Sports Redux: Indeed, Embarrassing

It might have been even worse if Kerry Rhodes had played (wait, he did?). Anyway, the Patriots did a fine job of embarrassing themselves yesterday in New Jersey, playing a listless and mistake-prone game and coming out of it the proud and deserving owners of a 16-9 loss to the Jets.

Where do we start agonizing over this one? The defense wasn't great, but they weren't horrible. Things looked really good when they knocked the ball out of rookie QB Mark Sanchez's hand on his first pass attempt, and they did hold the Jets' offense completely in check for the first half (at one point, we wondered out loud if Sanchez or the punter had been on the field more), but they let the kid get his confidence back by never ever ever knocking him down (hardly ever) and letting him run two efficient and clean drives for late scores.

Still, we're not pinning this on the defense. You can give up 16 points and still think you're going to win. No, we're pushing every panic button in sight about the Pats' offense, which has played two complete games this season and looked like itself for a total of about six minutes. Tom Brady, rushed for most of the game, kept either missing receivers or having his passes clank off their hands. Moss was invisible, the only time we noticed Joey Galloway was on one of the aforementioned clanks, and only Julian Edelman showed us much of anything, doing his best Wes Welker imitation with 98 hard-fought receiving yards. (Wes himself was on the sidelines looking injured and glum.)

And the football commentator's favorite stat - "intangibles" - went 100% the Jets' way. They played like a team that needed and desperately wanted to win. The Patriots played like a team confident in their ability to turn it on when they needed it. And then they couldn't. And didn't.

And penalties - oh, those penalties. How does a Bill Belichick team that's not in a parallel universe get whistled for multiple (and in some cases consecutive) delays-of-game? Bill admitted afterwards that Rex Ryan "outcoached" him. This is going to feel like a full week of rewatching that scene in Superman II when Clark Kent gets his powerless ass handed to him by that loudmouth redneck in the diner. Maybe this will end the same way, with Belichick throwing Rex Ryan headfirst into a pinball machine, but right now it's hard to see how. This is going to be a long week.

Oh, the Red Sox won. So we got that goin' for us, which is nice.