FOXBOROUGH — Don't even bother.
Hey, you, self-appointed tough guy of the Twitter-verse, spare me the message you're about to send me. I don't care. You're not going to change my mind. Just keep it to yourself.
The Patriots ultimately lost to Tom Brady and the Buccaneers on Sunday night, 19-17. But the way they played in that game should give you hope.
The season is far from over.
Not all 1-3 records are created equally.
A 1-3 record — 0-3 at Gillette Stadium (guess we can definitively say now who created any home-field advantage at The Razor) — while getting your doors blown off by these Buccaneers (who actually appear to be a bit of a mess right now) on national television, is a hell of a lot worse than what happened on Sunday night.
If the Patriots weren't really competitive in the loss, which most expected, the drumbeat would only grow louder about whether or not Bill Belichick had lost his fastball, whether anyone outside of Josh McDaniels and Ivan Fears could coach, and whether these players — many of whom came with high price tags this offseason — were worth much at all. We would have been talking about a 10-16 record since Thanksgiving 2019 and wondering when the last time the Patriots played a competitive game against a good team (Answer: 11 months ago, a similar win over the Ravens in similar conditions).
While there will be some of that talk, especially amongst the grumpy set that believes only in the black and white of wins and losses and nothing else — there shouldn't be.
Can you see? Do you have eyes?
Did you see what happened on that turf on Sunday night, against former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (after finally getting past this game, that's all he is ... for now. Toss him in the Matt Cassel bucket. Next thing you know, Brady will sitting next to Tom E. Curran on the NBC Sports Boston postgame set) and the defending Super Bowl champions.
If you think the Patriots that were on the field last night bore any resemblance to the pretenders who took the field in the first three games, I can't help you.
Teams — well, ok, maybe the Lions and the Jets – are not static entities. What you see in Week 2 has nothing to do with Week 4. The Super Bowl is not played in September or October. It is played in February, after 17 games and three rounds of playoffs.
Players and teams can and do improve over the course of the season, especially here in New England. Maybe not without That Guy, but we don't know that yet.
Would you rather be 4-0 in September or December? If the Patriots were going to have a sucky month, wouldn't you rather have it right off the bat?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, They reached the quarter pole-ish (damn you 17 games, and I know quarter pole is not the right racing term but no one knows horse racing under 70, so hush) and are last in the division, tied with the Jets, and are technically 14th in the AFC ahead of only the Jaguars and Jets. Thanks for checking in, Adam Jones.
But the loss to the Bucs has the potential to be the seminal moment in this season for the Patriots. (In fairness, that's not a high bar to jump over at this time.)
I saw a different Patriots team on Sunday night than the first three weeks, the team we thought we would see earlier and would be 3-1 if it played like this in the first three games.
"At the end of the day, that's a 1-3 team, but they don't play like a 1-3 team at all," said Bucs back Leonard Fournette. "I'm not going to lie to you."
What I saw was a team, certainly, on defense and at times on offense, that executed at a high level. You don't do that to a revenge-minded Brady (a penny for Tom Sr.'s thoughts) with those weapons and that line, without executing at a high level.
What did the Patriots do to hold the Bucs, who had scored at least 30 points in nine of their last 10 games and hadn't scored that few of points since Nov. 8th, to just 19 points and one touchdown?
Don't let others blow smoke up the Patriots' skirts, it wasn't anything Earth-shattering. Not everything the Patriots do re-invents the wheel. The Patriots methodically spun the dial — and I mention this quite often — by varying their pass rushes, coverage looks and coverage assignments. It's nothing new. The Patriots often do it in these games, and it was similar to the gameplan Rex Ryan devised to pull the 2010 divisional-round upset against the same QB on the same field. If you keep Brady guessing pre- and post-snap, he never gets settled mentally and starts to not trust his reads. Brady's at his best when, before the snap, he has a very good idea of what the defense was going to do. That rarely happened on Sunday night.
"Yeah, we used multiple rushes and multiple coverages. Been doing that all year," Belichick said. "I don't think it was anything, you know, a surprise to them."
