This rout of the Chargers had everything Bill Belichick loves about football - The Boston Globe

Bill Belichick liked what he saw from his Patriots on Sunday.Kelvin Kuo/Associated Press

They aren’t going to make it to the Super Bowl, they aren’t going to win the AFC East, and they are still unlikely to participate in the NFL playoffs.

But the 2020 COVID-19 Patriots are emerging as one of Bill Belichick’s favorite teams.

Sunday in Inglewood, Calif. — across the street from the spot where Kevin McHale flattened Kurt Rambis in the 1984 NBA Finals — we saw another Special Teams Palooza as the Patriots demolished the Los Angeles Chargers, 45-0, at SoFi Stadium.

This beatdown had all the stuff Bill loves: Blocked field goals returned for touchdowns; punts downed inside the 10; punts returned for touchdowns; Gunner Olszewski, the undrafted guy from Bemidji State, scoring two touchdowns and making a special teams tackle in the fourth quarter. It was a Special Teams Tour De Force that will hang in Belichick’s Leather Helmet Louvre near the Sankaty Head Lighthouse in Nantucket.

“We try to have the edge every week on special teams,” Belichick deadpanned. “That’s our goal every week. You just hope you can find a way and do something that will really impact the game. It’s nice when it happens.”

The Bradyless Patriots have won four of five and have clawed back to 6-6 after bottoming out when they trailed the tanking Jets by 10 points with six minutes left in the Meadowlands on “Monday Night Football.” The ragtag Pats came back to win that one at the buzzer and have since morphed into a team Bill loves perhaps even more than the Masters of the Universe who went 16-0 in 2007.

The annihilation of the Chargers was easily the highlight of this first Season Without Tom. It was a day when New England pinned LA near its own goal line with perfectly placed punts. It was a day when Olszewski took a punt 70 yards into LA’s end zone, then made a tackle after catching a touchdown pass from the Pats backup quarterback. It was a day when J.C. Jackson, another undrafted free agent, registered his league-leading seventh interception. New England’s no-name defense embarrassed rookie quarterback Justin Herbert for the full 60 minutes.

Poor Chargers coach Anthony Lynn. Belichick made the beleaguered Bolts boss coach look like a Trump lawyer with an empty briefcase trying to Stop the Steal. It was the worst loss in Charger history. Today would be a good day for Lynn to turn off his phone.

Belichick also pantsed the dopes in the media (like me).

We told Bill to get rid of Olszewski as punt returner. Can’t play. Negative yards. Bad decisions. There was a reason he was undrafted out of Bemidji State. The kid from Nolan Ryan’s high school in Alvin, Texas, had been a minor league pitcher in the Braves system and we thought it was time for him to go back to baseball.

But Bill was right and we were wrong. Olszewski had three returns for 145 yards, caught a touchdown, and made a tackle. This came one week after a 58-yard return which should have been a touchdown, but was shortchanged by a ridiculous blindside block penalty.

“He’s not a big guy but he’s got a big heart and he plays hard,’' said Belichick.

There’s more, of course. Wise-guy scribes and talk radio barkers spent the past week begging Belichick to replace Cam Newton with Jarrett Stidham. It was obvious to all of us. Time for a change. Cam had only four touchdown passes in the first 12 weeks of the season. Newton’s quarterback rating against the Cardinals looked like Jackie Bradley Jr.’s batting average. We had seen enough. Cam was killing the Patriots.

Belichick knew better. He knew that Newton still gives the Patriots the best chance to win. Belichick and Josh McDaniels went back to the running game and figured out a way to get the most out of the popular Newton without losing their locker room.

Newton was nothing special (12 of 19 for 69 yards passing), but he again was good enough to win. He went back to using his legs and threw short, accurate passes. He ran for 48 yards, including two touchdowns.

Belichick finally gave us Stidham, but only when it was 38-0 with eight minutes left. Stid threw the 38-yard strike to Olszewski.

Oh, let’s not forget N’Keal Harry, who we officially declared the worst draft bust in Patriots history. Harry, a first-round pick in 2019, caught a touchdown pass from Newton in the third quarter.

The big win in LA will breathe life into the Patriots “path” to the playoffs. Between now and Thursday (LA Rams), you will read all kinds of metrics about the Pats’ chances if they run the table and finish 10-6.

Good luck with that. The Patriots are 6-6 and the three AFC wild-card teams at this hour are Cleveland (9-3), Miami and Indianapolis(both 8-4). That’s bad math for New England.

“I think our entire team has gotten better pretty much weekly,” said Belichick. “We’ve just got to keep grinding. I think with our work ethic and our attitude and willingness to try to improve . . . we’ve been able to do a better job of coaching and playing complementary football.”

The coach knows you don’t win the Super Bowl every season. He doesn’t have Brady. Eight of his players opted out because of the coronavirus. He doesn’t have blue chips and thoroughbreds. This year it’s about something else. It’s been an extremely uneven season, devoid of our traditional Lombardi Trophy hopes.

But with 12 down and four to play, the Pats have only one less win than the Brady Buccaneers and if those two teams played tonight, I’d take my chances with Belichick and his vagabonds.

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Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @dan_shaughnessy.

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This rout of the Chargers had everything Bill Belichick loves about football - The Boston Globe
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