AP photo It's suddenly become a cold, cruel pandemic world for Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, as well as their fans.

It’s a weekend where there are high school championship games, even a couple of Sunday.

And football fans get a break – they don’t have to worry about the New England Patriots getting in the way.

They play Monday night at the New York Jets.

But even if they were playing on Sunday, would it matter?

Have they become irrelevant in fans’ minds?

Telegraph Sports Reporter Tom KIng.

We say hardly. In fact, after tomorrow night, they’ll be 3-5 and if they dominate, many will feel optimistic. If they struggle to beat the hapless Jets, many will take it as a sign.

This is unchartered territory for many Patriots fans, the ones who grew up knowing nothing but Super Bowl teams, Super Bowl contenders, Super Bowl championships.

You’d have to look back to Bill Belichick’s first year as the Patriots head coach to see a New England team with a record as bad as the one (2-5) they take into Monday night’s game. That year Belichick realized on the first day of training camp he had a soft team left over from the Pete Carroll era and was going to have to do some major rebuilding.

What does he have now? A team that suddenly can’t stop the run, which means that on defense it has become soft. You can talk about Tom Brady’s departure, and yes, Cam Newton has been abysmal at quarterback the last four weeks.

The Patriots also don’t score touchdowns early in games.

“Yeah, we definitely want to change it and need to change it,” Belichick said. “So, that’s not what we are tring to do, but we haven’t done a very good job of it so far. So , we’ll keep working on it and see if we can be more productive in the early part of the game, for sure.”

They probably will be on Monday night. The Jets stink, and will keep the Patriots out of the AFC East basement. It’s clear the opt-outs hurt this team. They’re undersized up front, and lost arguably their best linebacker, Dont’a Hightower, to the COVID opt-out. They also lost a run-stopping safety in Patrick Chung to the same. Linebackers Kyle Van Noy and Jamie Collins left via free agency.

New England just doesn’t have the younger players to replace those they lost. Linebacker/defensive end Chase Winovich is in the doghouse for some reason, only used on passing downs.

Of course it’s got to kill Patriot fans this weekend to see Antonio Brown playing with Brady. Belichick was under fire this week for lamenting the fact the team had no money to go after big name veterans,etc., thanks to the spending of the past (“sold out”). Well, last year they tried to keep Brady happy, in signing Brown, and trading for Mohammed Sanu.

How did that work out? They got stuck with Brown’s one-year salary after he behaved like the jerk he is and had to let him go. Sanu cost a No. 2 draft pick, and the Patriots helped butcher that situation when they had him return punts and he got hurt.

Now they don’t have Brady, nor do they have any veteran receivers. Look, Belichick can certainly stand on his remarkable record with the Patriots, but when you draft as poorly as they have over the last four years, lose players to free agency, and allow things to deteriorate with the greatest quarterback of all time to the point he wants out, a 2-5 record is what you get.

And probably a 7-9 record at the end of the season.

It coud be worse. Had the Patriots stuck with their possible original plan to hand the QB reins to Jarrett Stidham they might be 0-9 right now. They need to figure out a way to revive Newton, who still has some talent but needs weapons around him.

That’s for the present. The problem is the future. Belichick will have to go back to basics, and draft building blocks for the future. And, understandably, it may not be his future he’s drafting and planning for.

It’s a tough reality for Patriot fans, for certain.

But all is not lost. Monday night’s opponent is what lost looks like.

The Patriots had better hope they aren’t on the way to being that bad.

Newsletter