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The Patriots have been in a state of uncertainty before, and things tended to work out

In the quest for context, and maybe some comfort too as Bill Belichick takes a — well, let’s call it perplexing — approach to recalibrating the Patriots offense after longtime coordinator Josh McDaniels’s departure, I found myself thinking about other times during his 23-year tenure when the team entered a season with significant questions.

The Patriots, of course, enjoyed unprecedented success when Belichick and Tom Brady worked in tandem, winning six championships and reaching nine Super Bowls from 2000-19. The Patriots were so consistently excellent — I still don’t think their achievements are put in proper perspective in the context of NFL history — that it might be easy to overlook those periodic times when a question mark hovered over a season, even when Brady was here.