Calm Down New England Patriots Fans: It's Still NFL Preseason.

Those Pats do look really good. Football in Florida has taken a real beating the past few weeks. The Dolphins are in a state of flux and a rough season appears on the horizon. The University Of Miami is fending off accusations of some of the worst NCAA violations in recent memory and the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are recovering from a pair of pre-season drubbings both at the hands of those New England Patriots. 

47-12 and 31-14. Those are the scores of the New England Patriots first two preseason games and while preseason games don't mean much it's worth noting that the Patriots of summer 2011 sure do look a lot like the Patriots of Mid-October through the end of 2010. That look would be "dominant". 

Of course, it all starts with the man behind center—Tom Brady. Brady who has barely played this preseason has been nothing short of well...himself when he has played. That's good news for Patriots fans and bad news for just about everyone else because over the past decade the only quarterback that could even make a rational claim to being as good as Brady is Manning (Not Eli). 

Yes, Aaron Rodgers was amazing in last year's Super Bowl and yes Ben Roethlisberger has a great resume. Both those guys weren't in the league for most of the first part of the previous decade though. So while both men could possibly finish their careers with remarkable resumes, as of now, they're not in the same league.

All of this sounds great and while we all know that preseason games are largely meaningless, I think we can all agree that we'd rather see our teams go out and play great than play poorly. It's still only August though. 

In spite of all the dominance displayed by New England last season once the playoffs got underway, the Pats came up short. Woefully short. One and done to their most hated rivals. The New York Jets, who came into Foxboro still smarting from a humiliating 45-3 loss in early December, left 28-21 winners in a game that was not nearly as close as the score would indicate.

As fans we all want our teams to play well, and we want them to do that all the time. That's why seemingly rational baseball fans freak out following a loss even if their team is on pace for 105 wins. Football is different though. In football, especially the playoffs, one loss is worth freaking out over and all the points scored in advance of that loss can't help you.

The NFL isn't only about the best team. It's about the team that's playing the best in late January and early February. A team needs to win in the early months, but as last year's Super Bowl Champs the Green Bay Packers can attest to, a team doesn't need to be playing it's best football in those beginning stages of the season.

The Packers, in case anyone needs to be reminded, were a 10-6 wild card team last season. Among those six losses were defeats to such powerhouses as the 6-10 Washington Redskins and the 6-10 Detroit Lions. The Packers still made it to the post season and is where they started playing their best football, with the culmination happening in a 31-25 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.

That's really what it's all about and while watching the Patriots run over opponents every week is fun—the team, the fans, the owner, and of course the players would all really like to add another Lombardi trophy this coming February. If that happens than these wins will be looked upon as valuable stepping stones, but if not, then they're really meaningless.