The Mind-Numbing ‘Mistake’ That May Cost the Patriots an NFL Playoff Berth

If you associate the Patriots with excellence, or at least general acumen, you were surely shocked by the ending of Sunday’s game between New England and the Las Vegas Raiders. Tied 24-24 in the closing seconds, the game barreling toward overtime, Patriots quarterback Mac Jones handed off to running back Rhamondre Stevenson for what most assumed would be a brief ramble, a tackle and a careful end to regulation.

It wasn’t. Needing only to hit the turf to send the game into an extra session, a freelancing Stevenson instead lateraled the football to Patriots teammate Jakobi Meyers, who decided to satirize the infamous Stanford Band Play, heaving a deep lateral pass across the field intended for Mac Jones …which instead fell straight into the paws of Las Vegas defensive end (and former Patriot!) Chandler Jones.

Looking like a man surprised to catch a falling asteroid, Jones raced the lousy lateral to the end zone in what went down in the score book as a “48-yard fumble return” but really should be described as “one of the most hilarious self-inflicted train wreck endings in North American football history.”

The play delighted Pats haters, lifted the struggling Las Vegas coach (and former Patriot!) Josh McDaniels, and made stunned Boston sports fans suddenly open to discussing the 2023 possibilities of the Red Sox.

It likely also came as a great relief to the Indianapolis Colts, who Saturday choked a 33-0 lead in losing to the Minnesota Vikings, but could now look at the Patriots game finish and say: At least we didn’t do that.

“I take full responsibility for the play,” said a contrite Stevenson.

“Trying to do too much, trying to be a hero,” said Meyers.

“Obviously, we made a mistake,” said a taciturn Belichick.

For the Patriots, it’s another emphatic signal that the Super Bowl glory days are gone in the rear view. New England post-Tom Brady has been rocky—a 7-9 Covid season cameo with Cam Newton, followed by 10-7 and a hasty playoff exit last year with then-rookie Jones. Saved by a solid defense, these erratic 2022 Patriots entered Sunday’s game with Las Vegas with a winning record of 7-6. They were good enough to be a wild card, but they were also likely roadkill for a top seed like Kansas City or Buffalo.

Even in mediocrity, some Patriot aura persists, largely because of the Grumpy Captain, a certain Hall of Famer who keeps a tight ship. Belichick has made personnel blunders over the years, but the theory goes that as long as he’s around, the Patriots will never turn into… see, I was going to make a Lions joke, but I can’t do that, since the Lions have won 6 of 7 and are now 7-7, same as the Pats, still in the NFC playoff hunt. I can’t even make a Jets joke, since they are also 7-7.

The point is: Sunday’s finish is historically the kind of fiasco Patriots opponents do, not the Patriots themselves. New England, of course, won a last-second Super Bowl when Seattle decided to get cute with Russell Wilson instead of handing off to Marshawn Lynch. In another Super Bowl, they came back from a 28-3 deficit in an epic collapse by the Atlanta Falcons. The Patriots recovered the Buttfumble, for goodness’ sake.

Now they’re the ones making the howlers. One imagines the Schadenfreude across the nation Sunday, as nearly every franchise (except the NY Giants) can recall torment at the hands of the Patriots dynasty. Raiders fans, the ones gray enough to remember the snowstorm “Tuck Rule” that cost the Raiders a 2001 season playoff win and genuinely launched the Brady era, may feel a karmic jolt of justice delayed.

Or at least some kinship. The New England Patriots: They’re Just Like Us!

The rest of the time, the Patriots hover blandly in the NFL’s Zone of Blah, alongside ordinary teams that aren’t terrible at football, but aren’t very watchable, either. A must-see destination franchise has become easily skippable. (The only solace for irritated Patriots fans is that Brady’s 6-8 Buccaneers are a much more high-profile disaster.)

For a Patriots fan over 40, moments like Sunday feel like slowly walking back into an old, clammy cave.

Before the arrival of Belichick and Brady, and the success of Drew Bledsoe and Bill Parcells before that, New England was one of football’s saddest franchises. This was a team that got historically annihilated in the Super Bowl by the Mike Ditka Bears, was nearly run ashore by an electric razor kingpin turned owner, went 1-15 in 1990, soared to 2-14 in 1992, and celebrated as a franchise high point the time a convicted burglar on work release snowplowed the field to ensure a game-winning field goal against the Don Shula Dolphins.

They got better. Much better, with the intervention of new owner Robert Kraft and of course Belichick and Brady, who built a durable, consistent contender. Those Patriots suffered some heartbreak but it’s hard to overstate the persistent joy this team has lavished upon New England since 2001. By now, half of all people under 25 in Massachusetts are named Brady. The other half is named Gronk.

Now other teams are taking turns as the NFL’s model franchise—maybe now it’s Philadelphia, Kansas City, Buffalo, Cincinnati or resilient San Francisco. (It isn’t Minnesota—the Vikings are 11-3 but far too bonkers.)

It isn’t the New England Patriots, either. Not now, at least. Not when they can play a football game and finish like that that.

Write to Jason Gay at [email protected]