John McCall/Sun Sentinel

For the first time since 2008, the Patriots will not be part of the NFL postseason.

New England continued to trot out an offense that couldn’t compete with some high school teams in this state in a 22-12 loss to the Dolphins on Sunday. The lackluster effort leaves the Patriots at 6-8 with two games left against the Bills (next Monday night) and Jets.

Just to make things a bit worse, the Bills won their first AFC East title since 1995 on Saturday night, ending the 11-year run at the top for New England.

“Yeah, well, it’s obviously a disappointing day for us,” head coach Bill Belichick said. “We didn’t do anything really well enough to win the game. We just didn’t coach well enough. Didn’t … missed opportunities and Miami was just better than we were today. That’s the bottom line. We all … just came up short. To win these games, we got to do a better job. I got to do a better job and collectively as a staff and a team, we’ve got to perform better than this.”

The Patriots had 303 total yards of offense, but Cam Newton was just 17-of-27 for 209 yards and once again didn’t throw a touchdown. On the other side, rookie Tua Tagovailoa was decent, throwing for 145 yards and an interception with two short rushing touchdowns.

“”It’s a tough loss. It’s just unfortunate. It’s unfortunate,” Newton said when asked his thoughts on the Patriots officially being eliminated from the postseason. “But no need to dwell on what’s the obvious. There’s a lot of good things that happened in the game. We just didn’t do enough and that’s what it comes down to.

“Obviously, it’s frustrating. But like I said, I don’t want to just dwell on what’s the obvious. This whole season has kind of been the tale of just coming up just a tad bit short. Call it however you want to do. We still got guys that’s new to this system. We still got guys that’s young. We still got guys that just don’t get it and we still got guys that’s battling their tails off each and every week. We just got to keep building on the optimism of what we can become and just move from there.”

Two Patriots punts and a Dolphins punt accounted for most of the action in the first quarter until JC Jackson picked off Tagovailoa at the 4-yard line on a 3rd-and-goal, negating a 15-play, 95-yard drive. The Pats moved downfield for the first six minutes of the second quarter on the ensuing drive and got a 45-yard field goal from Nick Folk to go up 3-0 with 8:50 left in the half.

Miami had -6 yards in three plays on the ensuing drive and the Patriots immediately took over again. Newton moved the team 42 yards in six plays but again had to settle for a Folk field goal from 36-yards out. New England caught a break before the field goal as Newton fumbled on 3rd-and-8 and Miami appeared to have an 86-yard scoop and score touchdown. Ultimately it was ruled that the ball was going back to the Pats fo a 4th down and Folk put the Pats up 6-0.

Miami had an 11-play response but missed a field goal, handing the Patriots a somewhat stunning 6-0 halftime lead.

That lead wasn’t going to last though, as Miami opened the third quarter with a nine-play drive that ended with a Salvon Ahmed 1-yard run to make it 7-6. The drive consisted of eight running plays, and the Dolphins were just getting started. Miami ultimately racked up 250 rushing yards as a team, with Ahmed running for 122 of them and Matt Breida adding 86.

As ugly as it looked for the majority of the day, another field goal from Folk with 4:20 left in the third put New England up 9-7 and the narrow path to the playoffs was still alive. It all came crumbling down in true Newman-like fashion in the fourth quarter though, with a 14-play, 90-yard drive capped by a 3-yard Tua run to make it 15-9 on a two-point conversion.

Folk kicked a 42-yard field goal with 9:03 left to cut it to 15-12, but another methodical 11-play march ended with a Tua 1-yard TD, ending the Pats’ playoff hopes with just over three minutes left in the game.

So, what now? Well, for starters, Jarret Stidham absolutely should be the starter against Buffalo next Monday night. If Bill Belichick is going to continue starting Newton simply because he’s been a good Patriot in terms of dealing with the media, then the past 20-plus years of “doing what’s best for the team,” has been complete BS.

Stephon Gilmore appeared to hurt his knee on Sunday too, but later on it was reported that he may have avoided a serious injury. If he can play the Pats will probably put him out there, they don’t need to worry about further injury considering he probably won’t be here next year anyways, but it would be nice to see him avoid major injury and get paid somewhere else.

These are the types of thoughts and decisions you begin pondering the week of Christmas when you’re a fan of one of the garbage, mediocre franchises in the NFL. This 2020 Patriots season has been a fitting one for 2020, and it’ll be interesting to see how the head coach who seemingly doesn’t have any of the answers anymore puts the pieces back together.

“Just got to regroup and keep fighting. It is what it is. I think we’ve got to just keep fighting because that’s who you want to be as a man,” said Devin McCourty. “We’ve got a lot of stand-up guys in this locker room, so we just got to keep fighting.”