Welcome to the New England Patriots-New York Jets rivalry, Robert Saleh.

The extremely one-sided rivalry.

Sure, you lost to the Patriots at the Meadowlands a few weeks ago, but that was really the calm before the storm, your Jets were more or less competitive.

Your real initiation into this thing between the Patriots and Jets was Sunday’s 54-13 thumping at Gillette Stadium. This is when you saw just how much Patriots coach Bill Belichick hates the organization you work for. Doesn’t matter who coaches the Jets, who owns them, who runs them, he hates them.

“You give up 50 points, it’s embarrassing,” said Saleh afterward. “I don’t think I’ve had this feeling after a game since 2017 against Dallas. A helpless feeling when you’re just watching, you’re trying to figure something out.”

While Saleh tries to figure out what went wrong, and laments the knee injury suffered by his own rookie QB Zach Wilson, Belichick is savoring this one. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, or rookie Mac Jones and Hunter Henry, he’ll try to make it hurt.

Now the key is what the Patriots do with this win. It came at a time when the team was questioned for it’s lack of offensive aggressiveness, etc. The players one by one talked about how much they needed a game like this, a win they didn’t have to apologize for. They piled up 551 yards of offense, the rookie Jones had his first career 300 yard game and, in Brady-esque fashion, 11 Patriots caught the football.

But Belichick was defiant afterward. When asked if this win was a confidence builder for his team, his answer was quick and to the point.

“I don’t think we lacked confidence,” he said.

Maybe, maybe not. But the players who came out to speak to the media, one by one, were grinning ear to ear and you could feel the sense of relief.

“We really believe,” running back Damien Harris said after his 106-yard, two TD day, “that we can turn this season around.”

That tells you something right there. Of course, now for the reality: This was the Jets, and probably the Jets at their worst. They are going to suffer a few more of these, maybe a lot of them, before they get better. They’re a bad, bad football team that is really at the ground floor in terms of rebuilding.

So you should whip their behinds. As Saleh said, “They punches us in the mouth.”

The reason the Patriots were so giddy was that, besides the obvious, everything they worked on in practice worked in the game, starting with receiver Kendrick Bourne’s trick play touchdown pass to Nelson Agholor all the way to backs Brandon Bolden and J.J. Taylor getting into the act.

Now the players believe, if they didn’t before.

“We all needed this one, as a collective,” Bolden said, talking about finally giving the fans a home win as well. “Pats Nation, including us.

“A game we needed, to show us what we’re capable of.”

“I think we got a little flavor of if we do everything right throughout the wek and practice well and do our job in the game, it kind of translates over,” Jones said. “We’re excited we finally kind of saw a little bit of a result that was good, and we’ve just got to stick to the formula and stick to the process.”

Yes, “Trust the process” was a phrase heard a few times afterward, so you can bet it was likely said in the post game locker room celebration/speech.

There hasn’t been one like this at Gillette in a while, not since you-know-who was behind center. So now the question is what the Patriots do with this, whether they can show they can go out and not just beat the league’s weak sisters. They’ll get a crack at it next week at the L.A. Chargers, a team they blew out last year but did it more feasting on their mistakes and beating them up.

As edge rusher Matt Judon said, “A game like today, you like to keep rolling off that.”

“It can’t be a one-time thing,” Jones said. “Like I sadid, we’re not satisfied at all by any means. We have plenty of work to do, and plenty to get better at.”

So here you go, Robert Saleh. You were on the bus back to the airport, and on the plane stewing over this while a couple hours after game’s end Belichick was enjoying a quiet celebration of sorts outside for a little while with friends, including special assistant Matt Patricia, at the lounge behind the end zone at the enclosed end of Gillette.

You better get used to it.

Tom King may be reached @Telegraph_TomK, or tking@nashuatelegraph.com

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