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A Half Full Glass Seldom Slakes Thirst.

 Their 23-21 win over the Miami Dolphins yesterday gave the New England Patriots an 8-8 record for the 2022 season. That's as average as average can be, the living definition of the NFL's beloved "parity." It isn't coal for Christmas, but it sure isn't the luxury car with the big bow on top.

But, as is being pointed out by everyone even dimly aware of the Patriots around here,  the win also kept the Patriots capable of qualifying for the playoffs should they win their final game of the regular season come Sunday. That's praiseworthy, which is said without irony. It's also far from unusual.

There are seven other teams with 8-8 records in the league, and six of 'em could also possibly make the postseason, some by simply winning their final game, others through a combination of winning plus one or more of their mediocre rivals losing. The other one of the seven is already in. The 8-8 Buccaneers won the NFC South title yesterday. Need I mention this largely was because Tom Brady had his best game by far of 2022? Hope messing up the rest of your life for an NFC South Champs commemorative cap was worth it, Tom.

Here's the cold truth of the Patriots' situation, and those of their six other playoff contenders as well. It exists solely through the NF'L's fanatical commitment to creating more "product," its endless pursuit of revenue over actual product quality. Were it not for the league's expansion to a 14 team rather than 12 team playoff field in 2020, the Patriots would already have been eliminated from the playoffs. So would've five of those six other contenders. The Pats, like the Packers, Lions, Seahawks, Dolphins and Steelers, are batting for the seventh and final playoff seed a/k/a "Parity's Revenge." Being average would have earned these teams what average should earn a team in any sport, a good spot outside the ballroom window looking in at as the party takes place.

(This is a non-Pats related digression. The real ultimate absurdity of the new and unimproved NFL setup, both the 17-game season and the 14-team playoff, doesn't involve New England at all. If the Titans beat the Jaguars Saturday night, they will finish 8-9 but still win the AFC South and will be seeded fourth in the playoffs. The Bucs have already clinched the NFC fourth seed. Suppose they rest their starters and blow off competing next Sunday to finish 8-9. Did you know that the two teams in Super Bowl 56, the Rams and Bengals, were the fourth seeds last season. The odds of it happening are approximately 150 billion to one, but there is a chance the Super Bowl could feature two teams with losing records. I can't see how any real fan of both football and cosmic humor isn't rooting hard for the longshot to come home.)

Returning to parochial concerns, I want to repeat that the Patriots' remaining eligible for the playoffs is to be respected. The rules are the rules, and all any team can do is play the schedule and see how events sort out.  The playoffs are the playoffs and its far better to be in 'em than out.  Long shots do come in every so often. Ask Rich Strike, 82-1 winner of the Kentucky Derby. And in the cold world of NFL reality, having the 19th or 20th draft pick in the first round isn't all that different from having numbers 15-18.

It is all too easy to underrate the abilities of a .500 team. Football isn't like baseball, where a team with 79 to 84 wins can mosey along in comfortable anonymity, identified by one and all as mediocre by Memorial Day. Football's far shorter schedule and the random, chaotic nature of the sport breeds extreme mood swings even among supposedly neutral observers, let alone fans, who are supposed to be overemotional.

.500 NFL teams are, by contrast, usually mixtures of excellence and wretchedness, of super high highs and deep dark low lows. They are their own best friends and worst enemies. This makes them frustrating to watch. Imagine how it feels to play for one. Or coach one. And it makes them dangerously easy to misjudge.

The 2022 Patriots are the epitome of that split personality. Their strengths have canceled out their weaknesses half the time and vice versa. Everyone who's watched them this season knows what they are. Hell, one could have watched only the Bengals game on Christmas Eve and seen what both were. So only a brief description is needed.

The Patriots are 8-8 and not 11-5 or better because their offense has ranged from indifferent to terrible all season long. Specifically, their passing game, that is, quarterback Mac Jones and his bunch of kinda OK receivers, has been, to be kind, unproductive. Jones ranks in the bottom third of most statistical measures of quarterback play, and that's after two straight more or less "good" (for him, in 2022) games.

Fairness requires that I also state that Jones' recent improvement is in parallel with the improvement of the offensive line's ability to keep him free from bodily harm. But it does no one any favors to sugar coat the truth. He just hasn't been good enough to make the Pats a winning team this year.

Obvious weakness, meet obvious strength. New England is 8-8 and not 5-11 or worse because of its defense. Specifically, that unit's ability to rush the passer (second in the league in sacks) and its not unrelated ability to score defensive touchdowns. The Pats' seven defensive scores are more than twice that of any other squad. If one's offense has trouble scoring touchdowns, having the defense put one up every other game is most helpful.

It's not a panacea, however. The all time record for team defensive touchdowns, set in a 16-game season, was 10, by the 1998 Seattle Seahawks, a team so unmemorable I doubt it recalls itself. Seattle's record that season was, of course you've guessed, 8-8.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about .500 NFL teams is that they live on the sport's margins more than truly poor or quality ones, always more susceptible to the football's funny bounces, the role of random chance beyond human control or even understanding. Even here, the Patriots have put good and ill fortune in exquisite balance. Before any Pats' fan bemoans the red zone fumble against the Bengals, or the insane lateral that lost the Raiders game on the final play, they're instructed to remember the amazing string of backup quarterbacks and/or starters that then became backups on whom the defense feasted all year long, including against the Dolphins yesterday.

So it's fitting that the Pats' potential playoff scenarios are 1. neatly balanced between cheer and gloom and 2, Out of their hands to a significant extent. The oft-repeated statement that the Patriots "control their own destiny" is both technically accurate and largely misleading.

The optimistic scenario depends on the Chiefs and Raiders. If Las Vegas wins Saturday night, then Buffalo will have clinched at worst the second seed in the AFC regardless of how they do against the Bengals tonight. So, the New England optimist reasons, the Bills will sit their most vital personnel, particularly Josh Allen, against a Patriots team with all to play for.

Problem number one with the optimism case is that the Bills might not do that. Some teams do, some don't. Problem number two is that the Chiefs might win Saturday and the Bills might win tonight, leaving Buffalo to play for home field throughout the playoffs in the Pats' game (the way winter has gone so far up there, assuming Buffalo even has a home field all this month is itself optimistic).

Problem number three with the Pats' playoff case rests on what might happen if it comes true. Suppose New England beats Buffalo Sunday. They're in as the seventh seed. Yay!

In all likelihood, their reward would be the chance to do it all over again, playing the Bills in Buffalo the following week.

Fourteen team playoff or no, 500 football's a real bitch.

posted by Michael Gee @ 12:11 PM