E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Lost Weekend By Christopher Young

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

— from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II

Lots of cities are used to their teams going down in emphatic defeat. Here in New England, it’s been more of a foreign concept, especially concerning the region’s football team. So it was that NE endured one of the most disappointing weekends in recent memory thanks to Sunday’s double-dip by the AL East–leading Red Sox and the defending Super Bowl–champion Patriots. It was such an odd feeling for sports commentators that some local wags did research and — sure ’nuff, it had been a long stretch. Both teams had not lost on the same day since September 2003.

Two years. As recently as 2000, the Sox and Pats suffered same-day losses three times within a four-week period without much fanfare, and now we find ourselves bemoaning the first time it’s happened in a couple of years. Of course, it’s all about expectations and history, and with both teams still defending champs — and the Patriots having lost only three regular-season games since that September 2003 loss in Washington — winning is what we’ve come to expect.

That’s what made New England’s 27-17 away loss to the Carolina Panthers so shocking: fans of Bill Belichick’s squad didn’t know how to digest their team’s across-the-board poor performance. Who were those impostors, anyway? The Patriots in recent years have flourished by playing mistake-free football and waiting for the opponent to make the gaffes. But on Sunday, it was the Pats exhibiting a slew of sloppy penalties, poorly thrown or dropped passes, special-teams breakdowns, and even — gasp! — questionable coaching decisions. None of these was a hallmark of a Belichick-coached team, and yet there they were, surrendering 20 unanswered points from late in the first quarter until midway through the third.

The game felt ominous almost from the outset, just like last Halloween’s 34-20 loss in Pittsburgh (which broke New England’s 21-game win streak). In that game and in Sunday’s, the Patriots played poorly in every aspect and saw every break go the other team’s way, yet still found themselves in the game until the late stages.

And that’s what should be encouraging to Patriots fans: their team cannot play any worse than they did that day, yet they still weren’t getting blown out to a damn good team on the road. If you embrace that philosophy, and assuming the level of play returns to any sense of normalcy, any rematch down the road will likely have a different result — as evidenced by the Pats’ 41-27 manhandling of the Steelers in the AFC title game last January.

People tend to forget — amidst all of the hoopla surrounding the Patriots’ three Super Bowl victories in this decade — that you can’t win ’em all. Not since the 1973 Dolphins has a team done that, and that was a different time and place. Fact: teams win, teams lose. Happens to everyone; even here.

Yet there were troubling questions were raised by Sunday’s loss to the Panthers:

a) Corey Dillon’s ineffectiveness (14 carries, 36 yards), and the sense that he was going down on negligible tackles rather than exhibiting his trademark toughness;

b) The coaching staff’s reluctance to challenge two controversial calls that could have turned the game around, but instead derailed unfolding momentum;

c) Brady’s wayward tosses (a deceptive 23-for-44, 270 yards passing).

Another Sunday in Pittsburgh is the last place one would want to resolve such issues, but expect Belichick’s bunch to show up nonetheless — with improved effort.

Meanwhile, the Pats’ neighbors to the north continue to walk the division-leading tightrope. The Red Sox are exactly where they were three weeks ago — a game and a half up on the Yanks — and yet the local yahoos are preparing for the worst. As mentioned previously, the local nine has led the division for all but one day since late June, and still the non-believers think their team is going to blow this thing.

Over the same weekend that the Patriots went down in rare defeat and the Sox endured bookend maulings, Boston College’s gridsters blew their chance for a top-10 upset of Florida State and the MLS–leading Revs lost 5-4 to the fifth-place Metrostars. But some good news has emerged.

I just saved a bunch of money by switching my car insurance.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com