The last time the Patriots missed the playoffs, I was 11 years old. Facebook was only four years into it’s lifespan, the Red Sox were only four years removed from reversing the curse along with winning their second world series in three years, the Celtics added banner #17, the Revolution were challenging for MLS Cups, and the Bruins were… not exactly fantastic. It just goes to show how spoiled us as New England sports fans have been over the last twenty years.

I don’t quite know what we were expecting from Cam Newton and the Patriots this season, but it sure seems like a lot of us were expecting something spectacular, when in reality, this is pretty par for the course. Let’s just recap before we get into the fun details: the Pats had more opt-outs than any other team, Cam Newton had no next to no offseason and zero preseason training with New England, their best wide receiver coming into this season was a banged-up 34-year-old Julian Edelman. Honestly, the fact that the Patriots still have a chance to go at least .500 this season is impressive.

All of this isn’t a foolproof excuse for Cam Newton either. Newton was… inconsistent, to say the least. I wouldn’t say Cam was a bad quarterback, but his consistency and decision making at times definitely fell short, literally and figuratively. Some of that blame of course has to be put on Josh McDaniels and Bill Belichick, as they too had an extremely limited amount of time to prepare for a season with a QB with polar opposite skill sets than what they’d been working with for 20 years. McDaniels and Belichick had to try and build their ever-complex offensive schemes around a guy who, at the same time, is learning a completely new system on the fly. So the only real concern for me, was the lack of consistency in Newton’s game. It’s extremely hard to find what works and what doesn’t if things that would normally work aren’t working simply because Cam is having a bad game that day.

So the big question is, what does 2021 and the rest of the future hold for the Patriots? That I could not tell you. Cam says he has unfinished business, but there may be no more business to handle from the ownership’s point of view. They signed Cam for the league minimum, so in reality, no real harm done there. The Patriots absolutely need to find some answer at QB if we find out that they aren’t willing to work with and defend Cam Newton anymore, and they need tight ends more than anything else.

We’re on to 2021. That was hard to watch.

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