Former Patriots Pro Bowl and All-Decade fullback James Develin had a simple phrase to describe his dirty job on the New England offense as well as he is post-career decision to run the Boston Marathon.
“Embrace the suck.”
The phrase got him through a tough life he loved banging heads blocking for Sony Michel on a Super Bowl run as well as through endless miles pounding the pavement to challenge himself to get up Heartbreak Hill in retirement.
It’s a mentality that probably needs to be the motto in Patriot Nation through the final five games of this trying 2023 season.
Sunday afternoon’s 6-0 loss to the Chargers at Gillette Stadium was a new low in a season filled with them. Despite a change from the much-maligned Mac Jones to hopeful backup Bailey Zappe at quarterback New England was shut out at home once again, the first time the team has suffered that fate twice in a year in franchise history.
It was ugly as heck, and not just because the game was played in pretty putrid rain-soaked conditions in front of far less than a full house at Gillette Stadium.
While December football games in Foxborough used to be hat-and-t-shirt affairs with playoff appearances and division titles on the line, we are resigned these days to accept the fact that the holiday season is more about long-term turnaround hope and draft picks.
The harsh post-Tanksgiving reality is that even these prideful Patriots – a team with a fight-filled defense that’s allowed a combined 13 points over three consecutive losses – are playing for nothing at this point but professionalism and a love of the game.
New England has been all but officially eliminated from playoff contention.
The team is expected to undergo a major organizational overhaul of some kind shortly after the final whistle blows in the season finale against the Jets.
There are way more questions than answers.
Yet there is one clear and obvious path this December – not a path to the playoffs but a path to one of the top two selections in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Thanks to the Patriots latest lackluster loss and the Cardinals win over the Steelers, Bill Belichick’s team is now firmly established as the projected No. 2 overall pick next April. A couple in inversely “lucky” bounces for New England or Carolina could push the Patriots up the selection process one more critical spot, to a place the franchise hasn’t been since Drew Bledsoe’s arrival in 1993.
And that would indeed be what’s in the best interests of the football team. Whether anyone inside Gillette Stadium would ever admit it or not.
As Tom Brady used to say about late-season positioning for the playoffs, “we didn’t come this far to only come this far.”
The same is true for draft pick positioning. It’s time to finish the job. There is only one way to make all this losing palatable and pay off. This opportunity has developed quite organically for Robert Kraft’s team.
The Patriots aren’t tanking per se, they just kinda suck at his point. Or as safety Jabrill Peppers so honestly if unfortunately put it, “we ass.”
He’s not wrong and the truth is never mean.
So it’s probably just time everyone in New England simply gives in to the circumstances at hand.
Steer into the losing. Accept it as a necessary and temporary evil. Flip failure on its head and see it as a way out of this mess.
Lost season? Heck no, this is a season filled with losses that could and should jumpstart the next great era of Patriots football. It’s all about perspective.
It’s about time we all simply embrace the suck.
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