Every week Boston Globe Today Sports Host and Globe sports columnist Christopher L. Gasper weighs in on a notable sports topic in the segment “Write or Wrong?” Check out his perspective in the video above.
In a season full of unknowns and missing answers, here’s what we know: This 2024 Patriots team can’t reach the high bar set by Bill Belichick and Tom Brady’s teams.
So we need to lower our expectations and the bar for success for Foxborough’s football team in 2024. The Patriots’ success will not be defined by their record after 17 games – their total number of wins and losses – which is probably as unflattering as an incorrect rendition of the national anthem.
Regardless of the final results in the first year of the Jerod Mayo era, this will be a successful season for the Patriots if they can end up calling quarterback Drake Maye their beacon of hope and rightful successor to Brady. That’s all. That’s the answer. That’s all it takes for 2024 to be included in the Patriots’ positive development column.
It would be a success if Mayo and Eliot Wolf, the executive vice president of player personnel, could look at Maye, the No. 3 overall pick, and say he’s “The Next Guy” in January 2025.
Mayo was asked on Friday what would define this season as successful. “I really don’t want to focus too far into the future,” he said. “What I can say is that the team you see this week, you want them to get better every week and play their best game in December.”
That’s an understandable and common answer. But if that best football doesn’t mean Maye looks like a franchise QB in the making, then the team’s best football won’t mean much in the grand scheme of a major rebuild.
Boston Globe Today Sports airs every Friday at 5 p.m. on NESN and is available to stream on demand. on the Globe website.
Segment produced by Derrick Willand.
Christopher L. Gasper is a columnist for the Globe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @cgasper and on Instagram @cgaspersports.
