VITO'S VIEWS

The NFL kicks off its season Thursday night with the defending-champion Rams hosting the Bills, who are one of the favorites to win it all this year.

The Bills are trying to recover from their meltdown in the playoffs last year when they had a 36-33 lead over the Chiefs with 13 seconds left. It took the Chiefs two plays to get into field-goal position to tie the game and win in overtime. 

The loss like that can have lingering effects, and the Bills will be trying to put it behind them with a win in the opener against a Rams team attempting to become the first club to repeat since the 2003-04 Patriots.

A look at some of the other highlights of the first week:

–Unless they meet in a Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes and Kyler Murray will meet only once every four years if they stay in opposite conferences. This will be their first one and both are coming off playoff losses last year. 

–Russell Wilson will be taking on his former team when the Broncos take on the Seahawks in their opener on Monday night.. The Broncos hope Wilson will make them a contender in a division loaded with quarterbacks. The Seahawks are rebuilding without him.

–Baker Mayfield was dumped by the Browns after they got Deshaun Watson and he will be playing for Carolina against the Browns. But since Watson is suspended, he will go against Jacoby Brissett.

–The 49ers pushed all their chips on the table for Trey Lance, and he makes his debut as the starter against the Bears. But Jimmy Garoppolo is still on the team as a backup, which puts more pressure on Lance to get off to a good start.

–Tom Brady, who took a puzzling 11-day vacation from the Bucs camp (latest rumors are he was placating his wife, who was unhappy he didn’t retire), starts against the Cowboys at age 45 in the Sunday night primetime game.

First games can be misleading … or a sign of things to come.

For example, the Jaguars won their opener against Houston in 2017 and went to the playoffs. By contrast, they beat the Colts in their opener in 2020 and then lost their next 15 games.

This year with a new coach in Doug Pederson, they open at Washington and a victory would set a positive tone since their next three games at home against Indianapolis and road trips against the Chargers and Eagles will be challenging.

The Jaguars are upbeat now that they put the Urban Meyer fiasco behind theM. They hope that Trevor Lawrence will take a big step in his second year, and that this year’s top pick (Travon Walker) will team with Josh Allen to spearhead the defense.

But there are a lot of skeptics that the team is still too young to make big strides after winning only four games the last two years. Sports Illustrated I predicted they will go 5-12, and the over-under is 6.5 wins. The Athletic polled five personnel types and they ranked the Jaguars as the third-worst team in the AFC above only the Jets and Texans, although one said they could finish second or third in their division.

Pederson may need time to turn the team around because they still are paying the price for shaky drafting in recent years. They weren’t able to draft a solid core of four-to-six-year players that often the foundation for winning teams.

They have no drafted players left on the roster selected before 2017, although Tyler Shatley is still on the roster after being signed as an undrafted free agent in 2014.

They did hit on their first three picks in 2016 when they selected Jalen Ramsey, Myles Jack and Yannick Ngakoue, but Ramsey and Ngakoue got involved in contract disputes and departed. Jack got a second contract in 2019, but they feel he didn’t live up to it and he was cut after the 2021 season, ultimately signing with Pittsburgh. 

They have two each left from the 2017 and 2019 drafts – Cam Robinson and Dawuane Smoot from 2017 and Allen and Jawaan Taylor from 2019. There is also one remaining member (punter Logan Cooke) from the 2018 draft.

The bottom line is that they have just five drafted players taken before the 2020 season, so they don’t have enough to show from those drafts.

One plus is that they have several productive free agents in their fifth and sixth seasons, including Christian Kirk, Arden Key, Foley Fatusasi, Foye Olukun in their fifth year and Zay Jones, Evan Engram, Dan Arnold, Roy Robertson-Harris and Saquill Griffin in their sixth season to fill holes.

The question is whether the Jaguars’ young players will develop quickly enough to combine with their veteran free agents to make them more competitive this year as they attempt to go over the 6.5-victory number.

The Washington opener could provide a sneak preview on how good the Jaguars will be this year.

Just 18 month ago, Patrick Mahomes career was ascending like a rocket ship.

In just his fourth season in the league and third as a starter, he was in the Super Bowl for the second consecutive year with a chance to repeat.