Here was the surprise: the Patriots, from the run fits up front (at times, and often in big spots), to the rush lanes and the coverage in the back end, executed at a very high level. The Patriots from the first three weeks were the gang that couldn't shoot (or execute) straight. Constant mental errors. Bad this and bad that. Completely frustrating. Un-Patriot-like.
Not Sunday night. They looked like a real defense.
"Just playing against them, that defense, they're very disciplined. Very disciplined. They did a remarkable job balancing out our offense and keeping us on our toes," Fournette said.
Offensively, there are still a lot of issues — is the offensive line going to ever block well for an entire game, or are they resting on their Top 5 Unit rankings from the offseason?; are there any backs left who aren't going to fumble? — but that unit also took a big step forward, starting with the quarterback.
Yeah, you probably want more big plays, and harder throws, and more style points ... but you probably also look in the mirror and see Brad Pitt.
Mac Jones was playing his fourth NFL game. He has an average-at-best group of receivers and tight ends, nobody who could remotely hold the jocks of Troy Brown, Wes Welker, Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski, and an offensive line that played with two different right tackles and two different left guards in this game. His running game was out-rushed by Brady.
Yet Jones still brought the Patriots back three times in the second half, in the rain, against the Bucs, on national television with Brady watching.
And you want more?! Today? What the hell is the matter with you?
Do you want to know what Brady was doing in his fourth ... err, bad example (16 of 20, 202 yards, 3 TDs in winning 38-17 at the Colts) ... fifth start of his career (in his second pro season, mind you)? Throwing four interceptions and losing 31-20 at Denver.
If you weren't impressed with Jones last night, that's another thing I can't help you with. He will be a franchise quarterback. Do you know how many QBs in this league watch Brady drive for a go-ahead score and then pee down their legs trying to answer? 50? 89? 138?
Jones marched the Patriots down, and should have been given an opportunity by his head coach to finish off the game on fourth down, instead of going with an aging kicker who Belichick allowed to kick over 50 three times the past two seasons, none over 51 yards (none of Folk's consecutive made kicks were over 50).
"The kid is dialed in, man. He's continued to get better," said Hunter Henry. "Like Kendrick [Bourne] said, he's super poised and handles himself tremendously. He never is down, never is too up, he stays very even-keeled throughout the game and he's only going to continue to get better. That was a big-time game right there and I feel like he handled himself like a veteran, like he's been there before. He's just going to continue to grow. I'm proud of how he played, how he communicated, and how he executed out there."
Henry, with a touchdown and four catches, was another that seemed to take a step forward. Toss in Bourne and Nelson Agholor (Jonnu Smith has a lot to make up for from last week), and the Patriots seem to be building something, slowly, on offense too.
"I feel like we competed at a high level," Henry said. "We can see that we have a good football team. We competed with one of the best football teams in this league and they were the best team last year. We had too many mistakes."
Yes, they did. But you can't expect the Patriots to just be a good offense overnight, not with so many new pieces. That takes time. It feels like it's coming.
With the offense and defense on Sunday night, what I saw was a lot of guys earning their Patriots stripes. Before Sunday night, this didn't feel like a Patriots team. It felt like a collection of supposedly talented players who had barely gotten to know each other, let alone played good football together. You might wear the uniform and get adoring Tweets from fans, but you're not a true Patriot until you play in a big game, with a big audience, with big stakes and play tough, winning football.
If Belichick continued with some of his antiquated offseason Navy-inspired stuff, he wouldn't have allowed any Patriots emblems on any helmets through the first three games. No one had earned them yet.
Well, a lot of players earned them in this loss. Yeah, that's right, I said loss. Get over it. Ask the 2001 Patriots (Rams) and 2007 Giants (Patriots) if a loss was beneficial to them.
Now, whether this was a bunch of one-hit wonders playing up for a grand stage, or the start of something meaningful, I'll let Matthew Judon take it from here:
"I think every day that we come back in this building, we only get better and closer as a team," he said. "I don’t think we are far off, I think we are right there and time will tell."