In years past, December often meant seeing your favorite childhood things coming out to mark the calendar with excitement and joy. For residents of the greater New England region, it meant being excited for snow, for Christmas, for time off, for passing out drunk in snowbanks, and for touchdowns from Tom Brady to Rob Gronkowski or Randy Moss.

As we grow older, the meaning of the holiday season slowly transforms as well. In the same way that getting socks or losing a Super Bowl used to infuriate my younger self, now it makes me ten-bell furious and makes me swear eternal revenge on the perpetrator of such egregious clownery. I swear upon every other rival fanbase, moving forward, that you will know the suffering that has been inflicted upon my accursed franchise these past five years.

Revenge, of course, is a game of patience. It takes time to percolate and age until it’s at its sweetest. Being patient does not come naturally to me, nor to many other Patriots fans. This is a learned art; one that requires intense practise and intestinal fortitude to truly conquer. It has its peaks and valleys, but will run its course in precisely the amount of time it needs to in order to ensure the payoff is greatest.

That brings me to what we’ve seen this year from this team.

Drake Maye? Call him Drake Will. He WILL become one of the league’s best quarterbacks soon, if this season has been any indication of what’s to come. Behind a patchwork O-line and with essentially zero NFL-caliber receivers, Maye’s thrown for over 200 yards in six of his seven games started this year. He’s had basically zero help out there, and has taken the Pats’ offence from comically inept to “reasonably average” for a rebuilding team. I will admit that I was one of the fans preaching patience at the start of the season; we’ve seen enough Ryan Leafs and JaMarcus Russells that it tends to counterbalance the Mannings and Mahomes situations that also arise. But with Jayden Daniels playing so well in Washington (and with Caleb Williams showing flashes of brilliance despite being coached by three monkeys inside the same hooded sweatshirt), perhaps sometimes you have to put them into some pressure-filled situations to see them grow. That late TD against the Titans to send the game to OT was the highlight of the season for me thus far. It’s clear to just about everyone with minimum semi-functional vision that there’s no way in hell Jacoby Brissett could’ve have managed that, let alone even mounting a drive like that in the first place.

As for everything else?

Well, CB Christian Gonzalez is cool as hell. He’s already great and will continue to get better as his career advances. That’s the kind of guy you can build a defence around. On that note: the defense aside from him has been bad, which is noteworthy because it’s much the same as last year, minus Matthew Judon (traded) and Jabrill Peppers (arrested and charged for being a stupid asshole). That’s also worrisome because of Jerod Mayo’s supposed expertise as a defensive player and coach.

The Pats are dogshit awful in the red zone. I think a lot of that has to do with playcalling, but it also matters when you have receivers that can’t get separation at all. Tyquan Thornton was ass, and rightfully got cut. Ja’Lynn Polk is a rookie, but has also been ass and somehow hasn’t been cut yet. The clock is ticking on that front. Hunter Henry is leading this team in receptions and receiving yards – I like tight ends with hands, but damn if that isn’t an indictment on the rest of the WR room.

From a coaching perspective, I think that Jerod Mayo has some notable work to do in order to continue growing in the job as the top dog on the team. Again, it’s normal to see some rookie head coaches hit some bumps along the way, but he also hasn’t had the amount of coordinator or positional coach experience going into the job that many first-timers have in this game. I think he’ll continue to improve – in part because he simply must. If this team is going to take a step forward next year, better decision-making is going to be a significant part of that process.

Most of all, there’s just been a series of bad luck events that have similarly cost this team wins. Joey Slye missed some key kicks against the Colts and Dolphins; another one was blocked against Seattle. The team couldn’t recover two OT fumbles against Tennessee… there’s a number of instances right there that could’ve dramatically shifted this away from a 3-10 record. But it’s not about “what if”, it’s about what happened.

At this point, with a good young QB and cap space to burn for 2025, the top priority for the Pats is to find a true #1 receiver for Maye, be that through the draft or through free agency. That said, there’s also a major need for a stud O-line or two in there as well; as much as protecting Maye matters a lot, the only way this team is going to really turn a corner next year is by finding a guy or two who can consistently be open all the time. Drake Maye has done a fair bit with a whole lot of nothing this year; this can’t be the same formula for roster building that caused Tom Brady to get fed up and leave when nobody reliable was left to catch the ball.

The time to spend is now. It’s possible to rebound quickly. Houston picked CJ Stroud at 2nd overall and then hosted a playoff game in the same year. But you have to have a long-term plan in place. I thought that New England had that when Brady left five years ago; they clearly did not. I hope they’ve learned their lessons this time, but at the same time, I’m not holding my breath. This is a cruel, relentless, unforgiving game; all I can hope for, if my own team won’t be back to a Super Bowl any time soon, is that every other fanbase is completely wiped off the face of the earth in cleansing hellfire. Surely that’s not too much to ask?