If you’re not familiar with the misery business that is running the 400-meter dash, let me say two things.
First, good for you (said with resentful side-eye).
Secondly, if you ever find yourself attempting a full lap around a regulation outdoor track for any serious reason, here’s some advice: don’t think you’re going to get to the last 100 meters and suddenly pour on a last-second surge to the finish line. (Spoiler alert: you have nothing left by that point.)
But as with any sprint, getting out of the blocks fast sets the tone for everything you do. Sure, you don’t want to burn out too fast, but you also don’t want to have to play catch-up and do more stressful work just to stay in the race. By that point, you’ve let too much slip out of your control, and you need some combination of super-human effort and opponents’ mistakes to win — if you don't wear down first.
So perhaps it wasn’t surprising to hear Bill Belichick evoke images of racing when I asked him during his Monday morning presser about the Patriots’ ugly start to the season against Miami on Sunday.
“Everyone needs to learn from these games and get better and improve. It's really [about] the rate that that happens. … But it's a race against time,” he answered. “Everybody’s trying to improve quickly, and have a good record in the early part of the season, and get stronger as the year goes on. That’s the National Football League.”
Some of you might be reading this thinking, “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
Tell me that doesn’t sound like sage advice on how to have a winning football season, too. (Plus, like the 400-meter, the NFL season is much more sprint than marathon.)
But the trepidation around these 0-1 Patriots goes beyond simply limping out of the blocks during this “race against time” with a toothless Week 1 performance against the division rival Dolphins last Sunday.
It also stems from them bumbling through warm-ups, wandering around aimlessly with a new offensive install and coaching staff while everyone else was getting tuned up and ready to go. Though some mistakes are expected in Week 1, like Kyle Dugger missing a key tackle on Jaylen Waddle’s first touchdown, the offensive line gaffes that got Mac Jones wrecked on multiple occasions have been a consistent (and apparently unaddressed) problem for months now.
When that was happening all preseason, Belichick was trying to allay everyone’s concerns about how unprepared the Patriots looked to meaningfully compete (on offense at least) talking about how September was basically still preseason — still time for evaluation and working out the kinks.
But though Belichick has retained some of that tone following the Dolphins loss — “two plays…really skewed the game” — it seems he’s simultaneously wrestling with the painful reality of his situation: his team now looks multiple steps slow off the gun in a highly unforgiving race.
What’s worse: if you hit him with truth serum, he’d probably tell you this version of the Patriots can’t just turn it on a few strides in or even halfway through and expect to be in contention to win at the end like past iterations — even last year’s — were able to.
At this point, you have to hope competitors fall out or make mistakes you can take advantage of, and there are too many good ones — including having a bona fide Super Bowl contender in the lane right next to you — to bank on that.
Yes, there’s still a lot of race left, and one misstep at the start doesn’t always have to ruin you as long as you recover quickly or have a plan to eat up ground later. (A weak middle of the schedule might give them just the pick-me-up they need, much like last year.)
Then again, the 2022 Patriots haven’t shown any indication they can do either since they started training camp in late July, repeating a maddening process of sputtering, gaining the smallest bit of ground back then tripping over their feet again in practice session after practice session.
They’ll likely get back into this thing and give people some hope eventually. They’re not the only team to start off on a losing note, and they are very many worse teams in their conference.
But if your goal is to win the race and not just “do your best,” sometimes you have to face facts. The Patriots have made too many mistakes at and before the start of this thing to be taken seriously as a championship team, and they probably never had the horsepower to be one in the first place.
So don’t be surprised when they prove that to you as the real contenders pass them by and keep on going. When it becomes clear how far away they are from that Lombardi Trophy, that figurative trip around the track is going to feel like it takes years.
It’s like that in real life, too.
