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The Patriots are not going undefeated because their second strings are going to play against the Giants fighting for playoff position in week 17.

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Previously I agreed with that assessment - that the Pats will have no incentive late in the year and therefore drop one.

Now, I'm not so sure. And it's related to the topic of this thread.

There's any number of reasons why this team is piling it on their opponents this year:

Win This Game The other team isn't going to stop scoring, so it makes sense to score on every opportunity (which has been stated well here by many).

The Middle Finger Hypothesis Some sort of "us against the world" pathos driving them to rub it in.

Legacy Already accomplished championships, but knowing there are detractors out there over any number of things (the old not-dominant argument) this team wants to leave its mark.

Pure Professionalism A veteran team that buys into the system and simply wants to execute on every play. They are good and so they keep scoring, even late in games.

Humble Pie This one has not really been talked about, and I think it is related to the last point. Recall from the Browns game, they scored a pick six late, after having tried and failed to reach the endzone on a 4th and goal. I really think that series was calculated by Belichick as a way to motivate. Even if they had scored, he could say "Don't get too high on yourself, you had trouble scoring against a .500 team with nothing to play for, already down by 10 with 2 minutes left. What makes you think you can score when you need it to win against a playoff team?"

Arguably, any of these would be reasons why they would try to win a game at the end of the season to stay undefeated.

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Yeah I was thinking the same thing. I think whether this has been the F-U season will be answered by whether Belichick benches the starters for those games (I love how its a given that they will have their playoff picture locked up). There has been a measure of perfection that he has been striving towards but I'm not sure it will apply to meaningless games at the end of the regular season as opposed to the playoffs and super bowl.