The game: Colts “at” Patriots (in Frankfurt)
The beer: Stoneface Slopeside Milk Stout
The result: Loss, 10–6
The method: NFL+
The record: 2–8
The headline: “Hey you! You’re losing! You’re losing! You’re losing! You’re losing!” – Can, “Vitamin C”

The commentary:

He’s like the backup quarterback who comes in in the fourth quarter, so don’t blame him for everything that’s happened, give him a break here and go with what he wants.

So said Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) Sunday, not on NFL Network (or the German equivalent) and not about Bailey Zappe—he was referring to the latest weaponized Republican fake Christian and real Speaker of the House. Can we hurry up and re-elect Biden in a blowout, please?

Nonetheless, the remark encapsulates Belichick’s diminishing returns as the master strategist you want to be in charge of your favorite football team and its future. I’ve questioned his (using his own word) value as a general manager since the heyday of the team’s imperial phase but nobody anticipated such a wild plummet to prolonged disappointment three-plus years after Brady flew the coop. Remember the plan? Well there wasn’t one. Mac Jones was good (enough) his rookie year, then bad, now terrible. He is terrible. And he’s not terrible compared to Brady—he’s terrible compared to Brian Hoyer and Gardner Minshew.

Minshew, in the face of limited pressure, escaped the pocket like a blazing acid casualty yet somehow converted multiple third downs. Jones, in the face of actual or theoretical pressure, shit his pants and either sacked himself or pointed his feet in opposite directions while heaving eephus pitches toward opposing linebackers. He is consistent in this, and not by the coach’s definition: “We need to be more consistent” is obtuse misdirection, a ridiculous inference that the team has played well and should do so more often in order to succeed. “We need to be better” is what he means to say, removing the assumption of a stable, fixed level of excellence within reach. The 2023 Patriots, if nothing else, are consistent: they don’t score, they commit and recommit unforced errors and, worst of all, they lack talent. They are consistently terrible.

So Jones is not alone—the entire team is terrible. The offense, defense and specialists are terrible. The coaches are terrible. Patriots Unfiltered’s failure to post Friday’s episode “because of music in the background” is terrible. And “Handy” Bob Kraft is terrible, every preseason with “This isn’t good enough, changes are coming” self-deception and every week with empty “We need to turn this around” threats and every TV cutaway to him looking lost in oversized couture, his mouth agape to reveal an idiot who backed the wrong guy.

(I haven’t skimmed headlines in a few hours—for all I know, Belichick is already discharged and halfway to Mar-a-Lago. That’s one way to continue losing.)

The Bills game fooled no one and was the exception that proves the rule, the season’s lone great moment. Everything else, including the fifteen thirteen-point shoulder-shrug output against the Jets, has been stable, fixed, consistent, right through to Sunday morning’s attempted fourth-quarter comeback. Jones’s interception was a bench-able offense but keeping him in that long was equally problematic—I don’t know that Belichick dislikes Jones or that he didn’t want to draft him in the first place but he’s had so many opportunities to declare some version of “Mac is our guy” and, consistently, refused. All of a sudden he trusts Zappe, the man he cut loose in August only to insert him in these conditions? Are we set to endure a bye-week quarterback controversy, if it can be termed so mildly about a two-and-eight team, because of what Paul Perillo calls “coaching negligence”? I think Belichick might have broken three quarterbacks this season in Jones, Zappe and Malik “Dope” Cunningham and I almost I look forward to Will Grier starting against the Giants. Does Grier?

Up next: Lots of speculation about college blue-chippers I know nothing about. Cheers!