This game was a perfect "trap game" scenario. Coming off a heavily hyped win to cap off a 6 game winning streak, playing a perennial bottom feeder the week before a bye, everybody just wanted to get it over with. It's disappointing, but this isn't the first garbage loss a Belichick-Brady team has taken.
I do think the team has been on a steady downswing since Super Bowl LI, especially on defense. The 2017 team was markedly worse on defense than the 2016 team, and the 2018 team is worse still. The front 7 simply lacks speed and talent, which isn't going to get fixed this season, but worse than that is that they often just seem to be dumb. It's one thing for a star skill player to just beat you athletically, but it's another to keep getting clowned on because you keep biting on the same basic play fakes over and over and are massively out of position over and over again.
If I have to watch the front 7 look utterly baffled by the other team throwing a swing pass to a dude with nobody within a 10 yard radius I'm going to throw up. Which means I'm going to throw up I guess.
I'm less worried about the offense. I accept it as a given that Brady is 100 and could croak at any time , but the offense's problems are easy to understand - it's been a revolving door of guys coming in and out all year with hardly any continuity except for Brady himself. Even when they're piling up points in games it looks like they're having to work wayyy to hard for it. It's good that these haven't been season-ending injuries for the most part, but the fact that the gameday roster has been in continuous flux all year is just innately hard to deal with.
