FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Five games into the season, it’s fairly obvious what you’re going to get from the Dallas Cowboys, who are headed to Gillette Stadium to tangle with the Patriots.

At 4-1 after blowing out bad opponents and splitting against the good, they’re clearly contenders. All of the evidence smacks you right over the head:

They’re a very good football team.

The Patriots? A 2-3 record suggests they’re just the opposite. But defining exactly who they are isn’t quite as clear as the Cowboys. While Coach Bill Belichick typically has a pretty good idea about his team at this stage, they’re harder to nail down right now. The evidence is just so scattershot.

They went toe-to-toe with the Super Bowl champion Buccaneers, nearly winning that game and holding Tom Brady without a touchdown pass. That performance was encouraging.

But they also lost to the 1-4 Dolphins at home and had a life-and-death struggle with the Texans, one of the worst teams in football.

So who are they?

“We’re still trying to figure each other out,” linebackers coach Jerod Mayo said Tuesday. “In saying that, there have been stretches where I’d say we’ve played decently, especially on the defensive side of the ball … but we definitely have a long way to go. We have to get better.”

But will they?

A more defined answer should come on Sunday. We’ll find out if the Patriots are closer to the team that hung with Tampa Bay two weeks ago, or if they’re more on par with the team that nearly lost to the Texans.

To this point, the Patriots have had no signature wins, nothing to hang their hat on. Their highlight was not getting blown out by Brady.
Now comes Dallas. Getting square at 3-3 provides a much different outlook than 2-4.

In 2001, the Patriots’ first championship team started out 2-3. Then they traveled to Indianapolis for a showdown with Peyton Manning. They won that game, 38-17. It was a turning point, because they went on to win eight of the next 10, including the last six in a row to finish 11-5.
The rest is history.

Last season, they also started out 2-3 with Cam Newton as their quarterback and hosted another NFC team, San Francisco. Jimmy Garoppolo and the Niners embarrassed them, 33-6, at Gillette Stadium. They only won five more games to finish 7-9.

Now Newton is gone, and the Patriots are riding the wave with rookie Mac Jones. Let’s just say if the offense can’t pick it up and average more than 19 points per game, they’re going nowhere.

Same for the defense. They held the Buccaneers to 19 points. But for the most part, they haven’t come up with the kind of key stops that define an elite defense. Mayo, however, believes the real Patriots are about to emerge.

“We’re always talking about September, and you’re trying to figure yourself out, even early October, you’re trying to figure yourself out,” he said. “Then, hopefully, November, December, January, you’re playing your best football.”

Mayo still has faith the Patriots will get it together. He still believes the ceiling is high for this team.

It’s just that the evidence is currently missing. Five games in, the Patriots still have fumbling issues and substitution problems. They’re still committing costly penalties, and they’re still hindered by slow starts, and coming out flat at the beginning of games, not to mention the start of the second half.

The above description seems like the most accurate representation of who they are, and it won’t change, unless they alter the perception.

Against the Cowboys, they can either stay in the same rut, which won’t bode well the rest of the way, or hit their launch point for a drive toward the playoffs.

A win against the Cowboys would make quite a statement and tell us just how good the Patriots can be.
With Dak Prescott at the controls, the Cowboys have the league’s No. 2 scoring offense, averaging 34 points per game, so the Patriots defense is going to be challenged to keep the score down.

The Cowboys defense, which surrendered 34 points per game at this point last season and finished with the worst unit in 2020, is only giving up 23.4 ppg so far this season. But they’ve given up the second-most passing yards.

Still, it’s not going to get any easier for Jones and the offense.
Linebacker Matt Judon, who has easily been the team’s best defensive player, has said from the start he believes the Patriots are going to get their act together. But he also knows what having a record under .500 suggests.

“When I say we’re going to be a good football team, we’re going to have to prove it,” Judon said during his media session Wednesday. “We’re going to have to prove it as a unit, as a team, as a position group. We’ve got to prove it. It’s not going to be given to us … we’re going to continue to put our best foot forward and we’re going to continue to get better.”

For the Patriots, this is where the rubber meets the road. It’s the moment of truth for where this team is headed.

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