Rest of the nation may think Patriots are done, but we know better

[Hammock Parties]

Cheesy?

****. You. Dan.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/p...sxO/story.html

By Dan Shaughnessy Globe Staff

STILL HOUSTON — What a field day for the hate.

Monday. Tuesday. Every day. And this is the way it’s going to be until the Patriots get a chance to prove everybody wrong at Gillette Stadium against the Chiefs Sunday.

It’s open season on Tom Brady and the Patriots across Football America. The Patriots are frauds. They are the worst 10-2 team in NFL history. They are a house of cards, upheld only by a soft schedule, the stupidity of others, and the genius of Bill Belichick.

Suddenly those Patriot wins against the Eagles and Cowboys don’t look so impressive anymore. In a cluster of 10-2 teams including the 49ers, Seahawks, Saints, and Ravens, the Patriots are the ones that don’t belong. They are the ones trending in the wrong direction as the playoffs near.

America is loving it. And you know why.

It started late Sunday night after the carnage in Houston. Rex Ryan went on ESPN and said this was the worst Patriots team he’s seen. A four-person panel on FS1 Tuesday morning dedicated a 10-minute segment to “Patriot Problems,” featuring an endless loop of Brady yelling at his teammates and doing the diva thing after botched routes by his receivers. The sports cover of Tuesday’s USA Today featured a photo of Brady sitting on his butt in the middle of NRG Stadium, accompanied by a headline reading, “Brady had better heed warning signs.’’ An ESPN pundit compared the quarterback with the Bears’ Mitchell Trubisky.

It’s on, folks. Brady is calcifying in front of our eyes, the Patriots are free-fallin’, and the tailgating universe is loving it. Bill Polian, Max Kellerman, Marshall Faulk, and Shannon Sharpe have been waiting 20 years for a week like this.

You can be sure that the Chiefs — despite their clock-management issues and cheesy defense, and the fact that they couldn’t beat New England while playing at home last January — will be repackaged this week as the greatest Chiefs team of all time, better than anything Hank Stram put together. Patrick Mahomes will be touted as the next young quarterback (joining Lamar Jackson and Deshaun Watson) to expose and outplay Old Man Brady. The Chiefs will be the hot pick.

And the hot take will be the inevitable crumbling of the Patriot dynasty.

We all know that there is a Never Patriots movement in the deep state of NFL America. These are the millions of angry fans who have seen their way of life uprooted by decades of Patriot dominance. Folks who had it so good for so long in places like Pittsburgh, Miami, Indianapolis, and Denver have seen their teams repeatedly humbled and humiliated by Belichick, Brady, and the Patriots. Stadiums as far away as San Diego, Miami, and Houston have been aggressively occupied by Patriot fans, turning road games into home games for the Brady crowd.

Let’s face it, having one team play in nine of the last 18 Super Bowls, and four of the last five, is too much for the rest of the country. The Patriots are hated the way the old New York Yankees were hated. Just too good for too long. And caught cheating while they were doing it.

As a result, any time there appears to be a crack in the New England machine, pundits and fans are quick to announce that this is the end (Trent Dilfer in 2014: “They’re not good anymore!”).

That’s what we’ll be getting for the rest of this week, and I don’t even want to think about what it will be like if the Chiefs win in Foxborough Sunday. The Patriots never lose home games in December. The last time they lost a game at the Lighthouse in December was in 2015 against the Eagles.

It’s weird now to look back a few months to a time when we were talking about the Patriots maybe running the table and going 19-0. They had the greatest defense of all time, they had Antonio Brown for a week and a half, and we were all pretty sure Gronk was coming back. The Patriots traded a second-round pick for an established receiver. Belichick was loading up for one last Super Bowl win with Brady.

(Aside: Can everybody stop with the AB nonsense? He is not coming back to the Patriots. He took yet another social media shot at Bob Kraft and Orchids of Asia Monday. It’s over, people.)

Now there is doubt about the Patriots everywhere, even on the airwaves of the SportsHub and WEEI. And the Never Patriots crowd has seized the day, reveling in the “demise” of a team that still has the greatest coach and quarterback of all time and still shares the best record in football.

As ever, New England’s game plan is to stay the course, wait for the Bills to beat the Ravens Sunday at 1, then topple the Chiefs and ascend to the No. 1 seed again.

Perfect. It will restore order to the universe.

After the Patriots victory Sunday night in Foxborough, Belichick gets to go to the podium, pretend nothing significant just happened, and say the words that will comfort every citizen of Patriot Nation.

“We’re on to Cincinnati.’’

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Some of you guys are way too over confident


Patriots are not going down without a fight. It won’t be easy at all.

It's hard to beat a team and the refs too

[RobertWeathers]

Shank is total and complete disingenuous, trolling fraud. 95% of his articles bash to Patriots. Additionally he knows nothing about football.

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Patriots are not going down without a fight. It won’t be easy at all.

Thanks, Captain Obvious!

Glad you picked them for the WIN!

Way to go!

[2bikemike]

The Patriots are the team I most enjoy watching lose. It would make my year to watch them get their ass handed to them Sunday!

[AdolfOliverBush]

"We all know that there is a Never Patriots movement in the deep state of NFL America."


