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Patriots’ Q rating takes a hit in ugly loss to Jets on TNF originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Well, THAT kind of mess won’t create a stampede of free agents to the Patriots next March.
Before we get to a handful of pithy observations from Thursday night’s not-so-surprising pulverizing (I’ll get to why it wasn’t a jaw-dropping surprise), the circumstances surrounding the face-plant need mentioning.
The Patriots have been a bad team since about December of 2021. They’ve shown their whole ass on national television a bunch of times. (Previous lows: Bears loss in 2022 when Mac Jones got benched for Bailey Zappe, the playoff loss in 2021, the Raiders loss in 2022, and the Germany game in 2023.)
But with Bill Belichick on the sideline, the conversation presented to the nation was, “This just doesn’t look like a Bill Belichick team right now, but Bill will figure this out …” All would nod, the national audience would nod along too, everyone would pack up their attention after three hours and move on from New England.
Even as it kept getting worse and more dysfunctional, national media would chuckle out loud about the very idea that Belichick wouldn’t run the Patriots until HE decided he’d had enough. Despite the rampant instability, his presence still exuded stability. Even though it was chaos, he gave the illusion of calm.
With Belichick gone, the Patriots are — at best — a national curiosity. The success of the first two weeks and the presence of Drake Maye piqued that. Is this a FRISKY bad team? But Thursday night probably doused that curiosity and returned them to afterthought. They’ll remain there until they get the resources to pull an upset like they did in Week 1. And — with injuries to an already shakily constructed team — that’s going to be a while.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty much nothing but “Sunday at 1” for the rest of the year, so the chance to showcase improvement to a national audience and prospective players went poof Thursday…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/patriots-q-rating-takes-hit-202918627.html
Author : NBC Sports Boston
Publish date : 2024-09-20 20:29:18
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