Coping With Loss: Carolina Panthers Edition

We’re only a month into the season, and I’ve already wrote as many Coping With Loss articles as I wrote all last year. Dammit.

Whenever the Patriots lose, the sky starts to fall. That’s just the price you pay when you win a lot. And whenever the Patriots lose because they boast the worst defense in the NFL, it’s time to go into full-on panic mode. Up is down. Black is white. Justin Beiber is talented. Chaos in the streets!

But not to worry. All is not lost. No reason to jump ship just yet (or ever, for that matter. You pick your team and you stick with it for life, dammit). Here are five positives we can all take away from this most recent defeat.

Communication, not talent. On the defensive side of the ball, what has been plaguing this team more than anything else is a complete lack of communication and players not being even remotely on the same page. The plus about that is that once the communication clicks, everything else falls into place. The problem, though, is at the moment the defense looks like the “It’s a Small World After All” exhibit where every single guy on the team speaks a completely different language. Matt Patricia has his work cut out for him. But he’s up to it. This is a correctable issue.

Non-conference loss. It’s always better to lose to an NFC team over an AFC team, as ultimately this game isn’t going to factor into many tiebreaker scenarios. Ultimately, this one isn’t going to matter all that much, especially since it’s coming so early in the season.

Offense looks great. Overshadowed by how terrible the defense looks is how good the offense looks. Versatile. Explosive. Complex. Capable of beating you multiple ways. All the defense really needs to do is only give up 20 points a game as opposed to 30, and the Patriots will be just fine. That isn’t all that big an ask.

The AFC East is terrible. Make no mistake; from top to bottom, the AFC East is a very, very bad division. The Dolphins have no offense, the Patriots have no defense, the Bills are the Bills, and the Jets are the Jets. If history tells us anything, it’s that the Patriots will round into shape when the games start to really matter and the rest of the division will crash and burn. So the Patriots are still playoff bound; it’s just a matter of whether or not they can capture one of those top two seeds.

SUPER BOWL CHAMPS! Am I still riding this one? You bet I am. getting upset over a Week 4 loss when you’re still coming off your 5th World Championship is pretty hard to do. I have a feeling that it’s going to be pretty hard for me to ever get too upset over a loss this year - and possibly for the rest of the Brady era - given how firmly Tommy B cemented himself as the GOAT with this last win. So yeah, not crying too hard over this one.