There isn’t a Patriots game this week for the first time since late August, so I imagine that a lot of you out there will either be taking this Sunday off from the NFL or tuning into the RedZone Channel, losing the remote between the couch cushions, and spending the day rooting against the various teams competing with New England for a postseason spot while praying to the fantasy gods that you can sneak into one of those last few open playoff slots. And so I thought now would be a good time to send everyone a gentle reminder regarding the 2025 Patriots.
This entire season is already a massive, massive win.
I’m sure that there are a few folks out there who saw 11-2 through 14 weeks coming, but the vast majority of us (yours truly included) came into this season hoping for 10-7, a Wild Card berth, and perhaps they get a playoff win on the road before getting sent home by the Chiefs or Bills or Ravens or Bengals or whoever they had to play in the Divisional Round. I would have taken that result and basked in it all offseason long, optimistic and hopeful that they’d be able to build on that 9-8 season to maybe sneak into the conversation of legit contenders for 2026. As long as Drake Maye took some steps forward, I got a solid sense of who the long-term contributors were, and Mike Vrabel showed the level of poise and competence he showed during his early tenure with Tennessee, I would have been made in the shade.
But here I am, in December, looking at my team currently listed as the One Seed in the AFC. They’re a flawed team in a conference full of flawed teams, and they have as good a chance as anybody to go on a run. They are all but guaranteed to make the playoffs at this point, and may very well be hosting at least one postseason game at Gillette. This time last year, heading into this very same bye, the Patriots had just been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs on the heels of a 25-24 loss to the Anthony Richardson-led Colts at home to drop them to 3-10. That kind of turnaround simply doesn’t happen, and yet here we are.
I’ll say it again: this entire season, no matter what happens from here on out, is a massive win. Even if they lose the next four games and go one-and-done in the playoffs, or even somehow miss the playoffs entirely at 11-6, I’m still standing by that statement. This team has already exceeded expectations, and all that a complete implosion and doomsday scenario would hammer home is how it took some kind of unprecedented and inexplicable collapse for the Patriots to fall down to what most people had pegged as the highest possible ceiling for the team this year. There’s nowhere to go but up, and I’m enjoying every second of it.
I would never trade the Brady/Belichick Patriots for anything. We’ll never see a run like that ever again for the rest of our lives, by any team across any sport, so I’ll never lose sight of how incredible that era was. But with that level of success comes a set of expectations that you simply can’t ignore. Every season, without fail, the Patriots were expected to make a deep playoff run. 12-4 and a first-round bye was more or less the starting point of the season, and they either won a Super Bowl or the entire season was a failure, Brady’s championship window was closed, Belichick’s arrogance doomed his team yet again, and all of the other headlines that kept the lights on at the homes of any number of hacks over the past few decades. Whether we as fans bought into that is a different story altogether, but there’s no denying that the Dynasty Patriots had two options: win it all, or a complete disgrace.
The 2025 Pats, though? Nobody saw them doing this. I don’t expect them to make the Super Bowl at all – but would I be surprised if they made it? Nope. That’s absolutely wild, considering where we all were mentally a few short months ago.
And to make things even better, it has never been clearer that five years isn’t even close to long enough for fans elsewhere to shake off their deep-seated, all-consuming hatred for the Patriots. The mental gymnastics that people are doing to discredit this team aren’t quite as impressive as what we used to see during the Brady years, but they’re impressive nonetheless. Here are just a few things I never thought I’d be hearing coming into this season:
“New England’s schedule is pathetic. I can’t wait to see them crash next year when they have to play real teams.”“Drake Maye as an MVP candidate is the biggest joke in the history of the NFL. I forgot how many people out there know nothing about football.”“LOL Drake Maye no 300-yard games yet.”“I can’t believe everyone is riding the Patriots jock, I guess you all forgot that this team lost to the Raiders!“
Man I missed that. It’s like that first sip of good bourbon after a long, miserable dry January. I almost hope for the sake of humanity that it’s not Pats/Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, the effort you’d need to discredit the winner of that one might be enough to unleash Cthulu from its ancient slumber.
All of this rambling is just to say, make sure you’re enjoying this season. If things keep trending the way that they are—and that’s a big, massive, Vince Wilfork-sized if—there will be plenty of time in the future to expect the Patriots to be in contention every single year. This year, though? We have an extremely likable bunch of guys led by an extremely likable, competent head coach who have all bought fully into the system and are reminding us all that one united team is the safer bet than 53 individually talented players. I have absolutely no idea what the next few months have in store. Like I already said, I don’t expect them to do all that much in the playoffs; there are some real holes on this team and more than a few flaws. But there also isn’t a single team in the AFC that scares me right now, and if New England ends up going on some kind of tear and has me watching Patriots football deep into January, that (amazingly) wouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s very rare to experience this kind of season, so make sure that you’re getting the most out of it. There are good things on the horizon, and what’s about to transpire between now and early February, no matter what it is, is all just gravy.
Have a great bye week, everyone.