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Patriots 28-Lions 21

For reasons no one inside or outside the game can explain, every NFL team turns in one complete stinkbomb of a game each season. From the eventual Super Bowl champion to the eventual holder of next April's number one draft pick, all 32 clubs put together an effort far, far below their normal level of performance, even if that level already was in the sub-basement.

Ordinarily the stinkbombers lose said game by a substantial margin. But not always. Occasionally, they triumph over a foe that has its own shoelaces tied together that given Sunday.

This strikes me as the most plausible explanation of New England's slipshod play in its win over Detroit. The Lions' Doom Mojo is one of the NFL's most terrifying supernatural powers. Each time the Lions were in position to take control and gain the upset, one could see the question mark thought balloons over all their heads. How're we gonna blow this one? The thought, of course, immediately fathered the deed.

The analysis I DON'T believe is the notion suggested by my former colleagues at the Globe and Herald who felt the Pats repeated the same errors they committed against the Bears the week before. The two contests can't be compared. The Bears force errors. It's how they win. Nobody plays Chicago without committing turnovers and bad plays. Blunders against Detroit are pure double-faults. They're on you.

Coming away from one's annual horror show with a W is a splendid stroke of luck for a team with post-season expectations. The three Super Bowl champions Pats' teams of the Belichick-Brady era didn't manage the feat (2001: Dolphins 30-Pats 6, 2003: Bills 31-Pats 0, 2004: Dolphins 29-Pats 28). The question is, however, was this indeed New England's given Sunday of ineptitude? Although the Pats concentrated their playmaking into short bursts at the end of the second and fourth quarters, they made quite a few of them in those spans.

Patriot optimists are entitled to point out the champion's address is usually the intersection of Luck and Talent, and to add one team yet to turn in ITS stinkbomb is the Colts, leader of the AFC seeding chase. Pessimists may counter that through the decades, no place has seen more New England stinkbombs than the Dolphins' home field in Miami-the Pats' destination this Sunday.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:39 AM