A path for the Patriots

Tuesday 1/6/26

The Patriots finished with the second seed in the AFC, and that could end up working out more to their advantage than if they'd been the top seed.

They play the Chargers Saturday night on Gillette. Watching the Chargers play the Broncos on Sunday, it looked to me as if the Chargers wanted this game against New England. I'm not a huge believer in that Chargers team, their quarterback, or their ability to win in the January cold of New England. The Chargers aren't a bad team and they could win, but I like this match-up for New England.

So there's that, in terms of first things first.

The Steelers (just to get them out of the way) are the four seed, and this is a team that you think has no shot against anyone. It's like they can't wait to lose. They backed into the playoffs about every which way. Blew that game against the lowly Browns, then needed a missed field in their win against the Ravens on Sunday night. The Texans should have no problem with them. You have the Bills as the six seed against the Jaguars as the three in Jacksonville. It's Josh Allen. That's a winnable game for Buffalo. I'd pick them.

If these games go in this fashion, that means the Bills will play in Denver the next week. Again, winnable game for the Bills, if Josh Allen does his stuff. Would that even be an upset? Not really. I don't think so at all. The Patriots would have the Texans in Foxborough. Houston has a good defense, but again, it's New England, and you have a team from the south. A team with the best quarterback in the league, because that's what Drake Maye is right now. I'd like the Patriots in that game.

If the Bills overcame Denver, that'd mean the AFC Championship game would be between Buffalo and New England in Foxborough. Patriots should have beaten the Bills twice. As I wrote after their loss in the second game, that loss could be for the best.

This was in part what I had in mind. It's hard to beat a team three times in the same year. Drake Maye also rebounded well--learning from mistakes is a big of his game right now. He usually gets better after making mistakes. Eventually, the mistakes don't happen anymore or as much. Then you have a player who's just highly efficient.

Brady became that way. They have this in common--to some degree, at least. How much I don't know yet. One guy was the best, by far, ever to do it. The other guy is currently the best quarterback in the league and only in his second year.

A note about the Patriots' schedule: People are saying the Patriots are ripe to be beat because of the ease of their schedule. I don't think the schedule is an issue or that this team is the presently the product of an easy schedule. Yes, the ease of the schedule helped when the Patriots were first finding their way and didn't know who they were or could be.

That's as far as it goes, though. They went into Buffalo and won. And I know that the victory over the Ravens in Baltimore doesn't perhaps look impressive, but that was a prime time game on the road against a team that believed they had to win in order to make the playoffs and the Patriots won.

As for the weaker teams: The Patriots didn't struggle with them. They usually beat them soundly. Even good NFL teams will struggle against bad teams two or three times a year. Or lose to one of them. The Patriots weren't eking out wins over bottom dwellers or having to come from behind in the fourth quarter to beat a team that finished 7-10. Don't buy into the weak schedule rhetoric.

People can't think with any nuance, so it's either all this or all that. The key takeaway is that the weak schedule helped the Patriots early--that timing was important in their development--but it ceased to matter and now it's not relevant. The Patriots are what they are, and that's a pretty good football team with a real chance to win it all this year. You'll take your chances with them if you're a fan.

Moving on...

People are out of control with sports. It's too much of their identity. It shouldn't be any of your identity, but many are dependent on sports--the fan aspect--for an identity, which isn't, of course, a real identity at all. An interest in and knowledge about something is different.

As I mentioned, the Ravens' kicker missed a field goal that would have put his team in the playoffs and instead sent the Steelers to the postseason. People then threatened to kill him and his wife on social media--directly, I mean.

This is what I'm talking about. You have large numbers of people who are this way. There are those who will say it's gambling. That's a small part of it. But without legalized sports betting, the behavior would be the same and from nearly the same amount of people, because this is how we are now.

Think about a dog that is a terror. Something snaps in the dog. That's not dogs in numbers. It's this one dog you once heard this story about. But humans? We're more fucked up than dogs can be. What is one dog out of a million will instead for humans be many thousands of them in a single state.

And we're we're too dumb to even understand these simple sports. For instance, I read the comments of one "aggrieved" fan that kicker missed a chip shot. It was a 44-yard kick. Yes, an NFL kicker should make that every time, pretty much, but a chip shot is like a 19-yard kick. I knew that at five-years-old. Through not being a moron.

People watch these games, they live for these games, and they don't even understand the rudiments of the games. They can't talk about them intelligently, they don't know the terminology.

Then I saw all of these people saying how amazing Mike Tirico is. Best in the business! The GOAT! Same guy who said that the Detroit Lions have still never made the penultimate game. You know, the extra ultimate, super duper game. Because that's what "penultimate" means, right? It's like saying "literally," because you just have to kick it up a notch, bitches!

