“Falling on a Knife” must have been a real health concern in Oscar Hammerstein’s old neighborhood. Whenever the legendary librettist needed a quick character exit, but without implicating another, falling on a knife was the literary device of choice. Jud Fry? Billy Bigelow? Both dead by self-shiv.

The point being, as an NFL starting quarterback, JP Losman has a great future in musical theater.

The adjective doesn’t exist to truly describe the level of incompetence beheld in that one play Sunday, when Losman mindlessly fumbled the game away against the Jets when most any other option would give the Bills the win.

It was mind-boggling, incomprehensible, unbelievable, and yet so dramatic and so brutally idiotic, it felt predictable.

Right after the play, Pats fans expressed their disgust, collectively thinking we knew we couldn’t count on the Bills. And a Bills fan buddy told his wife moments before the play, “Watch. We’re still going to lose this game.”

There are these times in sports when we forget what we’re watching is live, and more prone to havoc than we realize. We watch football games with an expectation of order, that the game should go in an orderly fashion according to plan. Plays should be executed as drawn up, and any result outside of that plan - fumbles, interceptions, special teams touchdowns - are shocks to the system, even though we see these things in every game we watch. The irony is the unexpected is what keeps us watching every week.

Compound that with the sports movie glory collections in our heads (Jimmy Chitwood making the last-second shot, Roy Hobbs hitting the home run in the ninth - author Bernard Malamud had him striking out, incidentally), and it’s a wonder our synapses know at which points during a game they should fire.

The end product is a muddle where any result is one we saw coming.

So Losman’s fumble, then, was both a surprise and par for the course. Bill Belichick would probably describe it as a “football play.”

What’s more difficult is apportioning blame. Losman gets a lion’s share, of course. You don’t go that many years in the league with as much as experience as he’s had to blank out in execution.

Many want Bills coach Dick Jauron’s head on a platter as well, a sentiment emboldened with the news his contract was extended. But the call really wasn’t that bad. The two-minute warning was going to stop the clock anyway, so all Jauron was doing was trusting that the guy he had throw 32 times in the previous 58 minutes would know what to do in this situation.

The play has drawn comparisons to the notorious Joe Pisarcik fumble, except fans are clamoring that the Bills should have called the same play now that got Pisarcik in trouble in ‘78. No play is 100 percent safe. Belichick probably would have described the Pisarcik gaffe as a “football play” as well.

This was nothing more than Jud Losman falling on his own knife. Unfortunately for the Patriots, it increased the chances the fat lady would soon be singing.

Dan Snapp’s ‘Direct Snapp’ appears weekly on Patriots Daily. He can be reached at dan@patriotsdaily.com.

My daughter said the F-word last week. Here we were Thursday, happily watching the game, and out it blurted:

“Daddy, did the man just say, ‘Brett Favre’?”

Oh dear. We knew this day would come. A little bit before I expected, but here we are. Deep breath.

No, honey, there is no Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy is just bribery so you won’t freak out at the blood, and the Easter Bunny? Well, I have no earthly clue what the Easter Bunny’s supposed to be about. There’s also no pot of gold at rainbow’s end, and Mickey Mouse is actually just some girl sweating her butt off in a mouse suit in the Florida sun.

And yes, sadly there is a Brett Favre.

Turns out Brett Favre is one friend’s favorite player, and being so thrilled to hear the name on TV (yeah, just wait, honey), my daughter had to tell her best friend about it.

“Brett Barf?” he responded. Whether a character judgment or an allusion to Favre’s Vicodin days, I must say, prescient lad.

Actually, I come to praise Brett Favre. No, really.

In the Jets’ win against the Patriots a week ago, Favre had one of his most impressive days ever. Certainly not statwise, paling in comparison to a number of games. But he played a nice, efficient game, checking down to secondary receivers, not forcing balls, and generally taking what the Patriots defense gave him.

