Pats’ creaky old boat finally takes on water

Brady’s long gone and his replacement has had troubles

Despite all of the bizarre things that have happened in 2020, the year still can throw out surprises.

Like, for example, the New England Patriots. They are … bad?

I know, I know: On some level this does not qualify as a surprise. For years now they have been a rusty battleship, held together with epoxy and chicken wire, but still able to make the playoffs because their grumpy captain was the wiliest man on the seas.

Then Tom Brady left, and Bill Belichick did not seem to be in much of a hurry to replace him, and the Pats had a long list of players who opted out of the season for COVID- related reasons, and it made perfect sense that this would finally be the year in which that creaky old boat finally took on too much water.

But, also, these are the Pats. They have survived so many departures over two decades of dominance, so many moments that seemed like the dynasty might actually be fading, and then at the end of the season they had another AFC East title to their credit and were a team no one wanted to face in the playoffs. They have been impossibly relentless, a parity- defying machine in a league that forces even its best teams back into mediocrity, a yearly contender that is every bit as certain as death and taxes and a Meryl Streep nomination at the Oscars.

The maybe- the- Patriots- willfinally- stink chatter didn’t even last the whole off- season, as Belichick signed Cam Newton to be his quarterback when the rest of the league took a pass on the former MVP. It was an entirely Pats kind of thing to happen. Yes, Newton was several years removed from his best passing seasons, but he’s a handful for any defence when healthy and New England offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels would feel like he was just handed the keys to a fancy new sports car. Instead of the immobile Brady, he had a true dual- threat quarterback around whom he could build the offence. After Newton threw for almost 400 yards in a Week 2 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, it already looked like New England was going to keep rolling. They had lost the most accomplished quarterback off all time in a curiously messy divorce, they didn’t really have a succession plan in place, and yet they had still somehow ended up with a former first overall pick and All- Pro to handle the position in the post-Brady era. Because of course they did.

Things have since unfolded in a very non- Patriots way. Newton tested positive for COVID-19 after a Week 3 win, and the team had to use up a bye week early. The Pats lost when he was out, and have lost three more times since he returned. Whatever good vibes he was feeling in New England before the COVID result have disappeared. Whether it’s a result of the illness itself, or defensive adjustments against him, or both, his play has dropped precipitously. Newton has averaged fewer than 150 yards passing over his past three games, with five interceptions and no touchdown passes. In a 24-21 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, he was better than his first two post- COVID games, but far from dynamic, and it was his late fumble that sealed the victory for the Bills. Buffalo fans could be forgiven for being truly shocked by this turn of events: Wait, a quarterback committed a costly turnover in the dying minutes of a Pats-bills game, and he didn’t play for us? What madness is this?

More significant than Newton’s pedestrian play against the Bills was the fact that Belichick and the Patriots afforded their hosts a considerable amount of respect, with conservative game plans on both sides of the ball. This just isn’t what the Patriots do against the Bills. Whatever positive momentum the Bills have carried into a Pats game in recent decades, it is always almost immediately undone by a Belichick scheme that quickly exposes their fatal weakness. The Pats are the big brother, casually holding his little sibling at arm’s length to flail helplessly and exhaust himself, then wrestling him to the ground and sitting on his chest. They don’t just beat the Bills, they beat them in humiliating fashion. On Sunday, though, the Pats looked like a team trying to keep it close, trying to hang around against a better opponent in hopes of squeaking out a win at the end. It almost worked, but that didn’t make it less weird to witness. It seemed like a bear deciding to leave the good trash for a raccoon.

The Patriots have won the AFC East 16 of the past 17 seasons, the only miss coming when Brady was lost for the season in the opener in 2008. ( And they still went 115.) But they are 2- 5 now, ahead of only the sad-sack New York Jets in the division. Playoff forecasts give them between an eight per cent and 12 per cent chance of making the post-season. The last time they had odds like that after Week 8 was probably 1999, when Pete Carroll was the coach.

Maybe this is yet another dupe from the Pats. Perhaps the whole thing will end up as Belichick’s final masterpiece, proof that he could win NFL football games with a random collection of castoffs and hobos. I would hesitate to bet against it.

But at this point, you could get tremendous odds on the Pats making the playoffs. The surest bet in sports has, in the space of a month, become a long shot. You crazy, 2020.