Is it possible for an NFL team to go from better than its lowly record to not as good as everyone seems to think in little more than a month’s time?
The 2021 Patriots are certainly shooting their proverbial shot.
A potentially crushing overtime loss to the Cowboys on Oct. 17 dropped New England to 2-4 on the still-young season, the team’s only win in the prior month a three-point escape in Houston. There was very real potential that even as the players remained publicly confident in their comments that the season was circling the drain for Bill Belichick’s tight-knit squad.
There was plenty of reason to doubt the Foxborough rebuild and to believe that Belichick and Co. might have another even higher draft pick to work with this coming spring to help surround No. 15 overall pick rookie QB Mac Jones following another playoff-free January that was growing more likely by the week.
But little more than five weeks and five wins later New England has not only turned its season around, Jones and Co. are suddenly the darlings of national NFL media coverage. The longest winning streak in the league has the hot takers spewing pro-Patriots propaganda more aggressively than seemingly during the actual dynasty era at Gillette Stadium.
Attention hound Stephen A. Smith picked the Patriots for the No. 2 spot in his weekly NFL power rankings on ESPN. While that may sound crazy and might be stacked up as his attempt to lure in both Patriots fans and haters with one fell swoop, Pro Football Talk catapulted the Patriots from No. 8 to No. 2 in its power rankings as well.
But it’s not just the opinion-driven power rankings that reek of recency bias that have jumped on the New England bandwagon with gusto, supposedly computers are falling madly in love with once-dead Patriots as well.
Football Outsiders projected potential Super Bowl matchups this week – sure it’s way too early for such an exercise, but stick with it you’re going to love the results – and four of the top five most likely Super Bowl matchups include the red-hot Patriots. To prove their supposed veracity Football Outsiders even attaches a percentage chance to each match up. That has to be legit, right????!!!!
The Patriots have indeed injected life into their once fledgling season. They’ve put themselves in position at Thanksgiving to win the AFC East and compete for the No. 1 seed in the conference, now-attainable goals that seemed like scratch-ticket hopes not long before Halloween.
They are clearly playing as well as any team in the league right now, culling together complementary football thanks to a defense that grows more dominant by the week and an offense based in a physical ground attack that’s getting the job done.
But are they truly Super Bowl contenders? Are they actually one of the two best teams in the NFL right now? Better than talented squads with better records from places like Arizona, Green Bay, Baltimore, Tennessee, Tampa Bay and Los Angeles?
Maybe New England is still better than its record says it is, just as it was back when its record stunk to start the year. Maybe the team’s impressive chemistry will continue to lead to success through a daunting gauntlet of games over the next five weeks against the Titans, Bills (twice) and Colts.
Maybe the Patriots truly are a reborn team of destiny as so many making comparisons to the 2001 Super Bowl squad are seemingly hoping.
Or maybe questionable depth in the back end of the defense, limited playmaking weapons on offense and the fact that a rookie quarterback has never led a team to the Super Bowl will derail New England somewhere along the way. Maybe a team with a been-there-done-that quarterback like Patrick Mahomes like the not-dead Chiefs will be too much for Jones and his island of misfit weapons this holiday season and beyond.
This isn’t to say the Patriots aren’t good. They are.
Better than they were in September and maybe better than a lot of people projected before the season.
This isn’t to say the Patriots aren’t playing really good football over the last month-plus. They most certainly are.
This is simply to say the cart carrying the New England bandwagon jumpers is rolling a little too fast for the horse to keep up, kinda like the Grinch’s sled overtaking poor little Max on the way down Mount Crumpit toward Whoville.
After all, the real NFL season starts now. The games after Thanksgiving are the ones that matter the most. Belichick has taught us all as much over the years.
Thanks to an impressive winning streak the Patriots enter this critical time with plenty of reason for hope. And hope is a good thing.
But the hype surrounding the team, a strange swell of support from all across the NFL nation, it’s gotten a bit unbelievable at this point. And being overhyped leads to disappointment in the end.
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