Following the week-long soap opera of Tom Brady’s return to Gillette Stadium, we now rejoin the Patriots actual regular season football schedule already in progress.
With the competitive-moral-victory-that-was-still-an-actual-loss battle with Super Bowl champion Buccaneers now in the rearview mirror, it’s back to the bottom-line business of football.
And in case you missed it in all the postgame hugs, handshakes, bum-slapping and 20-minute secret conversations between Bill Belichick and Brady in the bowels of the visitor’s locker room, the Patriots actually left last week with a 1-3 record.
You are, as Belichick’s mentor Bill Parcells would say, what your record says you are.
It doesn’t matter if the Patriots could have, should have or would have beaten the Dolphins on opening day were it not for Damien Harris’ fourth-quarter fumble. They didn’t.
Forget that Nick Folk’s 56-yard go-ahead field goal attempt against Tampa Bay in the rain was literally inches away from being a would-be game-winner. It wasn’t.
None of that matters now.
Now, the 1-3 Patriots travel to Houston in Week 5 to take on the 1-3 Texans.
Yup, a hopeless Houston organization that’s been the laughingstock of the NFL for more than a year has the same record as the once-upon-a-time marquee measuring stick franchise from Foxborough.
Until something is done about that, it is what it is.
Sure, maybe it’s a joke that Jack Easterby went from sweats-wearing character-coach to essentially running the Texans.
Crazy even that Houston’s best player and one of the stars of football – quarterback Deshaun Watson – is sidelined in the midst of a sexual assault scandal in which he faces allegations from nearly two-dozen massage therapists and that came after he’d already declared he’d never play for the team again.
Houston is supposed to be vying for the No. 1 overall pick under the direction of head coach David Culley, who at times from afar seems a bit overmatched and confused to say the least.
The Patriots spent $200 million on free agent talent this offseason, picked up a supposed developing franchise QB in the first-round of the draft, have a roster littered with veteran leadership and are, if you believe the hopeful hype, well on their way to the post-Brady rebuild.
So, this matchup with the Texans was and theoretically still is a “get right” game. A chance for New England to get back in the win column against an inferior foe. An opportunity to feel good and take a step in the right direction.
Oh hell, forget all that. The Patriots just need a freaking win.
If the season is to continue with any sort of meaning. If there is to be even some fictitious mathematical “path” to the postseason by the time the holidays hit – maybe at least Halloween, if not Thanksgiving – New England simply needs to get a win on Sunday.
Can a team have a must-win game in Week 5?
To steal Tom Brady Sr.’s words, “Damn rights!”
And Patriots players know it. Actually they feel it.
“Absolutely. I would definitely say there is a sense of urgency,” tight end Jonnu Smith said.
“There is a sense of urgency,” Kyle Van Noy agreed. “We are getting better. As many people can see from Week 1 to Week 4, our record obviously doesn’t show. We need to go out there and prove it not only to ourselves but to the fans, too. That we’re getting better.”
“Off course there is urgency,” linebacker Josh Uche said.
“Sometimes things don’t happen the way you expect them to. But the urgency is always there. The faith is always there. That’s kinda how things gotta go, you have to keep chipping.”
“Losing sucks,” rookie QB Mac Jones said. “Nobody on our team likes to lose. You can play well or play not well, but you just need to score one more point than the other team.”
Yup. That’s called a win. Something the Patriots haven’t had since Zach Wilson gift wrapped one in the Week 2 trip to New York.
“Big week for us,” Belichick concluded.
AKA a must-win, coach. Good luck.
(Editor’s note: The Patriots season will not actually end if they fail to win on Sunday in Houston. The NFL will indeed require the at that point putrid Patriots to play meaningless games 6-17 on the fruitless schedule even if New England does somehow get upset by the terrible Texans!)
