At the end of the day, they never beat anybody.
Feasted on the Jets for the upteenth consecutive season.
Their “extra” interconference game was against the Cardinals with no Murray.
Tua gets hurt again so you avoid him in the home finale.
As Bill Parcells famously said “You are what your record says you are.”
That's exactly it. Of their 8 wins, only one, came against a quality opponent (Miami) and that was with their third string QB in the game. Their other best win in the end turned out to be Pittsburgh, but that was week 2 when they looked like garbage and had Mitch Trubisky at QB.
Otherwise they beat the Lions (trash), Colts (supertrash), Browns before Watson came back (mediocre trash), Jets twice (Jets), and Cardinals after their starter snapped his ACL on the second paly from scrimmage (also trash).
Their 9 losses, they were in the game at the end for at least 5 of them. But they say good teams find ways to win and bad teams find ways to lose. They were tight with Baltimore before a few red zone turnovers, took the Packers to the tail end of OT, were a Hunter Henry catch away from beating Minnesota, had a total meltdown in Vegas, and also had Cincy on the ropes until another damn redzone fumble. The only four times they got walked were Buffalo twice, the first Miami game in week 1, and f***ing 3-14 Chicago.
It really is the darkest timeline when you miss the playoffs but still pick 18th overall or whatever. But they're where they deserve to be. They mostly beat the teams they were supposed to beat and lost to the teams they were supposed to lose to. Just watching it play out was torture. Vegas and Chicago are primarily the reason they missed the playoffs. No excuse to lose those games to those teams - one from a complete no-show effort and one from historically bad decision. Either goes the other way they're in. We all know if they did make it in they would've just got rolled over in the WC game, but I think we'd all rather they made it in than being the last team out, if only for some semblance of pride.
Also infuriating is that today might've been the best the offense played all year. They actually opened up and used play-action. Mac had some of his best throws (but was nowhere near perfect) and looked more like 202`1 Mac than 2022 Mac - still not sold on him being
the guy though. But there doesn't seem to be any alternative out there. Just replacing Patricia with Bill O'Brien or really any high school QB coach would probably make a significant difference in his production next year. But I still find it concerning that we're two years in and he doesn't have a signature moment, a signature win. He came close a few times, but never finished. Of course, not all his fault, there have been 3 or 4 games where we had the ball late going for the winning score and fumbled. Some drops, bad calls, taking the lead and the defense letting them down. But Brady always finished. The only 4th quarter comeback victory of the last two years was actually on the back of a JC Jackson pick-six of Herbert in LA last year and not a drive downfield by the offense. It's fair to say he hasn't had a lot of help from the offensive line, his RBs, his WRs, the refs, etc. But just like good teams finding ways, so should good QBs, right? And in the two years, the only times I'd say we beat a better team than us with a strong effort were Tennessee last year and the first Buffalo game in that crazy windstorm when no one could throw. That's a concerning trend. They used to be able to find a way to win these games, and between coaching and players, they're not getting it done anymore.
