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It is the aftermath. Yes, and Dedy Doody, and the Patriots are basking in the aftermath and the afterglow of a 21 to 18 win over the Steelers, Phil.

The number one question that needs answering now is, what does it all mean?

Does this wipe out the Colts and the Saints and the Cowboys and the commanders and the Raiders and the Chargers

and Robert Kraft said with his head down in Frankfurt?

No, of course not.

Those will live on in our memories forever, Tom, and the 2023 season will continue to be.

And at the end of the day, we'll be a disappointment.

However, my argument after a win like this one for a team like this one is as much as you want to start the roster over from scratch in 2024, you can't.

And there are too many people who will be here next year who still need to learn what it is to finish a season, who still need to learn what competitive resiliency is, who still need to learn how to win when you're talking about some of the young players who haven't won a damn thing in this league.

Winning as many games as possible for them will be helpful in the long run.

Now, it hurts your draft position in all likelihood, and that might not be what's best

for the long-term future of the franchise, but you can't ask the players to lose.

You can't ask the coaches to try to lose.

So when you win a game like this one, it means a lot to those guys in the locker room.

Phil, coming out of the loss to Indy and Frankfurt,

conversations that I had really strongly indicated that this would be it for Bill Belichick

and that at the end of the season, there would be a parting of the ways,

not during the season, but after.

Really nothing between Frankfurt and the ensuing week when Mack Jones started again,

did anything to change that conversation. And then the six to nothing lost to the charges last

week kind of continued it. But now if we see a Patriots team that started the season here near my

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