It's the losses at home to PIT and TEN that do it for me. Lamar throws the first game away, and the offense can't put the Titans away in the 2nd. Flip those two games and we're talking about their chances of getting the 3 seed instead of sneaking in as a WC.
While those are games we should have won, I also think those are good teams that I'm "OK" with losing to. The Patriots loss to me is just so bad.
I mean I guess the Cleveland loss last year was a "bad loss" too, but it was the first game I've really seen in the Lamar era where we played a clearly vastly inferior team and got pushed around and beaten. We've largely avoided the "bad losses" in the Lamar era. With Flacco, we were pretty much guaranteed a loss or two every year against an inferior team.
If you told me we'd go 12-4, with losses to KC, TEN and PIT, including one PIT loss with a COVID outbreak, I would have been completely fine with that. I wouldn't have been happy that pretty much all of our losses were against the best AFC competition we faced, but at least I'd understand it. Losing to a well below average team like NE, especially when its literally like the best year ever to play them, is disappointing, and it'll be what I think of when I think of the reasons we missed out (if we do).
While I'm largely hanging my hat on PIT beating Indianapolis next week, I did realize this morning that PIT clinches the division with a win tonight. I suspect they'll still play starters in week 16 without an outside chance at the #1 seed still, but I think that will fade as they get into week 17.