Jabrill Peppers says the quiet part out loud in embarrassing postgame admission

Give Jabrill Peppers a ton of credit for saying what needed to be said. The New England Patriots are hot garbage, as this team stinks to high heaven. The Evil Empire is a shell of what it used to be under Bill Belichick. In the wake of Tom Brady leaving Foxborough, the Patriots have had a rough go of it in the 2020s. Cam Newton was washed. Mac Jones isn't it and the same thing applies to Bailey Zappe.

After losing a low-scoring affair to the New York Giants 10-7 in East Rutherford last Sunday, Peppers dapped up Saquon Barkley in the postgame exchange, telling the Giants star running back just how much the Patriots suck. New England fell to a disastrous 2-9 on the season in this defeat. The Patriots are a bottom four team in the NFL, alongside the likes of the Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers.

With Belichick firmly in his 70s, we have to wonder if he will be asked to retire by either owner Robert Kraft or his heir apparent son Jonathan Kraft in the coming years. The Patriots have sadly devolved into what they were pre-Tom Brady. They were essentially the Atlanta Falcons before, and probably after, Arthur Blank bought the team. New England is going nowhere fast, as Peppers is totally right.

Here is the clip of the exchange Peppers had with Barkley mid-field after last Sunday's awful loss.

The worst part is I can't trust the Patriots to make the right pick in the top five of the 2024 NFL Draft.

Jabrill Peppers knows the New England Patriots are the worst AFC team

It was slightly before my time, but this feels like history repeating itself to some extent in the NFL. In the late 1980s, the Dallas Cowboys were horrific. They were circling the drain as an NFC franchise under Bum Bright's ownership. Dallas still employed an aging Tom Landry as its head coach. Once Bright sold the team to Jerry Jones, the Cowboys new owner fired Landry to hire Jimmy Johnson.

Not to say Jonathan Kraft is going to fire Belichick immediately upon taking over for his father, but the Patriots may need to go in a new direction fast, as this is just not working. Ideally, Belichick has earned the right to retire from the coaching profession on his own accord. However, his friend and coaching contemporary Nick Saban is still winning at a prolifically high level in college at Alabama.

There may be more advantages available for Saban in the college game at a place like Alabama than Belichick in New England, but this is the former Evil Empire we are talking about?! For the Patriots to be this dead of a franchise this soon after Brady left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is staggering. Peppers' alma mater of Michigan may be crushing it, but his current team is the absolute pits now.

Belichick may cut Peppers out of spite for this clip leaking, but who is really to blame for all this?