New England Patriots: silver linings after the Pittsburgh Steelers loss

The New England Patriots are struggling more than we and they are accustomed to, but that doesn’t mean the season is lost just yet.

It’s never been more important for Patriots fans to keep their team’s season in perspective.

Yes, the Pats lost to the Steelers for just the third time in the past 12 meetings between these historic franchises.

Yes, the Pats lost back-to-back games for the second time this season, an anomaly that’s only happened one other time in the past 15 years.

And yes, the Pats just plain stunk on Sunday. The offense was paltry and pathetic, the defense got gouged by a rookie running back, and the team as a whole was uncharacteristically sloppy in getting whistled for 14 accepted penalties, the second-most in the Bill Belichick era.

There’s a pervasive sense of dread and doom among New England faithful right now, as if the loss against the Steelers represented the final nail in the coffin for this 2018 team.

Should it though?

The team is 9-5, two games up on second-place Miami in the division with two games left to play. A win against the Bills in Week 16 or the Jets in Week 17 will seal up New England’s 10th straight division title. Both games are at home in the cozy wintry confines of Gillette Stadium, a place the Pats have yet to lose in this season.

The Patriots should win both games. Both opposing teams sport rookie quarterbacks, both are eliminated from postseason contention, and both already lost to New England once at home.

If New England goes 2-0 over these last two weeks of the season, it won’t matter that they lost to the Steelers.

Pittsburgh has a difficult road challenge in Week 16 against the NFC-leading New Orleans Saints before a winnable home game against the Bengals in Week 17. Even if they win both, they can’t leapfrop the Patriots in the AFC pecking order, provided New England also goes 2-0.

In this scenario, the Patriots would finish the year as the No. 3 seed and would host the No. 6 seed on Wild Card Weekend. While it’s obviously not ideal to be playing that early in the playoffs, New England’s most likely opponent would be either the Ravens, the Steelers, the Colts, or the Titans.

They lost to both the Steelers and the Titans already, but both games were on the road. A January matchup in Foxborough would decidedly favor the home team this time around.

As for the other two teams, the Pats already beat the Colts once this season and have historically owned that franchise in the Andrew Luck era. Luck and the Colts as a whole have found their groove of late, but they’d be hard-pressed to take down a seasoned Pats team hungry to prove they’re still the dominant power in the conference.

The Ravens have proved an occasional thorn in the side for New England in years past, but more often than not it’s been the other way around. Plus Baltimore is riding a rookie quarterback in Lamar Jackson, a talented player but also a young one still finding his footing in the NFL. Belichick would relish a matchup against Jackson and the Ravens with all the chips on the table, and rightfully so.

There’s also still a great chance New England recaptures the No. 2 seed and a first-round playoff bye before the regular season ends. They’d need to win out and hope the Houston Texans slip up against either the Eagles on the road in Week 16 or the Jaguars at home in Week 17.

The Jags are just going through the motions until the offseason. But the Eagles, fresh off their primetime upset over the Rams on Sunday Night Football, have everything in the world to play for, including their playoff lives. Philadelphia is currently favored to beat the Texans, and if they do so, that would knock Houston back into the No. 3 seed.

A first-round bye is crucial because it shrinks the list of opponents standing in the way of another Super Bowl appearance from three to two. It also would guarantee at least one playoff game at Gillette Stadium, where Belichick’s Patriots are 19-3 in the postseason.

New England’s most likely opponent in the Divisional Round as the No. 2 seed would either be one of the teams listed above or the Texans, a team they beat in Week 1 at home. Texans head coach Bill O’Brien is 0-5 against his mentor, and Belichick’s Patriots would probably enter as at least a touchdown favorite against Houston.

None of this is to say the path back to the Super Bowl will come easy for the Patriots.

Even in a dream scenario where they finish as the No. 2 seed and likely No. 1 Kansas City gets upset by someone like the Chargers in the Divisional Round, the Patriots would still have to contend with a wild card team that could be 13-3 at season’s end.

Beating them or any one of the AFC contenders in the conference championship would book the team passage to their third straight Super Bowl appearance, this time in Atlanta, Georgia.

And that, of course, would be the ultimate situation to prove once and for all that these Patriots can play a complete game – and win – on the road.