In stark contrast to his legend, he wasn’t drawing up plays in the dirt, he wasn’t winging it, and he actually seemed to grasp the concept of nickel defenses. It even looked like he just wasn’t having fun out there.

by Dan Snapp
Dan@patriotsdaily.com

Tell me you didn’t think it. 

Tell me, as Adam Vinatieri’s unexpected (to put it mildly) 52-yard field goal sailed through the uprights Sunday night, you didn’t hear in your head the retired, red-nosed, paper-shuffling anchor with his most tiresome of bromides:

Why can’t we get players like that?

Fortunately, we did. In fact, the Patriots had their cake and ate it, too: they had Vinatieri for the bulk of his possibly Hall of Fame career, and then replaced him with somebody younger, cheaper, and - for the past two-and-a-half years, anyway - better. And remember, it’s not like the Patriots cut Vinatieri loose; his leaving was of his own choosing.

Like Larry Bird’s Indian Summer game against Portland in 1992, there was a nostalgic aspect to Vinatieri’s renewed vigor, even though it came at the Patriots’ expense. It was good to see the old man still had it in him.

But Vinatieri’s kick was the exception, not the rule. The 52-yarder was his first over 50 yards in two years (he had two over 50 in the 2006 playoffs), and he went all of the 2007 regular season without hitting anything over 40 yards before finally connecting on a 46-yarder against San Diego in the playoffs. And quite the irony that a good tailwind at Lucas Oil Stadium came to the aid of a man hoping a dome would extend his career.

Vinatieri’s time as an elite kicker is over. He had a glorious year in ‘06 with the Colts, including a five field goal performance against the Ravens in the divisional round. But his average has dropped each year, as well as his range. At 35, he should be around for a while; it’s not unusual for a good kicker to play into his 40s, as Jan Stenerud and Gary Anderson did. But he’s no longer the Adamatic of old.

In the meantime, we have Stephen Gostkowski, who was recently named October’s Special Teams Player of the Month. He’s raised his average each season, from 76.9 percent in ‘06 to a sterling 95 percent this year.  He showed he could hit the big kicks, like the game-winner against San Diego in the waning minutes of the ‘06 divisional playoffs, or the two fourth quarter field goals against the Colts in the AFC championship. And of course, there’s the value of his kickoffs, with nearly as many touchbacks in eight games as he had all last season.

At the time of Vinatieri’s signing with the Colts, Peter King claimed Adam alone would be the reason for three more wins for the Colts, and ostensibly by extension, three more losses for the Patriots. Three more wins for the Colts would be a pretty mean feat, seeing as how they had just gone 14-2 the previous season. Let alone the ludicrous idea that a kicker, even one Canton-bound, could change two teams’ fortunes so dramatically.

The outcome? The Colts went 12-4. The Patriots, 10-6 in ‘05, went 12-4.

There are a handful of personnel shortcomings since ‘05 for which we could critique the Patriots. Replacing Vinatieri with Gostkowski isn’t one of them.

by Dan Snapp
dan@patriotsdaily.com

You never know what memories of a football game you’ll stash away long after the contest’s completed. The big plays typically get top billing - the bomb, the interception, the game-ending sack - but often, it’s less-likelier suspects that resonate. It’s a subtle part of the game’s beauty.

Early in the fourth quarter Sunday, after the Rams went up 16-13 on the Patriots, an old familiar feeling washed over: the Patriots are going to win this.

There was no particular rhyme or reason for it at the time. The Patriots had just consummated an abysmal third quarter by giving up an onside kick, two interceptions, the ball on downs, and ultimately the lead. Moreover, their first possession of the fourth featured two dropped passes, a sack and punt.

Didn’t matter. The feeling persisted.

And it was familiar not from last year, when a different kind of “They’re going to win this” feeling would hit, usually in the first quarter. No, this was a feeling returning from 2003 and 2004.

Despite their matching 14-2 records those two years, the Patriots were often undersold as a league power, as they rarely blew anybody out. A common win would be them holding an 8- to 11-point lead early in the fourth, and then watching the opposition use up most of remaining regulation getting one of the two scores they needed.

