As Patriot fans we are accustomed to the phrase “We’re on to (insert team here)” and after Sunday night’s 19-17 loss to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it is time to move on. The hard-fought loss brought a plethora of emotions to the entire viewing audience but after it was all said and done, we are still 1-3 and are on the brink of another subpar season. Yes, it’s true, in the 2021 NFL season TB12 has more wins at Gillette than the Patriots (credit to Al Michaels) and we still cannot seem to protect Mac Jones for longer than .7seconds, but that is our reality now. So what do we do? How can we move forward? These are all great questions and I would suggest that the answer is a very familiar one; “In Bill, We MUST Trust”.
Media pundits around the country (yours truly included) have been wondering if Bill has lost a step or if the game has passed him by and after Sunday we got our answer. Hell no. He can still game-plan with the very best of them and that should be enough to rally the team. Now he needs to do it every week, against every team because this team has run out of room to fail or lose another game that they shouldn’t. New England fans have been conditioned to believe that the first 4 games of the regular season are really an extension of the pre-season but that logic should have gone out the door when TB12 took his talents to Tampa and won another Lombardi Trophy. Every game counts, there are no more moral victories or mulligans. Let’s hope this team reacts the same way the Patriots did twenty years ago when they almost beat the Rams in the regular season. Remember how that season ended?
Thanks for the memories, Tom, and thank you for defining and epitomizing the “Patriot Way”. There is no more room for looking back and we are on to the next phase. Let’s see if Bill can do it without you.
