Late expectations

Yawn.

Somewhere between squinting to make out the fuzzy men on yesterday’s non-HD broadcast and finally allowing the eyelids to fall completely shut for some undetermined amount of time, I was moderately convinced. This edition of the New England Patriots might be the most maddening in recent memory.

So they completely dismantled the Houston Texans, 40-7, in a performance about as complete as you could have asked for. Great. Not to get your pom-poms in a bunch, but there are probably 15-20 high school squads from Massachusetts that could have shown up at Gillette and done the same thing. That is about as bad a football team as you will ever see, so at least you got that statement going for you if you were one of the unfortunate that had to pay to see it.

The Pats are 10-4 and in the driver’s seat for the AFC East crown, one they have yet to clinch thanks to the Jets’ win over the Vikings. It comes down to this. If the Patriots beat the Jaguars Sunday, they clinch the title. If the Jets win both their remaining games and the Patriots lose against Jacksonville and Tennessee, Eric Mangini’s boys have a shot at the AFC East, leaving the Pats either gasping for a wild card berth or out of the playoffs entirely.
That’s not going to happen, of course. New England will indeed head to the postseason for a fourth straight season, but after that…well, trying to predict how they’ll do is like figuring out the formula for Gary Kubiak’s complete bungling of everything he touches.
They have the second-best defense in the AFC, which is a trait that goes a long way come January, quite obviously. David Carr had a better chance of finding an open lane on Route One just before game time than he did on the field against Richard Seymour and a smothering defensive effort. No fumbles either, which is a little ironic in that the Pats have been giving those gifts away all season long, just up until the time when it’s appropriate to gift-wrap such bestowments.
But…what is it? It’s just envisioning this squad as Super Bowl champs is a little hard to swallow for some reason. Sidney Bristow offered more in the way of expressing her true identity than these guys do.
Since that ever-impressive win over Chicago, the Patriots very nearly lost to the pathetic Lions, got smoked by the Miami Dolphins, and beat down a franchise, that is, with all apologies to the Raiders, the worst in the NFL. You have to imagine, if the Texans could do the draft all over again, knowing what they know now, they’d go out and pick Mario Williams again with the top pick, because yes, they do appear to be that stupid.
Besides the Bears win, there is no outstanding moment that sticks in the front of your mind as a “wow” moment with this team. Utterly boring and completely vanilla is how you might describe the way they’ve puttered through games. Not that that’s totally unlike the Super Bowl teams’ game, but injuries and personnel that can’t be seriously considered as decent as those teams could end up catching up with New England. At no point in 2003-04, besides the ’03 campaign opener against the Bills, did the Pats look as awful as they did against the Dolphins last weekend. And with Laurence Maroney (and maybe Kevin Faulk?) still on the mend, there has to be some major concern over the type of running attack that could beat the Colts in the playoffs. Unless you want to trust Corey Dillon to handle the load himself? Didn’t think so.
The bottom line here is, they are not quite as bad as the team that laid an egg in Miami last weekend, nor are they as good as the won that dismantled Houston.
What we see from the Patriots these final two games will explain a lot about their team character and overall talent level. The Jaguars are facing a must-win next weekend after falling to the Titans despite a gargantuan defensive effort (Tennessee could only amass 98 total yards, yet won the game) and will come out with their season on the line at home, where they are 6-1 this year. And the Titans are all of a sudden 7-7, and will assuredly be Dr. Z’s Super Bowl pick a year from now.
If the Patriots go 2-0, that’s the sort of statement that we can hang on heading into the playoffs. But you know they’re going to go 1-1, and we won’t have any idea if this is a good football team heading into a slate against the AFC’s best. As in love as everybody seems to be with the Chargers, Baltimore is the team that scares the heck out of me. The Bengals need to win tonight in order to stay alive in their resurgence, not the tall task it was weeks ago against a Colts team which would probably have a tough time stopping the tortoise on the run.
These are the playoff-bound teams that we, for better pr worse, know a little something about. Against NFL teams which are possibly headed to the playoffs (Denver, Jets, Indy, Chicago) the Pats are – surprise – 3-3. That tell you anything?
We know no such thing about the Patriots, who continue to sneak by and win almost every given week. They could finish 12-4, and we’d all sit around and try to remember the defining moment we all knew they were this good of a football team. And just when you think you might have witnessed one, you’re forced to forget it because it’s a 180 the following Sunday.
That moment has yet to occur, with just two more regular season weeks in which to witness one. If they do what they did yesterday to a certainly more talented Jacksonville team, take that to the New Year with confidence that this Pats squad could give it a good run at title No. 4.
If they don’t, Mangini still lurks. And who would have predicted that one?