To beat the Patriots back then, you had to knock them out early. If they were lingering, they were going to win. That old feeling said as much.

by Dan Snapp
dan@patriotsdaily.com

Remember the halcyon days of yore, when people routinely compared Tom Brady to Joe Montana? These days we’re left resurrecting the Ghosts of Patriots Misfortune Past.

Who does Matt Cassel remind you of most? Drew Bledsoe holding onto the ball too long, Tony Eason turtling under pressure, or Hugh Millen losing his bearings on fourth down? Is Deltha O’Neal the worst Pats corner since Duane Starks, Antonio Langham, or Chris Canty? And is Richard Seymour turning into Kenneth “Game Day” Sims before our eyes?

As our eyes tell us, and as the stats back up, the Patriots just aren’t a very good team. We suspected as much during preseason, but were willing to brush that off as just that - preseason. Surely with Brady back for the opener, they’d revert back to the dominance of ‘07.

But the blowouts to Miami and San Diego taught us something else: with or without Brady, this team has serious issues to resolve. Former areas of strength now loom as gaping holes. Positions neglected in drafts and free agency are exploited as vulnerabilities.

For Bill Belichick, it’s the perfect storm: His MVP quarterback out for the season, his old standby vets with too many steps lost to make the plays, and a couple of years of tepid drafting leaving nothing in reserve.

Ehh, but forget about all that. Let’s talk about the quarterback, as it’s so much easier to blame it on the guy handling the ball.

by Dan Snapp
dan@patriotsdaily.com

Troy Brown says he’s a Patriot for life. We need to hold him to that. Hear that, Troy? You can’t leave.

“If you love the game so much,” his son Sir’mon tearfully asked during the retirement press conference, “Why are you retiring?”

Excellent question, and the answer is he’s not. We won’t let him.

Consider this: The franchise’s unprecedented success ran concurrent with Brown’s career; they made five Super Bowls with him as a member of the team, and lost the two he was inactive. Coincidence?

He was a tremendous player, but perhaps it’s more than that. Maybe he was our good luck charm all along. Maybe it’s just good karma to have such a man on our sidelines. As the saying went, good things happen when Troy Brown touches the ball.

Bill Belichick likes to say he treats all players equally, but I think Troy should be the exception. Surely the man who allowed Vinny Testaverde to keep his yearly touchdown streak going and who let Doug Flutie try the first drop kick in decades, surely he could find a way to sneak Brown onto the squad come playoffs each year. Put him back at gunner. Have him hold for kicks. Teach him to punt. Hell, he’s done everything else in his career.

Of course it’s only a pipe dream, thinking someday we could peel him off the BINGO circuit to come on all Nate Scarboro-like into a playoff game. We can be sure that Brown, unlike say Brett Favre, has put a lot of thought into this decision. Knowing the man he is, there’s no doubting the permanence of it.

This week, Patriots Daily has examined Troy Brown’s greatest moments, the turning point of his career, and his lasting place in our hearts and memories. Now we’re left to ponder his legacy.

by Dan Snapp
dan@patriotsdaily.com

Crisis, they say, breeds opportunity.

When the NFL schedule makers posted the ‘08 season, the timing of the Patriots’ bye seemed pointless. Now it looks provident.

If the Pats are to make a real season out of it, this would be the week to plant the seeds. That could mean radical changes, with new players brought in and old ones losing their starting jobs. It could mean new schemes and focuses. Or it could simply be a matter of returning to fundamentals. Stopping the single wing might be a good start.

Perhaps that’s too much to be made of one measly defeat, but man, what a wretched stink bomb of a loss. The Belichick era has seen its share of calamitous results, notably against Tennessee in ‘02, San Diego in ‘05, and the Dolphins seemingly every other year. But this one seemed worse, conjuring up dark memories of the pre-Parcells Pats, replete with a record day for the opposing running back and a QB who seemingly couldn’t complete anything past five yards.