The funny thing is, most football fans--and most people--wouldn't have a clue what's wrong about such a statement. They'd think the same way. That's why Tirico has that job, that life, that salary, and is praised. (One of the key aspects of society now is that people are too stupid to even know when something is bad. Like if you showed someone a piece of writing in which the words weren't even spelled correctly, most people would think it's fine, because they can't spell either. And because that poor work is similar to what they'd produce and what they know, they likelier to favor it. Ignorance is a key to the success of almost everything now. If people weren't idiots and knew anything, they'd be like, "This show sucks, it's inept." But they don't know what they don't know.)

How do you get to be that age, making millions of dollars by talking, some words are your thing ostensibly, and now have a clue about basic English and what simple words even mean?

He's an idiot, and to the idiot goes the spoils, allowing that the idiot is hooked up in the first place, because that's what it takes. Other stuff. Not your skill, your qualifications, and not your greatness, if you are great. That'll make it harder; the greater, the harder.

Morons want morons. It's the intelligent and talented that morons hate.

Another question: How are the Jets the Jets? This isn't a Patriots fan asking that question with braggadocio. These are just children's games played by adults. I ask in unbiased fashion how an organization can be that bad. You should be able to stumble into some success, especially because the league rewards you after the season for having had a bad season with a high draft position.

But year in, year out, the Jets are a laughingstock. There have been plenty of bad teams in sports who are bad for long stretches, but I haven't seen anything like the Jets. To have gone the entire season without making in interception is...Well, obviously I'm a collector of arcane stats, and that's one for the mantelpiece.

How does that happen? Think of all the times a quarterback throws it right into the chest of someone on the other team's defense, or tipped balls that are like lazy infield pop-ups at a baseball game on a summer's day.

No Jets player was able to get even that kind of interception? I saw that score Sunday of that Jets-Bills game in Buffalo, and I thought, "Why even bother?" And it's not as if organizations in the NFL are loaded with smart people. How many smart people even exist in the world now?

Drake Maye was efficient in the Patriots pasting of the Dolphins. He now has the Patriots' record for most games in a season with a quarterback rating over 100, with thirteen games to Brady's twelve.

Matthew Stafford threw for four touchdowns, to finish with a gaudy total of 46. That's his key number. Maye completed 72% of his passes and had the highest quarterback rating in the league. That's a notable completion percentage, especially when you see how high Maye's yard-per-attempt was.

I give Maye a fifty-fifty shot at the MVP. He deserves it. I think he is clearly the league's most valuable player this year. He did more with less, and in the pure spirit of the award, no player was more valuable to his team than Maye was to New England. It's a coin flip now. Voters aren't going to be educated. When are people ever?

But Maye just had a true MVP year. I'm not saying he was as good as Dan Marino in 1984, because he wasn't, but Maye's year was so good that he could have a Hall of Fame career and not quite equal what he just did in his second season.

Which isn't mean saying I think he won't. The Patriots just tied the record for the biggest season-to-season turnaround in NFL history, in large part because of Drake Maye. That seems very MVP-y to me. He should win it walking away. He won't. If he wins, it'll be close.

Saw something I'd never seen in a hockey game before in the World Juniors quarterfinals match-up between Canada and Czechia the other night. Canada player was slashed on a breakaway and awarded a penalty shot. He got in tight on this subsequent penalty shot, made his move, had the goalie beat and an open net, and was then tripped by the goalie.

I wasn't sure what would happen next. I thought they'd award the player the goal. That makes the most sense to me. Instead, they awarded him another penalty shot.

This doesn't make much sense. The goalie has nothing to lose by taking a desperate swat at you if you're about to score. These match-ups always favor the goalie. Players score, what, on like thirty or thirty-five percent of attempted penalty shots? I thought the goalie made out like a bandit with this exchange. Stopped the attacker on the second attempt, too. Same Canadian player rang a couple posts in the game.

But there was this other guy in the earlier game between Finland and Sweden who must have had six breakaways if you count the shootout for Finland in their losing cause. He just kept coming in alone, and not once did he attempt to deke the goalie. Fired it ever time. Wouldn't you mix it up? The Canadian player, by the way, did the exact same move on that second penalty shot attempt. It's as if these guys were doing the goalies some real solids. I didn't understand this.

The final went about how I expected it to go, with Sweden prevailing. Their goalie was on a run. A wall-like run, if you will. Tough to win a series against a goalie like that, never mind a single and deciding game.

Four wins in a row for the Celtics, who are quietly having a commendable season and putting themselves in a position to maybe make a legit run at a title with Tatum's return. I thought they could be pretty good, but they're doing probably a bit better than I'd have hoped. OKC has come back to earth.