You mean the guy from West Sh*tkicker University wasn’t the answer?

There is no getting it back from the Patriots or their fans. They’d have to go through a couple of decades of haplessness, and that’s only because most of the Pats fans you know will be dead by then, and only then could you get some peace. Such has been their track record. The battle is lost, so you have to take your moments where you can. They’ll never amount to what they have, but they’re at least more recent.

Remember last season, when they couldn’t wait to tell us that everything would be fine under Mac Jones? Never mind he couldn’t throw a ball over five yards that could break a sheet of paper. The Patriots knew better, they would keep on winning with a QB that had Laffy Taffy for an arm because they were the Patriots and that’s how the world worked. They’re smarter than everyone else, don’t you remember?

Wasn’t true of course, but because Patriots fans knew better, they switched allegiances to a guy this year who didn’t even dress to start the season and only got on the field because Brian Hoyer turned into baby food or something. Maybe Hoyer was always baby food, who could tell? But yes, the Gillette Stadium faithful couldn’t wait for Bailey Zappe or Frank Zappa or whoever to take the field instead of the guy they all told us was the answer last year simply because he was a Patriot. They knew better, see.

Of course, after one drive where the Bears’ defense thought they were playing hide and seek, Zappe couldn’t zomby woof his way to any more points. He threw two INTs and also forgot how to make a handoff. They didn’t produce a point against a Bears defense that has no established playmakers aside from Robert Quinn, who is doing his best not to get hurt before he gets traded. This Zappe is really going places, I tell ya. Oh, Carson Wentz had the same rating as Zappe against the Bears. That’s the class we’re talking about.

Joe Buck couldn’t wait to tell us what a major upset this Bears win was, clearly working off the same old software that everyone else has. The Patriots can’t be majorly upset, they can’t even be just upset, because they’re not good. This is the NFL, there are three good teams, and the rest are a morass where nothing is going to make sense and anything is possible and there are no statements about anything. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.

Still, watching Pats fans glom onto Zappe after like 12 minutes of play in his career, trying to be the first to say that they were the first to know that they had Brady 2.0 and then smash cut to that Patriots fan with the foam finger was about as delicious as it gets. It was an entire fan arc in just an hour or two. Those dipshits with the No. 4 jerseys and signs are going to have those for a while. They spent either money or time on that. This is the good stuff.

I recognize that desperation, I’ve seen it here with the Bears. Convincing yourself that this guy is going to be the one because it has to be. Either the law of averages says so, or the confidence that the Patriots, the PATRIOTS, couldn’t possibly have a quarterback problem.

But look deep into their eyes or hear the crack in their screams, and you may pick up what they’re really saying, what they really fear. And that they simply might have caught lightning in a bottle with Tom Brady all those years ago in the draft, and it’s never going to happen again. Ten years from now, it could just be that the Pats are just the Dolphins or Jets again, what they were before all this started when Drew Bledsoe’s ribcage suddenly developed hinges. Maybe. Maybe not, but that’s the fear. You can sense it.

But hey, Zappe called Buck and Aikman “sir,” so he must be good, right?