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Three straight Victory Mondays! Here we go!
I honestly didn’t think I’d be sitting here in October, looking at a Monday Night game between the Bills and Falcons, and thinking that there was a chance that the Patriots could be first in the AFC East through the first six weeks of the NFL season. But here we find ourselves, and the Patriots keep getting better each and every week. Yesterday’s game wasn’t perfect, but it was a solid performance overall and has the Patriots very well positioned in a conference that doesn’t have one true dominant team. Oh what a world.
1. It’s currently 12:43 P.M. on Sunday, October 12th, as I type this first Fan Note. The game starts in about 15 minutes. My laptop is ready, and there’s a frosty six-pack of Tonewood Biergarten Marzen in the fridge with my name on it (shoutout to Tonewood Brewing in New Jersey, keep doing the Lord’s work). I wanted to get this one down before kickoff so I can use my third note to see how the Patriots answered the bell. There will be no editing of this note or the one that is about to follow, regardless of how the game shakes out.
2. People overreacted to the Bills game, in my opinion. There was way too much “The Patriots have their guy” and “Drake Maye is a superstar” and “New England is so back” for my liking. A statement road win in primetime against a division rival widely regarded as the class of the AFC is awesome, but divisional games are always weird, and without consistency and the ability to build off that victory, that Bills win doesn’t mean anything. The Pats are about to face a very beatable Saints team as the first of four very winnable games, and how they respond in about 10 minutes is going to carry a ton more weight than how they fared against the Bills. So I’m going to go put a dent in that Tonewood now and see how well these first two Fan Notes hold up.
3. And so, here I am, with the game over and all the glorious benefit of 20/20 hindsight. The Patriots won their third in a row. They didn’t blow the Saints out, and they didn’t barely squeak out a win either. So how should I play it? Should I Felger these Fan Notes, or should I Alec Shane them? “The Patriots barely beat the Saints, what a complete disaster, blow this whole thing up” or “hell yeah, let’s go!” I think we all know the answer to that question.
4. And that, I think, is the best part. The Patriots just won a game, and it was kind of an unremarkable one. This kind of win, by less than one score against a bad team, would have been viewed as a catastrophic embarrassment in the Tom Brady Era. Ben Volin would have been calling for Belichick’s job and there would be article after article about how the Saints have discovered the blueprint for beating the Patriots. Cut to the past few years, where we would have been thrilled with any win at all, even if that win came from the opposing team all coming down with dysentery and forfeiting the game. So that there’s even a debate to be had about how good or bad this win was is like scratching a long-forgotten itch.
5. As for the game itself, at this point it’s very hard not to look at this team and be happy with what you’re seeing. This is a tough, smart football team that doesn’t make many mistakes and is developing stronger weapons in real time. There are holes on the roster, as there are with every team in the league, but there isn’t a massive, glaring weakness that screws them over every week. We’ll leave the screwing over to the refs.
6. I hate talking about the NFL officiating. I hate it so very much. And the Patriots won, so the insanity we saw yesterday ultimately didn’t cost the Patriots the game. But in a decade of professional football lousy with lousy calls, the lousy calls that we saw yesterday are up there in contention for the lousiest.
7. There were two OPI calls on Stefon Diggs that negated 130 passing yards and a score, and neither of them would have even garnered a stern look from the playground monitor if there was a touch football game happening between fourth graders at recess. Furthermore, the flag that negated Boutte’s TD was thrown so late, and so far away from the play, that I thought that someone on the New England sideline was getting flagged after the play for a celebration.
8. And it really isn’t so much bad calls. Bad calls are as much a part of professional sports as drunken fans and overpriced plastic bottles of beer. Plus, referees are human and they’re going to get it wrong on occasion. What it does comes down to, for me at least, is just the complete lack of consistency at any level from a single NFL ref league-wide. Seven identical plays happening at the same time across the league could all get seven completely different calls and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. One no flag, one offensive holding, one defensive holding, one illegal hands to the face, one tripping, one OPI, one DPI. Take your pick. Coaches have to prepare for whoever they are playing that week and whatever specific set of rules the officiating crew calling the game that week is playing by, and that shouldn‘t be the case.
9. But enough of that. Let’s get to the actual action that wasn’t marred by dirty laundry.
10. The Patriots won a road game they were expected to win on the heels of winning a road game they were expected to lose, and each win came in the different ways you want to see from a mentally tough team. A two-minute offense to get into scoring range followed by a four-minute offense to protect a lead. Smart, mistake-free football with big plays at key moments where there was a decent level of confidence that the Patriots were going to be able to do what they needed to do.
11. If that game had happened this time last year, New England would have gone three and out with a run for negative yards, incompletion on a short slant, then a sack for a loss of 12 before punting, and New Orleans would have driven down the field to score with three seconds left on the clock. But even if the offense hadn’t managed to ice the game, I felt that the defense would be able to hold.
