Caveat emptor, Patriots fans!

Thursday 7/31/25

A most curious thing--well, to me--has blanketed the New England region here in the doggiest days of summer, this ironclad surety that by rights, as if by a matter of course, the 2025 Patriots are going to be a most impressive team.

Look out AFC East! Consider yourself warned, teams of the NFL! We're back, baby!

They will win--so this thinking goes--a minimum of ten games, but don't be surprised--nay!--if it's more like twelve.

I'm baffled by this, but then again, I am baffled by most things that people in the year of our Lord (who has apparently forsaken humans, if he exists) 2025 say and/or opine. Predict. Pronounce as borderline inevitable. Or as though it's already happened, and the issue was in you having missed it.

I look at these Patriots and I wonder where this insistent optimism comes from. What's different from last year?

Okay, there's a new coach, and the coach seems to have his act together, whereas before, the team was "led"--or whatever you want to call it--by someone who wasn't fit to coach a JV football team.

That will definitely make a difference. How much? Not as much as having talent on the field does. But it'll help.

The quarterback--who I'm told will soon resemble Josh Allen--is now in his second year. There is no question to Patriots fans that he is the man, which is also how they felt about Mac Jones in 2021. I have a cousin who named his dog after Mac Jones, so certain he was of Jones' greatness and what would naturally be a sustained run of said greatness. (I wonder if he feels any shame each time he calls the dog. I wouldn't expect so, but I would if it were my dog. I'm not saying I'd put him down, but I'd have a hard time thinking his attitude didn't suck, to say nothing of his arm strength.)

What do I know about Drake Maye? Well, I know that there were a bunch of winnable games last year that he failed to win.

In my experience and view, guys who are winners usually find ways to win right from the start when the wins are there for the taking. Even if it's early in their development or well prior to becoming what they have the potential to be. There's a winning trait. A winner's gene.

Last year, in Drake Maye, I saw a guy who found ways to lose winnable games. That was concerning. I also saw a guy who doesn't like competition, who needs things a certain way, and helped to engineer the trade of another quarterback on the roster who was looking to compete. Further, Maye's family was involved in this as well.

Whether it's the Little League/Pop Warner level, or the high school level, it's a bad sign when a kid's parents are involved. If they're campaigning to the coach for more playing time for their kid, or whatever they're doing. To say nothing of the family of a grown man doing this. That tells me something about the man. Does it not suggest anything to you about that man?

But okay. Let's say Maye is really good and this is a breakout season. I'll believe it when I see it, but for argument's sake now, that would be a big plus. We'll call it positive change number two.

What else? First round draft pick Will Campbell, taken fourth overall. Reports out of camp are that he's getting beaten quite a bit at practice. He has those short arms for one thing. But he's also had to tap out of drills because of the heat and drop to a knee.

He's from Arkansas. Yes, it's been hot and humid here, but not Arkansas hot and humid. In my experience again, guys who are good are...this is shocking...guys who are ready to go.

Is that not your experience when you think about it? This is your left tackle? Kind of an important position, right? What do you do if he can't play that spot at the NFL level, or in his first year, anyway? Doesn't look like there's much in the way of options.

And a lot of the rest of the team is the same. Which means, most of the roster isn't very good.

People love to natter about what an easy schedule the Patriots have. I don't know that. They don't know that. This kind of presumptive schedule talk is so weird to me. There are teams people think won't be good who win their division or get a bye or what have you. Happens every year. Do people really fail to learn this lesson?

NFL fans love to count wins before they happen as these all-but contractual givens. Promissory notes. "This team and their fan base is hereby entitled to a win in Week 2."

Strength of schedule before the season often looks a lot different than strength of schedule when she's all said and done. This is a truism that plays out and is repeated every single year.

I'm more of a wait and see person/Patriots fan. But now, the way society treats these things, it's like you're not a fan if you actually...think.

I get it, cue someone saying, "Fan comes from fanatic!" which is etymologically correct--though there was a tongue-in-cheek quality to the initial designation--but does not also mean you have to be a dumbass.

People don't reflect back on all of the times they were wrong, because they don't remember what happened--or what they said--two minutes ago. People just say shit now as part of the whole babble, babble, babble, babble, babble way of what's become the execrable world. No lessons, as such, are learned. We don't mend our ways in anything, never mind when it comes to spouting off for the latest time.

It's one reason why people who have no business betting--nor the means, typically--keep doing so. Which is a bigger issue than these comparative--but frustrating--trivialities I'm talking about here.

But I know people like this. Each year around this time, they say the same thing. I listen to them as I think, "Do you really not recall saying this to me last year and then look what happened?" I know the answer. They have no clue they said that to me. Or that they thought it.

In their minds, this thing they're thinking is brand new, with all of these super duper great reasons...that they couldn't enumerate.

All of which is a way of saying, you don't know until you know...and maybe not even then, depending.