Happy holidays to everyone!

I’m sure there are more than a few of you out there who work for some real-life Scrooges and are currently reading this week’s fan notes in the office, where you’ll be until 3pm on Christmas Eve before you’re finally allowed Out there to be happy and cheerful. I’ve been there and it sucks.

On the bright side, I can’t imagine there are any New England Patriots fans who are too distraught over yesterday’s loss. It was supposed to be a blowout, but instead it was a close game that the Pats could have won if they hadn’t been the same version of themselves week after week. We’ve got a real scorpion and the frog scenario here, so we might as well embrace it.

1. If you don’t know “The Scorpion and the Frog,” it’s an old fable in which a scorpion has to cross a river but can’t swim. So it asks the frog to carry it across. The frog is afraid that the scorpion will sting him if he agrees, but the scorpion promises not to. Because stinging the frog means that if the frog dies in the middle of the river, he too will be killed. So the frog agrees to carry the scorpion. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog, dooming both of them. The dying frog asks the scorpion why he stung despite knowing the consequences, to which the scorpion replies, “I’m sorry, but it’s my nature.”
2. In the case of the 2024 Patriots, they are both scorpion and frog, perhaps some kind of Scorpifrog or Frorpian or Froggyscorp. They start crossing the river and everything goes well for a while. But then they prick themselves right at the deepest part of the water and fall. We can sit here and get angry and question everything and wonder what the hell is going on, but when it comes to this team, that’s just their nature.
3. Be warned, today’s fan notes will be crowded and even more nonsensical than usual. It’s officially Christmas Crunch time at Casa de Shane and I still have a ton of shopping, packing, cleaning, and all the other things I’ve been putting off all season to do, so I’m pretty confused.
4. I also got into the eggnog a little early yesterday and may or may not have seen two Rhamondre Stevensons on screen all afternoon. That means twice as much effort!!
5. Ultimately, a 24-21 loss to the Bills in Bufallo is a result you can be pretty happy with. Considering how they held their own early, scored a nice opening touchdown and held the Bills under 30 points for the first time since October, you kind of have to appreciate what we saw overall.
6. But what you can NEVER do, especially against the best team in the AFC, is start the second half with three possessions that end in a fumble, a red zone interception and a terrible reverse pass-lateral fumble thingy drop for a touchdown. The fact that this game wasn’t 40-14 after the third quarter might be the best takeaway from this game.
7. There was nothing wrong with this play as the Patriots were all wrapped in beautiful Christmas paper and lovingly placed under the ugly tree. Demontrey Jacobs completely misses his block and falls to the ground. Maye doesn’t see Rousseau charging toward Mondre and doesn’t adjust. Mondre sees the ball bounce straight off his hands. And then four Bills fall for the ball in the end zone before a single Patriot knows what just happened.
8. I’ve somehow learned to look at the Patriots games this year as a series of individual moments rather than an overall product. In my opinion, the Patriots played three complete games all season and won all of them. There were a few contests where one unit played well but the others didn’t and they lost those. There were a few games, like Jacksonville, where no one was in attendance at all. And then there were games like this, full of brilliance coupled with a level of incompetence that I once thought was reserved only for burglars raiding houses while rich guys raid their entire family, including their dead freeloader brother, on vacation take with you to Paris.
9. Because in this case, the Patriots were simultaneously more prepared for a game than ever before and at the same time as undisciplined and overwhelmed as they could be. What’s clear about this team is that they simply don’t know how to win games. I don’t mean this in a “execute the game plan and everything will be fine” sense, although that’s worth discussing too. This team simply doesn’t have what it takes to dig in, make the plays needed, score at the crucial moment or get a stop and clinch victory with the bells ringing. For every beautiful deep pass or perfectly executed run, there is a bad play call, a mental error, a turnover or some other kind of nonsense.
10. And it’s difficult because overall I really liked the offensive concept that we saw from AVP. Movements before snapping. Rub routes. Power runs that prepare game actions. Let Maye off the leash a bit. But they coupled it with… well, all the other stuff.
11. And the defense held one of the NFL’s best offenses to 17 points. The tackling was effective and they forced a pick (which, of course, they tried to start at the 1-yard line instead of the 20-yard line). This loss is not on the D, which I wouldn’t say today.
12. I want to commend the coaching staff for the overall game…but I just can’t do it. They showed some stones by calling a fake punt at their own 22-yard line, but then punted from midfield on 4th-and-1. They stumbled from their own 46 on 4th-and-5 and lost by 10 with 8:46 left. I don’t know if New England’s final TD sequence was due to the coaches or rather because Maye was still a rookie was, but it was first-and-goal from the Bills’ eight-yard line with 2:32 left and all three timeouts. It took New England nine plays and 1:19 to get over the goal line. I didn’t even know that was possible.
13. In the first of hopefully many showdowns between Josh Allen and Drake Maye, I’d say the kid more than held his own. His stats are consistently better than Allen’s, and overall Maye is having a better rookie season than Allen. In no version of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, or Christmas Future am I suggesting that Maye is the next Allen. But I’m not saying it either.
14. Ultimately, this game was lost by the running backs. James Cook stormed to 100 and a score with a long 46-yarder to put the Bills back in the lead. Rhamondre Stevenson ran for 60 yards with two fumbles, one of which was returned for a touchdown. I know that Drake Maye is officially credited with this disastrous play – which, to be fair, he never should have thrown when the defense collapsed like that – but that was a soft hit that Mondre should have caught. New England couldn’t move the ball consistently on the ground, but the Bills could.
15. The greatest gift I took away from this game was that Josh Allen, one of the smartest, toughest and most accurate quarterbacks in the league, decided that wherever Christian Gonzalez was, he would focus on the other side of the field. Gonzo was targeted once the entire game and allowed no catches.
16. Another big gift? New England jumped up the draft order this week and is now ranked second overall.
17. Just be prepared for an inevitable two-win streak to close out the season if they beat the Chargers, because they always beat the Chargers, and then the Bills give everyone a break for the playoffs in Week 18. Jerod Mayo’s job is Next year for sure, no matter how The season is turbulent, but two wins to end the year could cool his hot seat a few degrees.
18. And finally, whatever you’re celebrating this time of year, I hope it’s a great time. Enjoy good company, even if it’s just your own. Eat something good. Laugh and relax and switch off. Drink some Christmas spirit. Just two games left in the season and then there will be no Patriots football until August 2025. Football is like pizza – even if it’s bad, it’s still better than no pizza. So appreciate the moment.