint-drying Eagles fell to the surging Bears, and the Broncos flirted with disaster against Mar-i-o-ta’s Commanders.
Go back further in the week, and the Thanksgiving holiday provided losses to both the Ravens and the Chiefs, with Patrick Mahomes fighting to get into the playoffs for the first time in his professional career.
“You must be the other guy.”
We’ve reached the point where we all have to lay off the “easy schedule” snark a little bit. Yes, the schedule is soft, but the Patriots are not. They haven’t lapsed since Week 3. Since Pittsburgh, they’ve weathered their goof-ups in games and found different ways to win. They let teams hang around, (they sure left the door open for Jaxson Dart on that two-point conversion to start the fourth quarter), but eventually, they close it out.
Above all, just when it starts to look like Maye is becoming mortal once again, he goes and drops it right in the bucket for Kayshon Boutte in the endzone, then finds Kyle Williams in stride for a 33-yard touchdown. He’s still the motor that powers this well-oiled machine. He shows no sign of engine failure. He’s flanked in his success by his draft classmates, Bo Nix and Caleb Williams, but Matthew Stafford is a closer peer.
Here’s one more noteworthy aspect of this particular team: anyone can be a playmaker on game day. Maye target six different receivers three times or more, and the one he didn’t was Williams, who still had the catch of the day.
Christian Ellis earns a big shout-out on the other side of the ball for having the best performance of his season. And Marcus Jones continues to be a hot knife in butter on punt returns.
"When you have everybody prepared like starters and everybody ready to play, it's easy to have anybody pop out at any moment," Williams said, postgame. "We've got a team full of dogs, and we're going to keep doing it."
The Patriots aren't a perfect team, but they're executing at the perfect time.
It’s December 1st, the region is bracing for its first wintry storm, and the Patriots are the league’s hottest team. Now they’ll take a week off to let everyone else catch up.