ESPN's "Get Up!" morning show with Mike Greenberg and Jay Williams was just going about its business Wednesday morning talking about LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers like every other show on the network does when the Patriots caught an unfortunate stray.
As Greenberg made the point that James and the Lakers would likely miss the playoffs for a second season in a row, Williams said it reminded him of a certain AFC East team with a lot of question marks.
"I look at the Los Angeles Lakers and the New England Patriots as the same," he said. "We're going to talk about them all the time. One has the greatest coach of all time...and the other has LeBron James. But realistically, when you look at both teams, they're marginal playoff teams. They're going to be barely right there or maybe on the outside looking in."
First of all: yikes.
Secondly: it unfortunately might not be as off as people want it to be.
Even now, the Patriots are making headlines on shows like "Get Up!" due to confusion about their coaching staff, whether Bill Belichick can pull off this wild experiment, and what it all means for (or is doing to) Mac Jones rather than how good the team looks or them being expected to win the AFC East.
Not that national shows always have the best insights into the ins-and-outs of the Patriots' operation, of course, but it feels like a lot of talk for all the wrong reasons.
As for Williams' proclamation: the Patriots certainly don't look like a playoff-caliber team at the moment, which you could at least envision last season around this time. That could change later in the year, but a lot of things must go right.
Even if they did, another Wildcard Weekend exit feels like this team's ceiling in 2022 given how rough this division and conference look.
It would be tough to have to hear national shows talk incessantly about the Patriots in the same way as they currently do with James and the Lakers -- as a ratings booster rather than an actual topic of substance. Unless New England shows us something unexpected in that gauntlet end of the schedule, that's where we might be headed.
