Coping With Loss: Green Bay Packers Edition

In what was a significantly more interesting game than anyone expected, the New England Patriots lost Sunday’s game to the Green Bay Packers to drop to 1-3 on the year.

I highly doubt that there are many people out there who are overly despondent today over this latest loss... but just in case there are a few people out there who didn’t move on almost immediately on the heels of this one, here are five positives we can all take away from Week 4.

Expected loss. Did anybody expect a different result here, regardless of who was under center? It’s a little frustrating to think about how New England could have very well won this game had Mac Jones been able to start, based on how the game shook out, but at the end of the day an expected loss is an expected loss. Nobody had the Patriots winning this game even when we thought Jones would be under center, and a loss is a loss, so I can’t imagine anyone is overly mopey today over this one.

Non-conference loss. Should the Patriots find themselves in the thick of the playoff hunt down the stretch, this game isn’t going to count for all that much at the end of the day. NFC losses are among the very last to be counted when determining the AFC playoff picture, so we can all basically just turn the page on this one immediately and not think twice about it.

Patriots can hang. New England took this game down to the wire, in spite of the quarterback situation. That leads me to believe that this Patriots team can go toe-to-toe with pretty much any team in the league. The Patriot have been in every game they’ve lost this season, and it has more or less come down to a handful of plays and a few penalties

Does anyone really care? New England trotted a fourth-round rookie QB out there at Lambeau Field against one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, and in spite of that the Packers needed a last-minute scoring drive aided by a bad punt and a questionable flag to win the game. That’s way better than anything I could have dialed up coming into this game even if Mac Jones had been starting in this one. I have yet to talk to a single person who is even remotely upset about this one.

No seriously... does anyone really care? I can’t imagine that Packers fans are feeling overly great about this win. At the end of the day, a W is a W, and how you get there doesn’t matter in the slightest... but that the Patriots lost this game in overtime on the road... I’m going to take that as a win at the end of the day. We all had the Pats going 1-3, 2-2 at best, through September, and here we are. Nothing in the NFL makes any sense in 2022, so may as well enjoy it and see what happens.