“The Patriots are as good as anybody.”
I got the text about 20 minutes after the Patriots had stormed back from a 24-13 deficit to beat the Ravens on Sunday. It came from an assistant coach with over 20 years of NFL experience, and at least a couple of Super Bowl rings in a safety deposit box. His current team is one that will be playing playoff football this January, and for him to offer that comment unsolicited tells me a lot about where the Pats are and where they could be headed.
“The Patriots are as good as anybody.”
I had a hard time wrapping my head around this notion until about the halfway point of the season. There are holes on the roster, I opined, and those inside the organization I speak to regularly would dance around the word ‘rebuild’ while discussing the areas that needed to be addressed, both roster-wise and in the organization's overall infrastructure. In other words, saying it without saying.
Yet the wins this season have continued to pile up, and at some point, there was no denying that while the sum of this team is greater than its parts, dammit, some of the parts are ones that just about any other team in the league would want. That’s especially true of the quarterback, who, after completing his first fourth-quarter comeback and recording his first 300-yard passing game, has checked off just about every box there is to check...except for what Drake Maye will face in January. And let me tell you, the only reason I’d doubt it is because I haven't seen him do it. But I’d be surprised if Maye didn’t. That’s the kind of year this has been, and the kind of year he’s had.
“The Patriots are as good as anybody.”
We’re officially in “Why Not Us” territory for this team. The AFC is wide-ass open. The top-seeded 12-3 Broncos got whupped at home by the Jaguars, who are now 11-4, and I'm apologizing to them on social media for not taking them seriously enough (they don’t care). The 11-win Bills stormed back in Foxborough to overcome a 21-point deficit two Sundays ago, yet played with their food and damn near lost to the freakin’ Browns. The Chargers are also 11-4, but their offensive line (both of their elite tackles are lost for the season) has led to Justin Herbert getting hit at an unhealthy rate (he’s already playing with a broken hand). The Steelers are somehow going to win the AFC North, and Aaron Rodgers is actually playing well. The team I fear the most, the Texans, almost got upset by the Raiders, and there still seems to be something