Down Syndrome confirmed.

[BlackHelicopters]

Patriots are far from done, despite my wishes otherwise.

[rabblerouser]

Originally Posted by RobertWeathers

Shank is total and complete disingenuous, trolling fraud. 95% of his articles bash to Patriots. Additionally he knows nothing about football.

Obviously.

Your team sign a kicker yet?

[Eleazar]

They’re still well coached and well quarterbacked which are the two main things. Will always be a tough game especially on the road.

Strangely this one might not mean much and we will likely end up going back there in a month so

[rabblerouser]

Originally Posted by Eleazar

They’re still well coached and well quarterbacked which are the two main things. Will always be a tough game especially on the road.

Strangely this one might not mean much and we will likely end up going back there in a month so

Means a lot with regard to playoff seeding.

Buffalo beats Baltimore and we win out, it could very well be Buffalo #1 and us #2, we hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over Baltimore...and if we have the same record as Buffalo we have the tiebreaker over them because of our strength of schedule.

A first round bye isn't out of the question.

[Deberg_1990]

Going to Buffalo in January would be a nightmare for any team. It’s one of the reasons they kept winning the AFC Back in the early 90s.

[rabblerouser]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Going to Buffalo in January would be a nightmare for any team. It’s one of the reasons they kept winning the AFC Back in the early 90s.

Oh, I remember. We lost there twice in the early 90s.

I remember a 44-3 beat down of the Raiders where Raiders were just huddled around the heater. They didn't care about the game, they just wanted to get warm.

That being said, it's a big reason why the Pats have so many rings, as well - beat down on the Bills (who weren't good for many of the 15 years between 2003-2017), Jets and Dolphins for 6 extra bye weeks, win at least half of the remaining games, win the division and home field, then teams have to come play in the brutal NE January cold.

6 one way, half dozen the other.

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by rabblerouser

Means a lot with regard to playoff seeding.

Buffalo beats Baltimore and we win out, it could very well be Buffalo #1 and us #2, we hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over Baltimore...and if we have the same record as Buffalo we have the tiebreaker over them because of our strength of schedule.

A first round bye isn't out of the question.

All I'm saying is that the real chances of the Chiefs getting a bye are pretty remote.

Having four very winnable games against the Colts, Texans, Titans, and Packers and losing all four of them has hosed us for playoff seeding. Even one win among those four games would probably have us in the driver's seat with a win this weekend. As it stands, our chances with a win Sunday are still pretty slim.

We should probably just anticipate that any path to the Super Bowl would have to involve winning road games in both Baltimore and New England.

[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Originally Posted by Eleazar

They’re still well coached and well quarterbacked which are the two main things. Will always be a tough game especially on the road.

Strangely this one might not mean much and we will likely end up going back there in a month so

They are Not well quarterbacked. Brady throws to a spot 10 yards away from the receiver and then yells at them for not being there.

That's just ****ing dumb. Brady is about done. Bet this is his last year.

[Clyde Frog]

Originally Posted by Hog's Gone Fishin

They are Not well quarterbacked. Brady throws to a spot 10 yards away from the receiver and then yells at them for not being there.

That's just ****ing dumb. Brady is about done. Bet this is his last year.

Can't wait to 2-0 and retire his bitch-ass to Thailand where he can make out with pre-pubescent boys to his heart's content.

[Megatron96]

Originally Posted by Hog's Gone Fishin

They are Not well quarterbacked. Brady throws to a spot 10 yards away from the receiver and then yells at them for not being there.

That's just ****ing dumb. Brady is about done. Bet this is his last year.

Not to argue, but that throw by Brady was more on the WR than Brady, IMO. The WR was supposed to take his route up-field, I think, but basically stopped at the sideline instead.

Make no mistake, Tom Brady is still a very good QB.

But this season he lacks any real weapons, his OL is not good, and Sony Michel has significantly regressed this season.

Bottom line, the Patriots aren't going to be nearly as efficient moving the ball this time around without Gronk carving up our defense, their OL is going to have trouble dealing with our pass rush, Brady is going to have to throw into much tighter windows against our top-10 secondary, and Michel isn't going to run for 5+ yards per carry either.

Their defense is going to have to carry most of the water for this match-up, and it's essentially the same defense they had from last year. A defense that Pat threw 7 TDs on, more than 450 yards, and a passer rating over 133. Their defense is going to have to play nearly a perfect game. Maybe the best performance of the season for them to have a chance of winning this game.

Meanwhile, our defense only has to play relatively mistake-free, but just a solid game; they don't have to be perfect against that Pats offense. Just good enough. Say, 80-90% of how they played against DEN.

And the Chiefs offense doesn't need a spectacular game either. They don't need Pat to throw 4 TDs, 400 yards, etc. Again, that's not the same Pats offense from last year. Our offense needs to score just their average of 30 points or so and the Pats probably won't be able to keep up. They've averaged less than 20 points in their last 4 games.

It won't be easy, because they're still the Patriots, but this is definitely the most vulnerable Patriot team we've ever seen in 20 years. The Chiefs just need to not beat themselves and start fast, and we should beat these guys.