NFLNFLThe Patriots have ridden the league’s easiest schedule to the AFC title game. Is America emotionally ready for what comes next?Getty Images/Ringer illustrationBy Nora PrinciottiJan. 19, 11:30 am UTC • 5 min
Is everyone ready for this? Emotionally, I mean?
The Patriots, perhaps in an elaborate rendition of the “2016” social media trend, are poised to go to the Super Bowl again. After beating the Texans 28-16 in the divisional round Sunday, all that stands in their way is an AFC championship game meeting in Denver against the Broncos, who will be playing their backup quarterback, Jarrett Stidham. He hasn’t thrown a pass in a game in two years. Non-New England America, meet your only hope:
So, unless that guy takes the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever, the Patriots will be back on the NFL’s biggest stage. Already.
The last time New England was in the Super Bowl was after the 2018 season, when they beat the Rams 13-3. That game was at the end of a dynasty, one that was widely loathed yet inescapable to most of the NFL-viewing public for two decades. When Tom Brady left for Tampa in 2020 and Bill Belichick’s coaching prowess deteriorated in the following years, it seemed like the Patriots might be floundering for a while, suffering through the draft whiffs and roster mismanagement other teams regularly and consistently endure.
Yet it now seems that, despite losing arguably the best player and coach in league history and bungling one first-round pick quarterback and a coaching hire, New England has completed a full-scale rebuild in the lifespan of a guinea pig. Since that Super Bowl win over the Rams in 2019, only two other AFC teams, the Chiefs and Bengals, have won the conference. In the Patriots’ own division, the Dolphins have not won a playoff game and the Jets have not even come close to playing in one. (The Bills have had six separate, genuinely devastating playoff losses.) Depending on the amount of chowder in your general vicinity, this AFC East infutility has to be either deliciously satisfying or make you want to put coarse-grit sandpaper onto your eyeballs.
They actually can keep getting away with this. 2018 was just not that long ago. I have most of the same sweaters. There’s a jar of cinnamon in my spice rack that would easily remember 2018. People were already into Yellowstone back then. Timothée Chalamet had already been an Oscar nominee.
Of course, this would be new for some. There are 8-year-olds from Dedham who will finally get to experience the Patriots in the Super Bowl. I know everyone would be relieved. This should be someone’s fault. The AFC got a year off from the Chiefs haunting them through the postseason, only for the Patriots to get in position to advance If they do make the Super Bowl, I bet Bon Jovi’s going to go, and I bet they’re going to show him a lot on the broadcast. I bet every single Wahlberg brother just got a call from his agent with multiple commercial offers. They’re going to say yes to those commercials, and they’re going to be incredibly annoying and they’re going to play all the time. You could not watch. You could tell yourself you’ll get super into the Olympics this year instead. But you won’t. You’re going to watch the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
I’m not sure if this makes it any better (and actually, it might make it worse), but this iteration of the Patriots is a lot harder to hate than those Belichick-Brady teams were. Mike Vrabel is funny! He seems capable of imposing discipline and standards while having real, personal connections with his players. Meanwhile, Drake Maye had his first legal beer two years ago and has the same cheeks as Alvin from the Chipmunks. He is married to his middle school sweetheart, a seemingly delightful woman who posts a lot of baking videos. My friends in New England say Ann Michael Maye’s apple cinnamon oat crumble bars are just OK, but the peppermint chocolate chip cookies are amazing. Is this your evil empire???!
Still, it’s crazy no one put a stop to this.
The Patriots, who finished 14-3 in the regular season, faced opponents with a .380 winning percentage, the softest schedule in the league by some margin. These are just a few of the quarterbacks they faced along the way to the no. 2 seed: Quinn Ewers, Brady Cook, Dillon Gabriel, and Cam Ward. Yes, they played Josh Allen twice, but they also missed out on playing against Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson was clearly injured when he played New England in Week 16. By the website Pro Football Reference’s simple rating system metric, the Patriots not only had the easiest schedule this season, but the 10th-easiest schedule of any team since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970 and the second-easiest this century. They were also the team least affected by injury in the entire NFL this season
Then once they got to the playoffs, they faced a Chargers team on its eighth-string offensive line, a Texans team that went into the game without leading receiver Nico Collins and quickly lost tight end Dalton Schultz, and will now play a backup quarterback in the AFC title game.
But let’s all be honest with ourselves and admit that the asterisk stuff we could assign to this Patriots run is hollow. It’s unsatisfying. It’s pointing out the Patriots’ weakness by listing all the teams they’ve been better than. Some of it is retroactive. New England was favored at home by just a field goal against those banged-up Chargers. And as you, I, and Cardi B have all seen by now, the entire ESPN crew of analysts picked the Texans to win Sunday. Also, didn’t any of you have a rich, or super hot friend growing up? Do you not know what it’s like to watch someone simply live a charmed life? The Patriots are those people, and this is just what happens to them. Asterisk talk is a coping mechanism.
It’s been a weak AFC all year, but that just means it was anyone else’s for the taking. Instead, the Patriots gelled under a new head coach and got their 23-year-old MVP-caliber franchise quarterback up and running. As the Patriots’ game ended Sunday afternoon, snow still falling, the Gillette Stadium PA system DJ pressed play on Springsteen’s “Glory Days.” They may never end.
Nora Princiotti
Nora Princiotti covers the NFL, culture, and pop music, sometimes all at once. She hosts the podcast ‘Every Single Album,’ appears on ‘The Ringer NFL Show,’ and is The Ringer’s resident Taylor Swift scholar.
