OK, OK, we were wrrrr…wrrrrr….wrrrrr…..wrrrrrrong.

Guilty. Screwed up.

We may as well own up to it.

We actually thought the New England Patriots would show up for their AFC Wild Card Playoff Game in Orchard Park, N.Y.on Saturday night.

Instead, owner Robert Kraft sent a bunch of scrubs, replacement players, whatever, to go to face the Bills on a frigid mid-January Saturday night. Because of that big mask, we don’t even know if that was actually Bill Belichick on the sidelines.

But yeah, it sure did sound like him after the game, as he refused to talk about the future of the team, just about how his team got thoroughly manhandled, 47-17.

“I said we couldn’t keep up with them tonight,” Belichick said, “and we couldn’t. … They were too much for us tonight.”

The Patriots gave Belichick his worst postseason defeat ever as New England’s coach. They made history, a perfect 7 for 7 on offensive possessions until their final series that ended with a kneel down. Absolutely incredible.

“We were ready to play, a good week of practice, a lot of preparation went into this one,” Allen said. “We just kept the momentum going all day.”

Now the Patriots limp off into the off-season, ending this year just a week later than the Cam Newton disaster of a year ago. Whether this was a success or not will be debated in the days and weeks and even months to come.

“It is what it is,” Patriots safety Devin McCourty who may or may not be back, said. “It sucks to end the season that way. It’s not how you want to end any season, how you want to play any playoff game.”

Ugh. Allen clearly was motivated by the Bills’ loss to the Patriots over a month ago on an incredibly windy Monday night at Orchard Park. This time they ran the ball, they got two big turnovers, and scored at will. It was stunning to watch.

Of course the irony is after that game, the Patriots weren’t the same, either. They went into a bye week and came out of it a different team, and lost four of their last five games. We were right that the Jacksonville game was a mirage, that it would leave everyone feeling better about things but not solving anything.

“We’ll have a lot of time to kind of think why it didn’t end the way we wanted to,” McCourty said.

It’s just another sign of how the glory days are gone. We thought maybe, just maybe, with that seven-game winning streak that the magic was back, even while a guy named Brady was in Tampa. Yup, Belichick vs. Brady in the Super Bowl out in Inglewood, Cal.

Not happening. You wonder now if it ever will. The Patriots defense was clearly shorthanded on Saturday night, but shouldn’t have been this bad.

“It was just kind of their night, they were just hitting on all cylinders,” Patriots linebacker Matt Judon said of the Bills.

Like we said, these are the playoff wins the Patriots used to get, right?

“The energy and excitement here was unbelievable,” Allen said.

Yes, we remember those days, when we were, well, often right more often than not.

Will they ever come back? That’s the question with really no answer right now.

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

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