He was facing .the Tampa Bay Bucs, a team the Chiefs had beaten 27-24 a couple of months earlier with a chance to hand Tom Brady his fourth Super Bowl loss. And if Dee Ford hadn’t lined up offsides late in fourth quarter of the 2018 AFC title game to nullify a Brady interception, he would have been appearing in his third straight Super Bowl. 

A second Super Bowl win in his fourth year and third year as a starter would matched the start of Brady’s career. Brady won two in his first four years in the league and third as a starter.

But then the wheels fell off for Mahomes and the Chiefs. They were routed 31-9 by the Bucs.

The Chiefs were missing two starting offensive linemen, had problems protecting Mahomes and their defense couldn’t stop Brady, who won his seventh Super Bowl ring.

Then his woes continues last year when teams started taking away his deep passes by dropping eight players in coverage with two deep safeties.

It took more than half a season for Mahones to adjust before he threw 12 touchdown passes with one pick in last five regular-season games and then won two playoff games to move into the AFC title game for the fourth year in a row, matching a feat done only by Jim Kelly of the Bills.

And once they took a 21-3 lead over the Bengals in the AFC title game, Mahomes seemed destined to make the Super Bowl a third year in a row. That is a feat pulled off only by a the 1971-73 Dolphins.

But then things went south again for the Chiefs. In a candid interview with theringer.com, Mahomes admitted they started to play not to lose. And they lost in overtime.

As Mahomes enters his sixth season and his fifth as a starter, the question is where does he go from here, especially now that the Chiefs have traded Tyreek Hill. 

And the Chiefs face a challenge in their division now that Russell Wilson is in Denver in a division that also includes Justin Herbert and Derek Carr. And Joe Burrow and Josh Allen are still in the conference.

There is no guarantee Mahomes will win a second Super Bowl, much less multiple titles.

Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers and Wilson are quarterbacks who won Super Bowls early in their careers. Favre never won another one and Rodgers and Wilson are still seeking their second.

Mahones may have raised expectations to an unrealistic level the way he started his career. Or maybe he is still destined to win multiple titles.

His quest to win more rings will be an intriguing challenge in the coming years.

Tom Brady’s surprising 11-day absence from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ training camp this month showed how times have changed.

The Bucs only announced that he left for “personal reasons” and coach Todd Bowles only said it was preplanned. According to reports, it turns out he had planned a family vacation while he was retired for two months and wanted to keep that commitment.

The Bucs handled it well and had no objections. It is not like he needed a full training camp. In effect, their attitude was like the line in the commercial, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

Contrast their attitude to what happened in 1966 when Jim Brown was making the movie “The Dirty Dozen” in England and there were delays in the filming.

Owner Art Modell didn’t leave the light on for him. He started fining Brown $100 a day (Brown was making $60,000) and said he would suspend him if he didn’t report by July 17.

So Jim Brown wrote him a letter saying he was retiring and never played again. And and just like that, the league lost one of its biggest stars at age 30.

The Bucs weren’t going to make that mistake. Brady is 45 and already retired for a couple of months at the end of last season before deciding he wanted to return. They let him call his own shots.

Once he returned, things seemed back to normal until he departed during camp. While he was gone, there were all kinds of wild speculations that he might be doing something like appearing on The Masker Singer. That made no sense, but it took on a life of its own. The family vacation seemed the most logicial reason.

If Brown were making a movie today, his team probably would have left the light on for him.

Meanwhile, the Browns have never made it to the championship game much less won it since he left. Kind of the Browns version of the Curse of the Bambino.

When Drew Lock came down with a bout of Covid and missed Seattle’s 27-11 loss to the Bears on Thursday night, it didn’t get much attention around the league even though coach Pete Carroll said he seemed to be “really sick.”

He didn’t lose any ground in his battle with Geno Smith for the starting job because Smith was ineffective in the first half and missed the second half with a knee bruise.

Carroll didn’t give much information about Lock’s status. And Lock could play in the final preseason game against Dallas and start the regular season at Denver when the Seahawks will meet their former quarterback, Russell Wilson.

Even though the NFL hasn’t had much of a problem with Covid during training camp and most people who are double boosted only have mild symptoms, Lock’s illness was a reminder that Covid could still play a role this season.

There is always a chance a key player could come down with Covid the day before a game and be sidelined and could have a major factor on a game.

Teams must give out a list 90 minutes before each game of the players who will be inactive.

This list will likely get more attention this year before each game than it usually does.

