The New England Patriots have four games remaining this season. If they lose all of them -- on the road against the Arizona Cardinals, at Gillette Stadium against the Los Angeles Chargers, and a home-and-home against the Buffalo Bills -- their final record will be 3-14. We don't need the football analysts to tell us that's really bad, though it'll be fun to see the smirk on media superstar Bill Belichick's face if the Pats do close out at 3-14.
But I find myself thinking about another Bill, as in Parcells, who is said to have said, "You are what your record says you are."
It's a great line, be it from Parcells at news conferences, rah-rah high school coaches at awards banquets, or, and this is where it seems to get the most traction, sportswriters trying to make a point. To pick just one example from the hundreds I came across via an internet search, here's Berry Tramel of The Daily Oklahoman on Oct. 12, 1998, following the Dallas Cowboys' 27-20 victory over the Carolina Panthers: "But remember, this is the NFL. You are what your record says you are. The record says Dallas is 4-2, the class of the NFL East, and who cares if the Cowboy schedule is weaker than Kansas State's?"
We can agree, though, and with apologies to Parcells, that the line is forever open to interpretation, qualification and tons of whataboutism. Which brings us back to the 2024 Patriots.
No attempt will be made here to manufacture a trove of life lessons and silver linings because these Patriots really are what their record says they are. In fact, let's take it a step further: In terms of expectations, they're actually worse than their record says they are.
To make the point, let's roll back the tape to the preseason. They were the new-look Patriots, with their new coach (Jerod Mayo), their new quarterback-in-waiting (rookie Drake Maye) and an old quarterback ticketed to be the Week 1 starter (Jacoby Brissett). The expectation was that they wouldn't win a lot of games but that lots of building blocks would be put in place for future Super Bowl runs. Put another away, in an alternate universe, the Pats could have won just three games but with everyone optimistic about 2025 and beyond.
Yes, Maye eventually took over at quarterback. And he's absolutely the goods. From the perspective of quarterback being the most important position in team sports, the Patriots struck gold when they selected Maye with the third pick in the 2024 draft. Barring injuries, he's destined to join Steve Grogan, Drew Bledsoe and Tom Brady on the list of long-term New England quarterback fixtures. So there's that, and that's mighty important.
But there's been a shocking lack of depth on the '24 Pats. Their offensive line has been a Frankenstein's monster of spare parts. There's no for-real No. 1 receiver. And the Indianapolis Colts' winning drive in last Sunday's 25-24 victory over the Patriots was accomplished via a methodical 19-play, 80-yard commute through the New England defense that chewed 5:22 off the clock.
And then there's the coaching. Mayo has shown a concerning lack of imagination this season, providing plenty of substantiation for those who accuse him of playing not to lose as opposed to playing to win. And when he finally did make a surprising, go-for-the-gusto coaching decision in the last seconds of the Indy game, it was sending out Joey Slye to attempt a would-be, NFL-record 68-yard field goal. Good try by Slye, but a miss. And New England's 10th loss of the season.
Moving on to the front office, there's this nagging question: Does executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf have the skills to (again borrowing from Parcells) shop for the right groceries?
To heighten my case that a team can have a poor won-loss record and still give its fans reason to be optimistic, let's take a look at the present-day Detroit Lions and the back-in-the-day Jacksonville Jaguars.
I chose the 2024 Lions because the current bunch is 11-1 and coming off a 2023 season in which they made it to the NFC Championship Game, losing to the San Francisco 49ers. The Lions were 3-13-1 in 2021 under first-year coach Dan Campbell, and yet there were plenty of positives to take from that season -- even though offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn was fired the day after Detroit's season-ending 37-30 victory over Green Bay.
As The Athletic's Chris Burke wrote in his summation of the season, "That was a last-place, 3-13-1 team, sure. It felt different, though, didn't it? Certainly, compared to Matt Patricia's clubs, but even on a broader scale. There is a legitimate, noticeable buy-in happening right now, in all corners of the organization."
The Lions improved to 9-8 in 2022, though failing to make the playoffs. They were 12-5 in 2023, eking out victories over the Los Angeles Rams in the wild-card round (24-23) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the divisional round (31-23) before losing to the Niners in the title game.
I chose the 1996 Jaguars because it so happened I covered their stunning 30-27 divisional-round victory over the Denver Broncos (13-3 in the regular season) at Mile High Stadium, and it's a game I take special delight in revisiting. That's how memorable it was, right down to the grousing I could hear all around me on the way back to the hotel.
Why are the '96 Jags relevant to this discussion? Because the Jaguars debuted as an expansion team just one year earlier and went 4-12 under coach Tom Coughlin, that's why. But, again, there was optimism after the 1995 season finale, a 24-21 victory over the Cleveland Browns. (It would be the final game for the original Browns before the team was relocated to Baltimore and rebranded as the Ravens. It was also Belichick's last game as head coach until taking over the Patriots in 2000 and building his Hall of Fame resume.)
With Mark Brunell having already supplanted Steve Beuerlein as quarterback, the Jaguars were looking ahead to bigger things in 1996. And, yikes, were they ever big: The second-year Jags sneaked into the playoffs with a 9-7 record, beat the Bills in the wild-card round and then toppled the mighty Broncs. It remains one of the biggest upsets in modern NFL history. In the grand scheme, it's not as memorable as Lake Placid in 1980 or the Miracle Mets of 1969, because those teams won championships whereas the Jags lost to the Parcells-Bledose Patriots in the AFC title game. But Jags over the Broncos is way up there.
Bottom line: If you were a fan of the 3-13-1 Lions in 2021, or the 4-12 Jaguars in 1995, you could get away with challenging the precept that you are what your record says you are.
With the 2024 Patriots, not so much.