Now THAT’S how a bad team is supposed to lose.
Get the drop on the unassuming opponent expecting a walkover win. Overachieve for a while. Be frisky and annoying. Mosquito-like.
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Then, sink back to standard operating procedure as the lack of talent, experience and overall good footballmanship rears its head. Toss in a few “Are you s---ing me?!?!” turnovers to undo the good and leave with the inevitable L.
It’s a low bar. But it’s both realistic and -- somehow -- one the 2024 Patriots have found impossible to clear this season.
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Sunday’s 24-21 loss to Buffalo was the first of its kind for the Patriots. One in which there was more good than harm.
🔊 Patriots Talk Podcast: More good than bad from Pats in frustratingly close loss to Bills? | Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube
Among the 12 defeats, the Patriots have had no-show losses against the Jets (24-3), 49ers (30-13), Texans (41-21), Jaguars (32-16), Cardinals (30-17) and Dolphins (34-15).
They’ve had “So close, maybe they aren’t far from sniffing the hindquarters of mediocre” losses to the Rams (28-22) and Seahawks (23-20).
And they’ve had “How can you possibly lose to THAT team in THAT situation?” losses against Miami and Snoop Huntley (15-10), the Titans and Mason Rudolph (20-17) and the Colts and Anthony Richardson (25-24) after allowing a 19-play, 80-yard go-ahead drive with a two-point conversion.
But aside from the season-opening win, no other game signaled legitimate progress like this one. Hell, this loss was in some ways better than the wins over the flatlining Bears and Jets.
The circumstances mattered.
The way their post-bye loss to Arizona went down -- a flatline performance pockmarked by penalties and bad plays, followed by Jerod Mayo's disastrous postgame press conference -- seemed to eliminate any shot the team had at generating late-season optimism.
Then came a game in frigid Buffalo against a team that’s beaten both the Lions and Chiefs and scored 90 points in its previous two games behind MVP frontrunner Josh Allen. The elements were in place for a humiliation.
And they played their overmatched asses off.
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There was the requisite bust that led to them giving up a James Cook 46-yard touchdown run. And there was another Drake Maye pick when momentum was on their side that likely took at least three points off the board.
There was Rhamondre Stevenson's league-leading seventh fumble of the season, which led to a Bills field goal.
And there was a screen pass that Alex Van Pelt called from the Patriots' 12-yard line in the fourth quarter that required not-very-good right tackle Demontrey Jacobs to execute a cut block (he didn’t), and then required Maye to calmly process the looming disaster and throw the ball to the ground (he didn’t), which led to an easy touchdown.
And there was disarray offensively that led to timeouts being burned, the play clock winding down far too often and one delay of game that came at a critical moment in the fourth quarter.
But there was coaching aggressiveness shown in using Maye on designed runs. There was a successfully executed fake punt in the second quarter.
The questions about the Patriots' game management – punting on fourth-and-1 from their 34 after pulling off the fake punt and punting on fourth-and-5 in the fourth quarter -- are valid enough. But in both cases, Mayo was proven right in his strategy.
The Patriots forced a Bills punt after giving the ball back in the second quarter. And they forced a punt after the Bills gained 31 yards in the fourth. If they failed going for it on fourth down and gave up 31 yards, the Bills would have been kicking a game-sealing field goal. So they extended the game and gave themselves a shot, getting the ball back with 4:30 remaining.
That it took about 13 plays and 3:16 to score from there is beside the point. It’s not supposed to take that long. But they aren’t that good, so …
The bottom line is, the Patriots upgraded from a dysfunctional loss to a pedestrian team in Arizona to a mostly-functional loss to an elite team in Buffalo. You didn’t have to squint to see the progress on the field.
And it was hard to miss that Maye, in the postgame, made the most impressive podium statement of the entire season when he went to bat for the embattled coaching staff.
“The conversations about our coaching staff and stuff like that, I think it's some B.S., to be quite honest,” he began. “Coach Mayo, we’ve got his back, and he's coached us hard. He wants to win. We all want to win. We're all frustrated. AVP [Alex Van Pelt] has been, I feel like, calling great the past weeks. We're just plays away, and it's basically me turning the ball over.
“I think it's just a testament to these guys that keep fighting, we keep fighting,” Maye continued. “Shoot, we're not going to make the playoffs; we're out of the race, and these guys are coming in, frustrated when we don't score. They’ve got energy at practice, and they’ve got energy coming into the game. We want to win. There's guys not even playing that are yelling on the sidelines and wanting to win.
"So, I think we're building something good, building something that feels right here, and I'm proud to be a Patriot.”
Those last six words? From a player of Maye’s talent at the tail-end of a chaotic season? Spoken to a fanbase that’s increasingly angry and alienated from the team?
They make you hit the pause button on the weekly catastrophizing about how lost this team has become over the past five years.
