Conspiracy theory:

With the depressing football being played for the past couple of weeks and the massive stock on Maye and MHJ, pretty much everyone has been talking about the need to tank instead of winning, and at the same time roasting Bill and the front office for supposedly not doing it. But since last week I’ve been more and more convinced that they actually are trying to lose. Obviously, coaching staff and especially players will never intentionally play poorly, but I think Bill and Kraft have something worked out. Here’s the evidence so far:

• Jack Jones waived with our CB room already stretched tight
• vs. Indy on Sunday, you had Trent Brown, JC Jackson, Ja’Whaun Bentley, and Parker all listed as inactive for ghost reasons. Jackson was just “personal”, Brown was “personal”, and the other two were for injuries that hadn’t been seen in their nine other starts or reported on. This is the smoking gun for me. Hell, Demario Douglas was essentially WR1 in that game.
• The Pats’ o-line coach, Adrian Klemm, has also been off on a “personal” hiatus since week 9.

You can’t really definitively prove it either way, but what this team is clearly showing is not really WANTING to win, even if they don’t want to lose. And remember, it’s only really been two or so weeks since we’ve completely lost hope in this season.

And probably the most important part is that of motives. Bill isn’t stupid, and neither is Kraft. They know this is a lost season, and they know Mac is a lost QB. You can play revisionist and act like they were anywhere near the same in 2022 or 2020 where they were games away from the playoffs, but this is not even close to salvaging. And before someone says that Bill is chasing the Shula record, I’d say that he’s still 30+ wins away from that - so he’d need long-term success to get anywhere near there before hes 80.