For Pats, playoffs are spelled J-E-T-S

FOXBOROUGH -- In a league of never-ending story lines, the final chapter has brought us to this: Bill Belichick likely needs the help of Eric Mangini to get into the playoffs.

You can’t make this stuff up, and in the NFL, you clearly do not need to. It’s the Non-Fiction League. Everything is quite real. One team can thoroughly wipe out another, 47-7, and the loser is the one guaranteed a playoff spot despite one of the most disgraceful performances in the history of professional sports. The losing team's backup quarterback is a Heisman Trophy winner while the winning team's starter was his collegiate backup, offering further proof of Belichick’s longstanding theory that all that matters is the moment before you and the task at hand.

There is simply no way of knowing what will come next.

"We would like to be in the playoffs, I am not saying that. We would like to be in the playoffs. That’s what we’re here for," Belichick said yesterday at Gillette Stadium. "I think our guys are playing hard, preparing well and they are playing very competitively. But, we are not in it with Arizona at this point. They are in a different conference."

And on this particular day, the Pats were in a different league.

Roughly three hours later, the Pats had their portal into January when the Seattle Seahawks knocked off the reeling New York Jets by a 13-3 score within a swing pass of Puget Sound. In New England, it might as well have been the shot heard round the world. Next up for the Jets are the Miami Dolphins, who just happen to be tied with the Patriots for first place in the AFC East. And oh, by the way, the Dolphins are this year’s NFL answer to the 1967 Red Sox, possessors of a 1-15 record a year ago (and, thus, the No. 1 pick in the draft) who now are within one win from a division championship and in complete control of their destiny.

Miami’s quarterback next week will be none other than Chad Pennington, the man whom the Jets cast off before acquiring Brett Favre, he of the gray beard and (once?) golden gun. So now Favre runs the risk of missing the playoffs while Pennington is on the verge of making it, only adding to the intrigue of what will be a typically cataclysmic Week 17 in the NFL season.

Take note, Detroit Lions.

There is hope.

Do the Patriots deserve to be in the playoffs? You bet they do, from the coach to the quarterback to the kicker to the running backs. For all of the talk about the potential fruitlessness of an 11-5 season, 10 wins really should have been enough. In the NFL, the line between legitimate postseason viability is drawn somewhere between 9-7 and 10-6, and the Patriots have crossed it. This is true despite a considerable amount of adversity, no matter how soft the schedule, because we long ago learned the lessons taught us by a man who, appropriately enough, has significant ties to the Pats, Dolphins, and Jets entering the final week of this season.

In the words of Bill Parcells, you are what your record says you are.

And as Belichick himself reiterated roughly a year ago at this time after the Pats completed a 16-0 regular season with a victory over the New York Giants, there are no easy games in this league.

All of this brings us back to Cassel, who stands as Exhibit B for the indisputable argument of You Just Never Know. (The man Cassel replaced, Tom Brady, forever will remain Exhibit A.) A seventh-round draft pick and the 230th overall selection of the 2005 draft, the man who might have been Mr. Irrelevant has proven anything but. On a day when the Patriots abused the Cardinals with an assortment of screens and short passes, Cassel finished 20 of 36 for 345 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions. Over the last six games, Cassel has completed 58.8 percent of his passes (143 for 243) for 1,815 yards (an average of 302.5 per game) while throwing 14 touchdowns and four interceptions. During that span, he also has rushed 27 times for 128 yards, an average of 4.7 yards per carry.

Yesterday, in the irony of all ironies, Cassel came off the field (for precautionary measures) just as Matt Leinart was going on, the latter now assuming the role of mop-up man and his Heisman Trophy serving as nothing more than an elaborate paperweight.

"I think Matt Leinart is a great player and he’ll be a great player in the NFL,’’ Cassel said of his former roadblock. "He did a great job at USC. We won two national championships with him as a starting quarterback at USC, so they obviously made the right decision."

Nonetheless, yesterday triggered a succession of questions, none of which has a correct answer:

How might the Southern Cal Trojans have fared those years if Pete Carroll chose Cassel, and not Leinart, as his starting quarterback?

Would Leinart now be the man replacing Brady?

Would the Jets have been better off with Pennington and would Favre have been better off on a beach somewhere?

Most incredible of all, have the Patriots missed Brady nearly as much as they have missed, say, Asante Samuel, Adalius Thomas, or Rodney Harrison?

In the Belichickian world, of course, each of those questions is nothing more than a needless exercise because there is no point in wasting energy on what might have been. All that matters now is what is. Come Sunday, the Patriots must beat Buffalo while hoping for losses from either the surprising Dolphins or salivating Baltimore Ravens, the latter of whom host the disappointing Jacksonville Jaguars. Belichick’s best chance appears to require him rooting for Mangini, though we should all approach this weekend carefully.

In this league, after all, nothing is ever what it seems.