New England Patriots safety and captain Devin McCourty gave us all a reminder after Sunday’s excruciating yet highly entertaining 35-29 overtime loss to so-called America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys.

“I say it all the time,” McCourty began. “Everything in the past has nothing to do with this year. We’re the 2021 Patriots who haven’t won a game at home.”

They’re the 2021 Patriots who are 2-4, the Patriots who keep coming up, as they say, a two or three plays short in their four losses which have all been at Gillette Stadium.

The ones to Miami and New Orleans, you would hope, wouldn’t happen in December. The one to Tom Brady and Tampa Bay, well, you know.

The one yesterday? The same as the Bucs game. It’s what this team is right now: good enough to compete, hang tough, but not good enough to win. Not good enough to overcome a Mac Jones pick six, even if the rookie throws a touchdown pass a couple of plays later that probably should have won the game.

That’s the thing – it has to win the game.

“We’ve been two or three plays away,” Jones said. “I guess that’s how the NFL works. I learned that the hard way.”

Overtime was the one thing these Patriots probably couldn’t have survived, at least not defensively. The Cowboys ran a whopping 82 plays, and the defense could only stand so much of chasing after Dallas’ early MVP candidate at quarterback, Dak Prescott. Prescott kept extending plays, and the Cowboys had the ball, if you include overtime, nearly 40 minutes (39:17).

“They’re a good team, and that’s what you’ve got to do,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. “Got to stop them.”

But they couldn’t stop Prescott from hitting an open CeeDee Lamb – Jalen Mills was the “closest” to him, and that’s in quotes for a reason.

Belichick and his players often speak in the humdrum NFLspeak: “They made just a few more plays than we did”. But that’s exactly who these Patriots are right now. Their last three losses are by a grand total of nine points.

The loss to New Orleans was the exception, 28-13, but even that was closer than the final score indicated.

“Even the Saints game, came down to a few plays,” McCourty said. “We came up short.”

See? Somehow these Patriots have to turn this trend around. They can’t let an opposing QB hit a 13-yard pass on fourth and 4 for 13 yards like Prescott did to Cedrick Wilson at midfield with just over a minute to go in regulation.

All that being said, this is a likeable team. They play hard, etc. You have to love Jones, and you can tell the Patriots do because after he throws that pick six just out of Kendrick Bourne’s full reach into the hands of the Cowboys’ Trevon Diggs, he comes back and hits Bourne for a 75-yard TD.

Bourne said that Jones “knows how to forget” and that helps.

You just hope these Patriots don’t know how to forget to win. Oh they’ll win next Sunday vs. the Jets, and all will feel better. But what happens the next time they face a good team?

“We just have to keep moving forward,” center David Andrews said. “There was some good in the game, just not enough to win the game.”

And lest we forget, winning the game is what it’s all about, and these Patriots, against above average teams, have yet to figure out how to do that.

They had better figure it out soon.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.

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