COMMENTARY
It’s a safe bet that Sunday’s clunker from the Patriots forced many among New England’s football fandom to alter their original plans for this coming Saturday night. Only the most pessimistic of the prescient could’ve seen this coming, after all, and envisioned a scenario in which the once-mighty locals would lose to the lowly Dolphins and in the process bid adieu to their first-round playoff bye.
The Pats haven’t worked on wild card weekend since 2009, and a week after seeming to reassert their supremacy against the Bills it looked nearly certain that streak would endure the decade.