The Patriots are good.
Relative to the 2021 NFL competition, evidently really good.
Good enough for a 9-4 record as Christmas nears.
Good enough to run off a seven-game winning streak before enjoying this past weekend’s bye.
Even good enough so that 9-4 record remains not only atop the AFC East but in the No. 1 seed slot in the conference with a month to play even while New England spent the weekend resting, relaxing and hanging out with family.
Bill Belichick’s team is so good, in fact, that it’s brought up a question that only comes about with the really good, really successful teams who are clearly streaking toward a title chance: Could the Patriots benefit from a loss? (Ducks and shuts off Twitter mentions!)
Before you roll your eyes, click away and call us every synonym for idiot (or worse) in the Urban Dictionary, hear us out.
It’s a question that infamously popped up for the then-undefeated New England team down the stretch of 2007, surfaced by the Boston Herald. It was an idea that was almost universally mocked, right up until that seemingly unstoppable team fell to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII with players subsequently revealing that the pressure and stress of the possible perfect season became backbreakingly immense.
So maybe it wasn’t and isn’t such a dumb question after all?
Of course while a loss in the 2007 stretch run clearly would have reduced much of the pressure and expectation, it would also have wiped away the chance at history and becoming the greatest team of all time.
Either way, New York did just that in early February anyway.
Now, with visions of Super Bowls dancing in the heads of Patriot Nation once again this December, the question of whether the Patriots would be better off with a loss in the final four games of the regular season has been resurfaced locally by WBZ.
As much as we tend to bristle against such media-driven talking points, the reality is history tells us it’s not a ridiculous idea.
With the Patriots having won seven games in a row at this point, a continuous successful run at another Lombardi Trophy would take another seven wins.
Are the Mac Jones-, Matt Judon-led rebuilt Patriots really good enough and capable enough to run off a 14-winning streak to close out an unexpectedly remarkable season on the way to Super Bowl glory?
Never say never, but it’s certainly hard to envision for a team with a rookie quarterback that is less than a year from being left for dead in the playoff-free, post-Tom Brady era.
Such a winning streak to and through a Super Bowl would be the second-longest of Belichick’s tenure in New England, trailing only his 2003 team’s 15-game march, the dynasty coming to fruition before all the world’s eyes. That team actually set an NFL record with a 21-game streak that continued into the 2004 season.
The only other Patriots team to ride a double-digit win streak to Super Bowl victory was the 2016 squad, a 10-game streak that culminated in a “helluva story” that was the greatest comeback in history to defeat the Falcons.
There is a problem, though, with the idea of the Patriots theoretically being better off with a regular season loss to reset things a bit, recalibrate what’s needed to truly succeed. The problem is that a loss could inherently hurt New England’s chances to secure the No. 1 seed, the lone playoff bye, and by extension a shot at the Super Bowl given the bunched-up standings atop the AFC. Hosting say the Chiefs or the Titans in late January at Gillette Stadium certainly seems more palatable for the Patriots than traveling to either Kansas City or Tennessee, even if New England is undefeated on the road this season.
The Patriots team makeup is another consideration in this mythical do-they-need-a-loss? conversation that’s probably best suited for a too-much-time-to-think bye week and really nowhere else.
New England has the most proven, focused coach in NFL history. The roster includes such tried and tested veteran leadership as Devin McCourty, Matthew Slater, Dont’a Hightower, Lawrence Guy, David Andrews and others.
But it also has key roles filled by youngsters like Jones, Christian Barmore and Rhamondre Stevenson as well as veteran New England newcomers Judon, Hunter Henry, Kendrick Bourne, Jalen Mills, Davon Godchaux and others.
That mixture of established Patriots and newbies guided the team through the 2-4 start that had it on the brink of another lost season.
The group dealt with adversity as well as it could and now preaches a “2-4 mentality” as it works through streaking success with most of the football world jumping on its supposedly Super Bowl-bound bandwagon.
The Patriots are good. Good enough to wonder if they might be better off with a December loss to fuel and redirect a January/February postseason run to sports immortality. Or maybe even good enough to not need a loss, to simply keep on streaking the way they have been for nearly two months, knocking off all comers regardless of the situation.
It’s a great hypothetical, one that can’t be answered with certainty, if at all, until the benefit of hindsight. One that the hypothetical-allergic Belichick would never publicly ponder for even a nanosecond.
But it’s one that’s deservedly being asked once again in New England. Feel free to answer it in the recesses of your own mind, deep down in that spot reserved for honest opinions you won’t share at your holiday parties.
Would you rather see the Patriots run the table over the final four games of the regular season and deal with the building pressure and expectations of a long winning streak heading into the postseason? (Yes, but that’s just me!)
Or, would you prefer one little stumble of a loss down the regular season stretch with the idea that it might actually benefit a three- or four-game run to glory in the postseason?
Oh, and I guess there is a third option, the one where we say who the eff cares? Just let the games play out as they may you media dink and deal with them as they come.
To that we say, touché!
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