Americans seems to be acting as if they are done with Covid and are getting back to normal lives. But Covid may not be done with Americans – especially NFL players.

It may not be a big deal if a baseball player comes down with Covid and misses a few games. They play 162 of them.

But with each team playing just 17 NFL regular games, Covid could have a big impact from time to time.

And then there’s the playoffs.

Lock is not likely to be the last NFL quarterback or key player to miss a game with the illness this year. The NFL can only hope it won’t happen very often this year.

The Indianapolis Colts have one of the strangest quarterback rooms in the league this year.

Their starter, Matt Ryan, is one of the most prolific passers in league history, but he has made only one Super Bowl and that resulted in the infamous 28-3 meltdown against the Patriots in 2017.

Ryan has started all 222 regular season games he has appeared in during his career and missed only three games while passing for 59,735 yards. He has 367 touchdown passes and just 170 interceptions, but no rings.

Their No. 2, Nick Foles, is in his familiar role as a backup, but he did beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl the year after the Atlanta meltdown while filling in for Carson Wentz. They even have a statue of him in Philadelphia.

They both wound up in Indianapolis this year. Ryan became expendable in Atlanta after the Falcons tried and failed to sign Deshaun Watson. The Colts only gave up a third rounder for him. The Colts then signed Foles to be his backup. Coach Frank Reich was the quarterback coach in Foles’ Super Bowl winning year.

Now Ryan is at a crossroads. In the AFC, he faces a lot of young guns like Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen and Justin Herbert and a Super Bowl winning veteran in Russell Wilson, who was within a yard of claiming a second consecutive Super Bowl two years before the Atlanta letdown and is now in Denver.

And he faces high expectations in Indianapolis. Can Ryan cap his career by finally winning a Super Bowl or will his legacy be 28-3? That is the question.

The loss to the Patriots is remembered for the New England comeback, but the Atlanta offense’s inability to score in the final period opened the door for the Patriots. All the Falcons needed was one field goal to put it out of reach but they were blanked in the fourth quarter.

After the Patriots cut the deficit to 28-9 with a third-quarter touchdown and missed a two-point conversion, the Falcons had the ball three times. On two of the drives they were just outside the Patriots 40 and 20.

They got just two firsts downs those three drives. And Ryan took a sack on each of the drives. And two critical holding penalties played a big role in the killing two of the drives along with some shaky play calling by offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. On two of the drives, they had a second-and-1 and a third-and-1 and didn’t get a first down either time. And the Falcons defense wore down because they were on the field too much.

After the Patriots cut it to 28-9 late in third period, they tried an onside kick that the Falcons recovered just past the Patriots 40. After a nine-yard run, they were virtually in field-goal range, but a holding call made it second-and-11 and a dropped pass and a sack pushed them back to midfield and they punted.

The Patriots then kicked a field goal to cut it to 28-12. On the ensuing drive, an eight-yard run made it second-and-2, and another run made it third-and-1. Shanahan called for a pass instead of a run. Instead of making a quick throw, Ryan took a five/yard drop and a sack fumble gave the Patriots a short field and they made it 28-20 with 5:53 left.

The Falcons were pinned back on their nine on the ensuing kickoff but Ryan completed two passes – the second a spectacular catch by Julio Jones to give them a first down on the Patriots 22 with 4:38 left. All the Falcons had to do was run three plays and kick a field goal for an 11-point lead to clinch the win. But after the first-down run lost a yard, Shanahan decided to go to the air. A sack and holding penalty made it third-and-33, and the Falcons punted again.

The Patriots then drove for another score against a gassed Falcon defense that had been on the field too long and won the overtime toss, scored again and it was over.

The Falcons never really recovered. Both GM Thomas Dimitroff and coach Dan Quinn were both eventually fired, and now Ryan is starting over in Indianapolis.

Meanwhile, Foles doesn’t know if he will see much action. He is likely to play only if Ryan is hurt. 

Ryan has continued to put up big numbers. He has averaged 4,485 yards a season since 2018. If he does it again for the Colts, he will be fifth on the all-time passer list and that virtually guarantees him a bust in the Hall of Fame.

He is currently eighth with 59,735 and has a shot at passing Dan Marino, Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger to move into fifth on the all-time list behind Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Brett Favre, who has 71,838.