12. But while we’re on the offense…
13. New Orleans is stout against the run, but the Patriots weren’t able to get anythig going on the ground at all. So they pivoted to a multi-level passing attack that exploited the entire field. Nine Patriots got at least one target, seven of them making at least one catch. Diggs carried the offense last week, Boutte did this week, with Pop Douglas reminding us all that he’s still on the team. Maye was four for five on deep shots (that counted, at least) and threw more than one pass into a window I’d have trouble fitting my Arby’s takeout order through. He looked off defenders, moved the pocket, stayed home unless necessary, and has played his best six quarters of football over the last two weeks by a wide margin.
14. I think my favorite play of the entire game came on New England’s second possession on 2nd and 5 with about four minutes to play in the first quarter, just before the 2nd Pop TD that got called back. Maye scanned the field, stayed in the pocket, waited until the absolute last possible second, then took off for a short gain rather than a sack. Kyle Williams drew a DPI call on the next play and the Patriots were in business.
15. The offense had scoring drives of four, six, seven, and 12 plays. You want to see them close out this game with touchdowns, particularly when it’s goal-to-go, and the bulk of the damage took place in the first half. But that’s where that whole “room for improvement” comes in.
16. Speaking of room for improvement, I benched Kayshon Boutte for Calvin Ridley for the first time this fantasy season. Boutte’s five catches for 93 yards and 2 TDs left 26 points on the bench. But at least Calvin Ridley got one catch for 18 yards before leaving the game with a hamstring injury.
17. To that end…I missed my fantasy draft this year. I was out of the country for a wedding when it took place, so I was at the mercy of the ESPN Draftbot and I didn’t do any pre-rankings. Unless I don’t get a combined 10 points from Jayden Daniels, the Bills D, and Matt Prater tonight, I’m going to move to 6-0. Add “fantasy guru” to weatherman, draft expert, and politician to the list of jobs where there’s a ton of money to be made just for being completely, utterly, unfathomably wrong all the time
18. Who had zero first half punts on their Bingo card for this one?
19. And when was the last time the Patriots double dipped at the end of the first half and the first drive of the second? Rather than do the 45 seconds of work it takes to answer that question, I’ll just leave it here for someone else to handle.
20. It’s very weird that what seems to be the most useful replay camera, the one stationed right overhead on the goal line, is hands down the NFL’s lousiest camera. On the May 2-point conversion review, the right ultra-high-definition pylon cam showed nothing. The left ultra-high-definition pylon cam showed nothing. But the grainy overhead footage which has only slightly more resolution than the videos I used to download off Limewire in 2003 was the one that decided it.
21. Who here remembers Limewire? Or Kazaa? What a wild time that was. You’d search for, since this is a family-friendly site, we’ll say a song you wanted to hear A few options would come up, and you’d click on the .wav or .mp4 or .avi file that seemed the most reliable. Then, anywhere between 45 minutes and 45 hours later, you’d have a fully downloaded file and either exactly what you were hoping to see hear or some random mess of nothing and a ton of viruses. Good times.
22. And speaking of good times, I didn’t think I could appreciate Marcus Jones any more than I already did, but he’s in the conversation for best player on the defense. Three pass breakups (including one that should have been a catch and fumble), his first career sack, and a constant threat as a return man.
23. I don’t want to get negative on this article. It’s been so long since the Patriots have had a lot to celebrate, and we should ride this feeling for as long as possible. But I wasn’t overly happy with how much difficulty the defense had getting the Spencer Rattler-led offense off the field yesterday. There might have been some deliberate decisions there to operate out of a deeper safety shell with an under man press in order to keep the Saints on the field and wait for Rattler to make a mistake. And to Rattler’s credit, he was very efficient yesterday. Plus, the defense only allowed one TD on the day, and the Patriots were able to trade touchdowns for field goals. Still, you want to see the pass rush get home a little more and get the ball back to the offense.
24. Last week I mentioned that I don’t remember a single commercial I’ve seen while watching any sporting event in 2025. I remember seeing a holiday decoration commercial from Home Depot yesterday. It’s not eve
25. It’s a cold, windy, rainy few days here in the northeast as the residual weather from whatever hurricane is currently swirling around the Atlantic batters our shores. Yesterday saw a cloudy morning bleed into a grey, drizzly afternoon, which to me represents the absolute perfect formula for Sunday football watching. A Pats game on the TV, the first fire of the season, a well-stocked fridge full of malted, hoppy goodness, and a slight crack in the window to let the fall breeze and its hints of dry leaves and fireplace smoke into the house. That’s a little piece of heaven for me.
This week was a sort of revenge game for Boutte, and he went off. I wish there was someone on the team who had ties to Tennessee, that would make for an interesting storyline.
See More:
* [New England Patriots Analysis](/new-england-patriots-opinion-analysis)
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