Do you whistle past the graveyards of Patriot Nation?
Is your head constantly buried in the sand beneath the not-so-authentic lighthouse of Gillette Stadium?
If so, you should probably either stop reading for just a second or momentarily stick your fingers in your ears and hum loudly. Because, I have some 2020-reality-bites bad news for you.
[Whisper font] The Patriots are probably going to lose Sunday evening in Kansas City.
OK, that’s the bad news.
But there is good news.
Regardless of what happens against the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, New England will fly home anything but a group of defeated losers.
No matter what the end result on the scoreboard, this is one of those no-lose situations that comes along every once in a while.
How so you ask?
Well, the absolute worst-case scenario is that arguably the best quarterback on the planet, the half-billion-dollar-man Patrick Mahomes, and his many speed-based weapons wipe the turf with Bill Belichick’s feel-good-to-date Patriots on an early-October evening in the Midwest.
And?
That means that New England will be similar to reigning NFL MVP Lamar Jackson and the Ravens, who got their hats handed to them by the Chiefs on their own turf in Baltimore in front of the entire football world earlier this week on Monday Night Football.
Baltimore is supposed to be an ascending squad. Maybe the most well-rounded team in football led by the most unique offensive weapon on the plant. And, yet, Jackson and the Ravens once again failed to hang with Mahomes, Andy Reid’s game plan and everything the defending Super Bowl champions have to offer.
But wait, what if it’s not the worst-case scenario? Maybe the Patriots hang around with the Chiefs. New England has, after all, beaten Mahomes in his young career. Past Devin McCourty-led defenses have stymied the infinitely-talented quarterback early in games only to see him put on a flurry of production after the half.
Maybe that happens again, maybe Cam Newton and Co. have a chance down the wire to win a big road game in a tough environment against a Super Bowl contender for the second time in the last three weeks only to come up a smidge short.
If that happens the growing bandwagon of In Bill We Trust believers – including some strange national media bedfellows like Max Kellerman – won’t shrink but will in fact only continue to grow in the first month post-Tom Brady in New England.
Heck, that would give the Patriots a 4 MVPW through four games, which of course analytics-savvy supporters of Belichick’s team know is the new-age Moral Victories Plus Wins. Only those hip readers no longer beholden to archaic statics of measurement like simple wins and losses understand what I’m talking about.
Finally, what if the unthinkable becomes thinkable and a Patriots team that’s found ways to make plays, put up points and cull together three very different but productive game plans in three weeks shocks the world and upsets the Chiefs? It was, after all, less than two weeks ago that the upstart Chargers with a rookie quarterback making his first start had Kansas City on the ropes, right?
So, as Kevin Garnett might say, “Anything is possible!”
Best-case scenario, New England boards AirKraft One for a flight back with a 3-1 record coming off what might be one of the biggest upsets and most noteworthy wins of the 2020 season for any team in any week.
Belichick will be well on his way to his first Coach of the Year nod in a decade. (Yes, it’s crazy he hasn’t won the award since 2010!)
Cam Newton will be the talk of the town – talk of every NFL town-- and the fact that he’s on a one-year, prove-it contract will become a runaway narrative focused on the potential for a still-too-soon contract extension.
Pandemonium will reign supreme.
Tom who?
It’s a fun dream, but let’s get back to reality.
Regardless of the painful or enticing details the Patriots are likely to lose Sunday evening in Kansas City. And that’s more than OK, even for this team, this coach, this organization that plays in this city, one that has spent the last two weeks debating the value of moral victories.
With another moral victory or worse, the Patriots will still finish the first month of football with a 2-2 record, having won home games they were supposed to and come up short in the tall-task challenges of two trips to arguably the toughest road venues in the NFL, even in a pandemic.
They’ll be very much in the mix of the AFC East and the conference playoff picture. They’ll have their whole season ahead of them and control their own destiny, as the curious cliché goes.
Remember, one of the fundamental strengths of nearly every Belichick-coached team is that it gets better as the season wears on. It plays its best football later in the season. (Please ignore 2019. Thanks!)
The Patriots don’t have to worry about playing a team like the Seahawks again, if at all, until the Super Bowl.
After Sunday night the next time they might possibly have to deal with Mahomes and the Chiefs would be the playoffs, a shot that New England’s early season play might give them a shot at despite some of the sky-is-falling predictions of the preseason. K.C. is seemingly cruising toward the No. 1 seed and lone bye in the AFC, a spot the Patriots are no longer really vying for. It is what it is.
[Whisper font] The Patriots are probably going to lose Sunday evening in Kansas City.
And while no one inside the COVID-19 protected walls of Gillette Stadium will articulate it – certainly not Belichick or Newton -- that’s OK. Because regardless of what happens Sunday evening, Monday will represent the first day of the rest of what is already looking like it could stack up as a relatively successful season in New England.
Don’t worry about wetting your lips to whistle your way through a beating. Dust that sand off your head.
The Patriots have nothing to lose against Mahomes’ Chiefs.