But for all his passing yards, Ryan’s legacy isn’t that he is likely to throw for more yards than Marino, who also lost his only Super Bowl appearance but not in the meltdown fashion Ryan did. San Francisco simply had a better team than the Dolphins, so Marino’s loss isn’t remembered the way Ryan’s is.

Ryan’s legacy is still 28-3.

He gets a chance to change that legacy in Indianapolis.

There wasn’t a lot of celebrating in the Miami Dolphins locker room after they beat then Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII to become the first and still the only team to record a perfect season.

“It was a mature team that just took everything in stride,” said Doug Crusan in the new book “Seventeen and Oh” about that perfect season. “Although to be honest, it was a relief more than anything. We had finally done it.”

This is the 50th anniversary of that historic season and still no other team has done it. And now that the schedule has been increased to 17 regular season games (it was 14 when the Dolphins did it), it looks unlikely any team will go 20-0 to have another perfect season.

The closest any team has gotten to it since then was in 2007 when Patriots went 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl to the New York Giants.

The book written by Marshall Jon Fisher, who was a young fan growing up in Miami in 1972, and published by Abrams Books, is a sweeping history not only of that Dolphins season but of what was happening in Miami and the rest of the country at that time.

They went to training camp in a year in which both political conventions were in Miami Beach and the Watergate break-in had just taken place. And the Vietnam War was still raging. It was a tumultuous time. And in an era before million-dollar salaries, he writes the players considered themselves ordinary working guys who lived in the community.

Some of the author’s school friends got the courage to knock on Howard Twilley’s door and ask him to throw the football with them. His friend said Twilley was too nice to say no although his wife may have been annoyed.

The Dolphins went to camp with a chip on their shoulder because they had been blown out by the Cowboys in Super Bowl VI and were on a mission to win it this time and they did it. That is almost as hard to do as having a perfect season. A team that lost the Super Bowl has only won it once since when the Patriots beat the Rams in 2019 after losing to the Eagles the previous season.

The book is divided into 21 chapters, one for each of the 17 games, two at the beginning for what he calls Preperfect I and II and one for Super Bowl pregame and one Post Perfect chapter.

Each chapter not only includes the story of each victory, but has mini bios of the players and what they were like. For example, he pointed out quarterback Bob Griese is an introvert. I remember covering their two Super Bowl wins and he was one of the worst interviews on the team. It was annoying at the time – especially when he later became a TV analyst – but I guess it was his personality.

He also provides inside details of how Joe Robbie, who really didn’t have the money to own an NFL team, kept it afloat and as Mike Ditka once said of George Halas, he treated nickels like manhole covers.

Robbie even fired the caterer providing the food in the press room because he wanted to save money. The author doesn’t mention it but he did spend money hosting a dinner for the New York media before the Giants game in an effort to promote the team before the days of the Internet and ESPN and the NFL Network.

The author is also candid in talking about Robbie’s drinking problem, which was no secret in the NFL. I once saw him passed out at the hotel bar in a league meeting. And he quotes Larry King as saying Robbie wasn‘t a very likeable person.” The author doesn’t sugarcoat how things were.

Robbie also had a contentious relationship with city officials over their refusal to build him a stadium to replace the Orange Bowl. He was so upset that he signed off when the league decided to give Super Bowl XVI to Detroit when it was Miami’s turn in what was a Miami-New Orleans Los Angeles rotation in the early years.

They were trying to prod Miami into replacing the Orange Bowl. The move was announced at a Hawaii meeting and when I interviewed Robbie, he was candid in saying the stadium issue was costing Miami the Super Bowl.

The Miami Herald didn’t cover the meeting and when a staffer called to ask what happened, I gave them the Robbie quotes. The next day, Robbie said, “I didn’t realize I was talking to the Miami media.” Miami wouldn’t budge and went nine years without a Super Bowl until Robbie built a privately funded stadium by inventing the PSL concept.

The author also notes that the doctors passed out painkillers like they were candy and didn’t seem to realize that too many cortisone shots made them less effective.

He also notes the team had only five black starters, which wasn’t unusual in those days. The league had a gentleman’s agreement to ban black players from 1934 to 1946 when the Rams and Browns, who were then in the AAFC, signed two each.

