The Patriots certainly don’t feel like much of a playoff team.
Last Thursday night’s loss to the Bills at Gillette Stadium left New England at 6-6 for the year, in a two-game losing streak that has it entrenched in last place in the AFC East.
It once again displayed a dysfunctional offense that couldn’t even dream of keeping up with Josh Allen & Co., as Mac Jones let his season-long frustrations boil over in an expletive-filled sideline tirade.
It also showed a defense that for the second straight season had built up a fraudulent resume based on beating up on inferior teams with incapable QBs only to fail to get the job done in the face of actual NFL passers with actual high end talents to throw to. Allen and Stefon Diggs did to Jonathan Jones and the Patriots secondary what Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson had only a week earlier in primetime action.
No, the Patriots aren’t ready for primetime action. Nor are they seemingly capable of getting the job done against actual playoff contenders like the Vikings or the Bills. Or likely the Bengals, Dolphins or Bills again, all on the late-season schedule holiday horizon.
But regardless of what our eyes tell us about the Patriots, the playoff picture paints a different post-Thanksgiving tale.
Another weekend of action is in the record books and the optimistic reality is that New England very much remains in the back end of that playoff picture in the AFC.
Observationally we may feel that the Patriots don’t come close to measuring up to teams like the Bills, Vikings, Dolphins and Ravens who’ve already dispatched Bills Belichick’s team this season.
Looking ahead we may struggled to see them having much of a chance to measure up to teams like the Bengals, Dolphins and Bills down the home stretch of the season schedule.
But all that is just speculative analysis and prognostication. In many ways it’s irrelevant.
What’s relevant is that at 6-6 with five games to play and thanks to the expanded playoff picture that includes seven teams and four Wild Cards, the Patriots are very much in the middle of the bunch of mediocre teams battling for at least the No. 7 seed in the AFC.
The Jets – yes the Jets that New England twice defeated, although it was with Zach Wilson at the helm – currently hold the final AFC Wild Card spot with a 7-5 record, one game head of the Patriots.
The Chargers, like the Patriots, have a 6-6 mark as Justin Herbert tries yet again to punch his first postseasons pass.
Then there is the left-for-dead list of 5-7 teams that may still have life like Josh McDaniels’ Raiders, Deshaun Watson’s Browns and a Steelers squad led by Mike “Never had a losing record” Tomlin.
At least one of these very mediocre, probably-shouldn’t-be-there teams is going to make the playoffs.
More importantly, New England very much controls its chances to play meaningful January football – or meaningless, if you believe a road playoff loss like last years in Buffalo is essentially meaningless in the big picture – thanks to those upcoming battles with Cincinnati, Miami and Buffalo.
Are the Patriots a Super Bowl contender? Almost certainly not.
Could New England even win a playoff game if it were to make it to the postseason? Probably not.
But as of the second week of December Belichick’s team is still very much a playoff contender with a little more than a month of football left to be played.
For now, that should be good enough for Patriot Nation.
Actually, it will have to be.
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