Bill Belichick didn’t seem interested in acknowledging the severity of his team’s 24-3 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night. His press conference sounded like the same Belichick that lost to the Miami Dolphins in Week 14 in 2017, or the Houston Texans in Week 13 in 2019 amid a season where the New England Patriots were destined for the playoffs.
It was a loss — but they’d be back next week. They’d be relevant next week.
But with the Patriots facing a 6% chance of making the playoffs, the conversation of improving in 2020 felt trivial. The Patriots coach, who values winning football games above seemingly all else, suffered his seventh loss of the season. New England is growing more and more irrelevant in the playoff picture. Even if they win every remaining game, they have just a 33% chance — the probability of a Marcus Smart 3-point shot.
It’s surprising, stunning, shocking. With Belichick, the football world doesn’t let itself believe he’s actually out of the mix, because he has an extended track record of taking teams that look like pretenders and converting them into contenders — and, in some cases, Super Bowl winners. No one wants to be the next Trent Dilfer, who infamously said the Patriots were “not good anymore” before they won three Super Bowls in five years. (Oops.)
So that’s why it was impossible to believe your eyes when you saw the Patriots suffer embarrassing losses to the Denver Broncos, the San Francisco 49ers and the Houston Texans. It was easy to believe that Belichick would figure things out, in part because he seemed to be doing just that, with wins over the Baltimore Ravens and the Arizona Cardinals in recent weeks. But Belichick didn’t figure it out. Without help from Tom Brady, the Patriots are withering under pressure. Their offense is a mess, with a predictable run-first identity. Their defense has regressed from a top-five unit in 2019 to bottom-five in 2020.
And the Rams’ win confirms what everyone’s been thinking: this Patriots team isn’t good. That’s not to say the Patriots aren’t good anymore. But in 2020, Belichick put together one of the worst rosters in his long tenure. With that confirmation comes a scary realization: New England has no quarterback and no supporting cast on offense. They need to choose their next moves carefully. Cam Newton isn’t the answer. Neither is Jarrett Stidham. And to make matters worse, New England chased a playoff berth and will continue to do so. That means they’ll be sitting in the middle of the first-round draft order — and out of reach of the top quarterback prospects in 2021.
So this loss is a huge turning point for Belichick and the Patriots. It’s a clear reminder that the transition and uncertainty will continue. New England’s transition away from Brady was unsettling, but there was a sense that Belichick could figure out the quarterback position, because he’d done so when Matt Cassel, Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett filled in for Brady. But now you’ve got to ask: What if Belichick doesn’t figure it out? What if this turnover grows familiar every offseason? It’s common for teams to search decades for a reliable quarterback. That’s the daunting task the Patriots face, not to mention surrounding that quarterback with better talent.
By Belichick’s standards, the roster he built was a failure — it won’t make the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl. He’s got eight months to make sure the 2021 Patriots don’t fail in the same way. He’s got eight months to build a new identity on both offense and defense. And he’s got eight months to find a quarterback.
[vertical-gallery id=99821]