The book said the Rams did it In 1947 and hopefully that will corrected in later editions. Coach Don Shula, though, did make an effort to have the players cross racial lines and create harmony on the team. But times were changing. By 1974 when the Steelers started their Super Bowl run, they had seven black starters on defense because they mined the black colleges for talent. When the southern colleges integrated, more black players were showcased and the league is now over 70 percent black or multi-racial.

Although the book is likely to fly off the shelves in Miami, it is a must read for any sports fan and is likely to be included in the future in any list of top books about the NFL. But there is one paragraph the Miami fans won’t like.

He points out that even though they a perfect season, they weren’t the best team ever. They probably weren’t as good as the 1973 team that lost the second game in Oakland and then lost a later game when they had clinched the playoff spot and rested Griese and some other starters. But they were more dominant in 1973, particularly in the playoffs.

The Dolphins, particularly Shula, usually contended having a perfect record made them the best team. He was upset a few years ago when ESPN put together a tournament using a computer and had the Steeleers beating the Dolphins in the title game.

Shula ignored the fact that they weren’t a team of the decade and a lot of things went right for the Dolphins that year. For example, Green Bay, which won the first two Super Bowls, and Kansas City, which appeared in two of first four, had grown old.

Dallas, which beat the Dolphins in the Super Bowl the previous year, lost Roger Staubach for much of the year and lost to Washington in the NFC title game. Staubach returned the previous week to lead a comeback win over the 49ers but he was still rusty.

And the Redskins had Billy Kilmer at quarterback because Sonny Jurgensen was injured. Pittsburgh didn’t become a great team until 1974 when they added four Hall of Famers and signed a fifth as a free agent to give them10 HOFers. They won four of the next six Super Bowls.

And Oakland, their toughest rival in those years, lost to Pittsburgh in the Immaculate Reception game so the Dolphins played a young Pittsburgh team instead of Oakland.

The Raiders ended their win streak in 1973 but then lost to them in the playoffs before beating them in the Sea of Hands game in 1974 that ended their bid for a fourth consecutive Super Bowl appearance and a third consecutive Super Bowl win.

So the Raiders beat them twice in three games in 1973 and 1974. We will never know if they would have beaten them if Pittsburgh hadn’t pulled off the Immaculate Reception

The next year Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield jumped to the WFL and their run was over. Robbie could have tried to keep them, but he always looked at the bottom line. The Dolphins went 10-4 in 1975 but missed the playoffs and slid to 8-8 the following year.

Shula never won another Super Bowl after 1973, coaching 23 more seasons and making it to the Super Bowl twice but lost to Washington and San Francisco. That left his title record 2-5. He had four Super Bowl losses and the 1964 title game to Cleveland when he was in Baltimore in the pre Super Bowl era.

Things weren’t the same for Shula once he didn’t have Joe Thomas and Bobby Beathard finding his players and he couldn’t build a title team around Dan Marino. Still, he wound up being the winningest coach of all time.

The post perfect life of the players was mixed. Some had successful careers. Doug Swift for example went to med school at an Ivy League school (Penn). But others suffered the effects of playing in a run oriented era when there wasn’t much emphasis on player safety. Too many had to deal with CTE and dementia and addicted from taking too many painkillers. Two wound up in jail.

And Robbie’s heirs wound up selling the team after he died.  When he died, he singled out three of his nine children to act as trustees and manage the Dolphins. Others disagreed and a legal fight started that ended with them selling the team. Each of the Robbie children wound up with $6 million after taxes. If they had kept the team in the family, they would be worth billions. 

The Dolphins have been poorly managed and coached in recent years and have had only nine winning seasons in 21 years.

Still, to paraphrase Bogart in “Casablanca,” they will always have the perfect season. For one brief shining moment, they were perfect. This book tells the story of what it was like when they did it and how they did it.

Baker Mayfield is the latest quarterback to show that being the first pick in the NFL draft doesn’t guarantee success.

He was traded to the Panthers after the Browns gave up on him and signed Deshaun Watson to a $230 million guaranteed contract despite his off-field issues.

Mayfield was so happy to get out of Cleveland that he even took a $3.5 million paycut to go to the Panthers, where he will battle Sam Darnold for the starting job.

Even if Mayfield puts his career back together, he no longer has a shot at winning the Super Bowl with the team that drafted him first.

If you don’t count Eli Manning, who technically was drafted by San Diego, the last No. 1 overall pick to win a Super Bowl for the team that drafted him was his older brother Peyton.

