Boston (WEEI/WGR 550) - Let’s try a little SAT logic.
The New England Patriots are an NFL football team.
NFL football is a professional sport.
Professional sports, at their most basic level, are supposed to be entertaining. Not in a WWE scripted sports entertainment way, despite tongue-in-cheek marketing campaigns. Just a simple, basic I-enjoy-watching-this kind of way.
So, therefore, the Patriots are supposed to be entertaining.
And therein lies the problem for Bill Belichick’s 1-5 floundering football team, and its connection to its admittedly entitled and spoiled fan base.
The Patriots have been anything but entertaining through six dismal games this fresh fall season. Heck, one might argue the team has failed to register much entertainment value for three-plus seasons, save for a bit of fleeting and misleading fun in the middle of Mac Jones’ rookie campaign of 2021.
Sadly, for the most part over the last three seasons and six games, the Patriots have been anything but entertaining. Anything but respectable.
Anything but worthy of fans’ time and money.
Just in case Belichick and his troops aren’t aware – which I’m sure they have to be – sloppy, ugly football is not what we’re looking for, to steal the Hall of Fame coach’s own phrase.
False starts on the first offensive play of the game – one of two consecutive penalties to open a game – aren’t it.
Nor is a dropped pass on a perfectly thrown ball with comeback hopes of winning an ugly road fair alive.
A safety, in which multiple supposed professionals literally and figuratively fall on their asses in the face of an opposing elite pass rusher, are the things of old NFL Films follies. Not fun.
Ugly interceptions on a weekly basis? Thanks, but no thanks.
Big plays wiped out by penalty? Thanks for nothing but a tease.
Even something as simple as a quarterback pitching the ball to a running back turns into a turnover? Are we serious?
Sure, there have been the occasional big hits and takeaways. However, that’s pretty much all coming from Jabrill Peppers, which as impressive as it’s been, is not nearly enough.
And sure, there’s times when throws to Kendrick Bourne and Hunter Henry look like actual, honest-to-goodness, professional plays, but they’re way too few and way too far between.
As the modern pseudointellectuals like to say, is it too much to ask for the Patriots to be better?
Heck, Jones has said that phrase about himself and his team more often than anything else in his two-plus years as the "franchise" quarterback.
Be better? Sure. Be more entertaining! For God’s sake, yes! Please and thank you.
We know the double-dynasty is dead and officially buried. The nine trips to the Super Bowl are a wonderful distant memory of glory days gone by. The Lombardi Trophies in Robert Kraft’s office area at Gillette Stadium not needing to make room for a new friend anytime soon.
And that’s OK. Can’t stay on top forever. Probably shouldn’t really have for as long as we did. It’s the natural course of events in professional sports, especially the cap-driven world of the NFL.
But what we’ve been seeing on the field for the better part of a few years now? Nope. Not acceptable. Not OK. Not even a little bit.
So forget about trying to be a contender. Or a divisional champion. Or even a playoff team.
We’re all mostly big boys and girls. We know that for the time being those days are over. "Doneski" as one former Patriots Super Bowl champion might describe it.
How about we just string together some clean, competitive, entertaining plays?
How about we put guys on the field that are fully invested and engaged in giving everything they have to get whatever best-case-scenario unfolds?
How ‘bout we get back to putting some entertainment value back into the three hours that New England fans are still willing to invest in their Patriots football team for the final 11 games of this lost 2023 season?
Winning frequently and dominating the competition, are too much to ask for at this point.
But a good ol’ fashioned professional effort and a little entertainment value?
Is that too much to ask for? Starting with Sunday’s game against Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills at Gillette Stadium?
Right now, it actually kinda feels like it is.