The week between Christmas and New Year’s is this strange whirlwind where you never know what day it is or what time it is. You’ve been eating and drinking blindly for five days and walking around in bloated sweatpants. You know that all the work you’ve been putting off until January is slowly closing in on you, and that you’re staring at the two worst months of the year, and so you’re doing everything you can to take advantage of this last week of gluttony what it’s worth. It makes it difficult to do much productive stuff.

And maybe that’s what happened to the entire New England Patriots roster yesterday, because no one showed up to that game at any level and therefore the Chargers were 40 points behind and it probably would have been a lot more. Just a sad, embarrassing loss that looked the way I feel now.

1. The purpose of these fan notes has always been to break down the game with a combination of analysis, opinion, and a bit of humor. They are not always winners, but I do my best. But even though this game literally just ended, I can’t for the life of me remember anything that took place other than two games. So I think I’ll start there.

2. Last week, the Patriots ran a reverse lateral play that never should have been called. The Bills noticed it immediately, Mondre couldn’t hold the ball and in the end it was a defensive result for Buffalo. Well, the Patriots outdid themselves yesterday with a sort of jet sweep/toss hybrid in which the receiver moves behind the quarterback and executes the throw with aplomb to gain a lead. Well, that didn’t happen. Maye didn’t throw it to anyone, the entire Patriots offense was clueless, and the Chargers fell for it and scored another turnover. On the one hand, we would like to give credit to the coaching staff for trying out new moves and pulling out all the stops. But then again, if they’ve proven week after week that putting in the effort to make even the simplest plays works, perhaps it’s their job to save the trickery for next year.

3. The only other play I can remember is Drake Maye taking advantage of a free play to throw a long ball into the end zone that Pop Douglas intercepted with a nice adjustment and grab. It was the type of game you’d expect from a seasoned veteran, not a 22-year-old who has spent most of this season fighting for his life.

4. Oh, I remember Ladd McConkey rushed for 94 yards and two scores. And Gonzo gets hurt. And Maye gets hurt. So there is that.

5. And since these are legitimately the only pieces that somehow stick in my memory, and I have neither the desire nor the courage to go back and watch even a second of this debacle again, I might as well watch a few of the old standbys use This got me through almost all of the fan notes I wrote this season.

6. Holding penalties and mistakes on the offensive line negate positive plays.

7. Drake Maye only needed a few seconds of protection, got none of it and collected sacks.

8. A defense that can’t cover anyone, can’t tackle, can’t stop the run and can’t get off the field.

9. Under other circumstances, such a play would result in a coach being fired. An absolute joke in a game where the entire team looked completely unprepared and had put in a pretty positive performance the week before with a real chance of gaining some momentum in the off season. Instead of continuing to show promise, the Patriots played what was undoubtedly their worst game of the season and were completely embarrassed at home. Jerod Mayo’s job is safe, but only because he is a first-year coach. Any other circumstance, I expect headlines today about how New England will make a change.

10. That means the Patriots are about to find themselves in the absolute worst position any team, or any fan of a team, could ever find themselves in. The absolute last place you would ever want to be. The “stuck between Aunt Millie and Uncle Jake at Christmas dinner” of football hell. They’re a team with a full front office in the hot seat and a ton of room at the top.

11. Because what we have now is a set of diametrically opposed forces. There’s a group of men whose livelihoods are at stake next year, and unless they do something drastic, they’ll all be gone. So they’re going to spend a lot of money on people that they think will help the team. They’ll probably overspend to make sure players come here and not somewhere else. As an added incentive for players recruited by better teams, there will be more guaranteed money up front. And to be fair, maybe everything will work out, the contracts will be worth it and the team will take a significant positive step forward from all the upcoming deals and signings. But if it doesn’t work out, all the people who were supposed to lose their jobs anyway will be gone, and they won’t have to worry about the crappy contracts they just negotiated, and the Patriots will go from having a lot of cap space to a lot of cap space Damn, there’s almost nothing to show for it.

12. Not to make things all dark and gloomy here. There is still reason for optimism next year, and I mean it. We all know Maye is the one, and there are several players who will bolster the offense via free agency. I can’t imagine the Patriots taking the Bills’ backups next week, so a top-3 draft pick is still likely. They can’t be a worse team next year than they were this year (right? right? anyone)? But we all just have to prepare ourselves for treaties and signings that we really haven’t seen here in this century.

13. But I don’t feel like talking about this game anymore. To be honest, I’m surprised anyone is even reading this article. This is the kind of game you forget ever happened as quickly as possible, so let’s all do it.

14. Finally, a few final thoughts about this time of year.

15. I wish Christmas fell on a Wednesday every year. Basically you get two weeks off. I’m sure there are people who need to be back in the office for two days on the 2nd before the weekend rolls around again, but we all know that absolutely nothing of substance gets done until the 6th. So for the poor suckers who have to pretend to work later this week, feel free to use these two days to “settle in.” To “get back into the swing of things.” For “calibration for the year”. “Unearth.” There are a lot of phrases you can use to rationalize slacking off at work. So be sure to dust off your favorite.

16. Also, it was too busy on Christmas Day to watch any of the games, but it seems like there were some good games. I’m sure the NFL will continue like this for as long as possible – although it will certainly be interesting when Christmas falls on a Tuesday and there’s a team that inevitably played a game less than 48 hours ago that finds itself again needs to be fixed in order to make the league more money.

17. What I definitely had time for was my annual observation It’s a wonderful life last Christmas Eve on NBC. I don’t know what it is about this film, but for me it’s a real cinematic pepper spray every year. It’s never a matter of if I’ll lose it, but when.

18. “Zuzu’s petals…there they are!!! What do you know about it? MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Goodnight Irene.

19. And I don’t care how monotonous I sound or how sick one of my regular readers is to hear it: George Bailey, stopping to kiss the broken post on his way up to hug his children, is the greatest moment in the history of American cinema. I will die on this hill forever.

One more game and then, fortunately, everything will be over. I feel battered and hurt by this season, so I can’t even imagine how Drake Maye feels.