Mayfield was drafted in 2018 and Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence were drafted with the first pick the following three years.

Burrow is the only one of the four to make the Super Bowl, although it is too early to judge Lawrence because he didn’t have a chance to develop under the coaching of Urban Meyer. With quarterback whisperer Doug Pederson now the Jaguars head coach, Lawrence will likely have a better chance to live up to his billing.

The Mayfield-Darnold duel pits the first and third quarterbacks drafted in 2018. They are both trying to resurrect their careers. The Jets gave up on Darnold a year ago when they drafted Zach Wilson.

Mayfield and Darnold are proving that judging quarterbacks coming out of college is an inexact science. The third and fifth quarterbacks drafted on the first round that year, Josh Allen, who went seventh to Buffalo, and Lamar Jackson, who went 32nd to Baltimore, have proved to be better quarterbacks.

The fourth quarterback drafted on the first round that year, Josh Rosen, who went eighth to Arizona, was dumped after a year when they decided to take Murray. Rosen is currently with his fifth team in Atlanta.

Now Mayfield and Darnold both get a second chance. It remains to be seen if they make the best of it.

The NFL appears to be the Teflon League.

As the NFL prepares for the start of another season, it is facing numerous problems.

It starts with the safety of the game itself. Demaryius Thomas, who died at age 33 last December, was the latest deceased player to be diagnosed with Stage 2 CTE.

There were other complications because he suffered from seizures brought on by a 2019 car crash, so it is impossible to tell what factor CTE played in his death. But the fact that he suffered CTE at such a young age is another sign that safety remains an issue.

Then there is the issue of the Washington Commanders, which has now reached the halls of Congress.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a recent hearing about the Commanders many problems, including rampant sexual harassment of the team’s female employees.

Not surprising owner Dan Snyder was a no-show, leaving commissioner Roger Goodell to claim the team has transformed its culture.

But with Snyder in charge, that is debatable. The committee also revealed that the team conducted a shadow investigation designed at intimidating witnesses.

The obvious solution would be for the NFL to remove Snyder, but Goodell quickly pointed out he doesn’t have the power to do that — although he is not pushing the owners to do it, either. He doesn’t want to rock the boat.

Meanwhile, what was an iconic franchise has turned into a dumpster fire, which is not good for the league.

And then there is the lack of diversity in the coaching ranks, which led to the Brian Flores lawsuit. And there’s also the Jon Gruden lawsuit over the leaked emails that cost him the Raiders job.

On top of that there is Deshaun Watson, who will eventually play but isn’t going to help the league attract more women as fans.

And the league also got away with banning Colin Kaepernick, which will be a stain on the league in the future.

Despite all of these problems, they seem to have no effect on the league. The fans seem addicted to watching the games on TV and the TV money keeps exploding, especially with new platforms entering the bidding.

So as long as all the money keeps flowing in, the NFL can brush off all of its problems.

In 26 years ago as a head coach, Bill Belichick has never gone four years in a row without winning a playoff game.

Belichick is now on the cusp of doing that for the first time.

Last year was the third time he went without a playoff win for a third year in a row.

The first two times were his first three years with the Browns and then the 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons with the Patriots. He won a playoff game in his fourth year with the Browns and then went 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl in 2011.

That is why this is such a critical year for Belichick and his future as a coach.

There are differing opinions where the Patriots are as a team. Fansided reported only three teams in the AFC – the Jets, Jaguars and Texans – are worse than the Patriots. And noted they have just one Pro Bowler, Matthew Judon, on defense.

And Belichick spent big in free agency last year, including signng two expensive tight ends, and still didn’t win a playoff game. And now he’s lost play-caller Josh McDaniel and maybe the job to Matt Patricia, who is noted more as a defensive coach.

And last year, they had a seven-game winning streak but then lost three of their last four and then were blown out in the playoffs by the Bills, 47-17.

Meanwhile, The Athletic’s view is that Belichick is getting too much grief.

Regardless, owner Bob Kraft seems to be getting impatient.

“More than anything, it bothers me that we haven’t won a playoff game the last three years,’’ Kraft said at the league meetings in March.

It may bother him more if they go a fourth year without winning a playoff game.

Now the question is whether Belichick can end his three-year drought and win a playoff game this year.