AP photo The dejected look of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was seen all too often this season.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – It was a tale of two seasons for the New England Patriots.

There was the dominant, shutdown 8-0 start that made you not even worry about whether or not the team would be in Miami for Super Bowl LIV, but just wonder which NFC team they would play.

That turned out to be fantasy. The combined records of the teams the Patriots played in that stretch ended up being 43-69.

Then there’s reality: A 4-5 finish, including Saturday night’s AFC Wild Card loss to Tennessee. The combined records were 61-58.

And, overall, the Patriots won three games over teams with a winning record, and two of those were Buffalo.

It all adds up to a team better than more than half the league but not better than a quarter of it, which are still playing in the Divisional Round in both conferences this Sunday.

The question is, why?

“It’s really tough to put your finger on it,” Patriots special team captain Matt Slater, one of those free agents to be. “Every year is different. You have to try to live in the moment and understand that things can change quickly in this league. Obviously down the stretch things changed for us and it wasn’t the outcome that we wanted.

“As to why that happened, I can’t put my finger on it now; it was just different. Different, it is what it is. We have to be able to live with that, we have to be able to move forward, and I’m confident the guys in here can do that.”

Most signs point to the offense’s lack of production, especially big play production. The running game was average or even below average, and the passing game lacked playmakers around quarterback Tom Brady.

It’s really impossible to look too far ahead for a team with 20 free agents, especially when one of them is Brady.

But one might surmise looking back, that Brady would not want to return to an offense with these players around him in 2020.

“Look, they scored a high number of points,” Belichick said of the team in its entirety. “There were times when things were good, and there wereother times where they were average and there were other times where they weren’t so good.

“There were a lot of things that we’d like to improfe on, and that’s again, I think you can say that pretty much in every year.”

But one thing you can’t say is how close things were in several games, one way or the other, especially duirng the second half of the season.

“Several very, very close games that came down to the last, next to last possession in our season,” Belichick said. “Especially the games that we lost, other than the Baltimore game.

“A play here, a play there, a call here, a call there, a decision here, a decision there and things might look a little different. But they didn’t, and that’s what it is.”

What is will be is simple: The Patriots need playmakers on offense, at just about any skill position. There’s the hope that N’Keal Harry take the next step (the first would be to stay healthy), but the Patriots also have to be concerned about their running game. And of course, tight end, as

Patriot tight ends had a combined 419 receiving yards.

It’s not like Belichick didn’t try to improve things. They took a leap of faith in signing Antonio Brown, and it blew up in their face. They traded for Mohamed Sanu, and it certainly looks like they were sold a bill of goods.

Whatever happens next year,the player acquisitions have to be better.

The problem is, with free agents (Devin McCourty, Patrick Chung, Kyle Van Noy, Jamie Collins, etc.) on the defensive side of the ball, it’s impossible to see how all the needs will be met.

The Patriots’ defensive reputation was over-inflated by facing a lack of talent at the quarterback position. After eight weeks it would have been hard to believe that New England wouldn’t have been able to get big stops vs. Miami and Tennessee down the stretch in its last two games.

The 2019 New England Patriots didn’t go further because they simply weren’t good enough – or physical enough. Teams like Baltimore and Tennessee were able to win the battles in key moments at the line of scrimmage.

In September and October, we were fooled by the schedule. But in November and December, they were what their record said they were.

It’s the sudden reality that is the toughest to deal with.

“Certainly, when the season doesn’t end the way that you want it to, it is like a crash landing,” Slater said. “It is very emotional. You put a lot into this, spend a lot of time away from your family,spend a lot of time in pain, you spend a lot of time in this locker room investing in relationships and really you never want to see it end.

“But the reality is that it is going to end like this for all but one team and unfortunately this year we aren’t that team.”

And it remains to be seen, with so much change looming, whether they have a chance at being that team in the coming season and beyond.

AFC

1.Baltimore (14-2). 2.Kansas City (12-4). 3.Houston (11-6). 4. Tennessee (10-7). 5. New England (12-5).

NFC

1.San Francisco (13-3). 2. Seattle (12-5). 3. Green Bay (13-3). 4.Minnesota (12-5). 5. New Orleans (13-4)

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