We're not used to this.

Not really.

Not used to seeing the Pats' offense looking like just another mediocre group that can't score. Not used to seeing Tom Brady looking for most of the game like just another guy, not the magazine-cover quarterback he is. Not used to seeing the Pats losing a big game at home, the kind of game they've all but had a patent on for the last few years, this team with the best home record in the NFL since 2002.

Not used to seeing what we saw Sunday night, a game in which the Pats seemed as flat as last week's pancake. No swagger, no real attitude, no sense that they were in a big game, just another team in just another game.

Not used to Bill Belichick saying, "We got outcoached and outplayed," sounding like just another coach with no answers.

But that's what losing does. It humbles. It hurts. It deflates. It takes the luster off.

Most of all, it demystifies.

And there's no team in the NFL that's been so wrapped in mystique the last five years than the Pats. The three Super Bowls in five years. Brady's ascension as a megastar. The anointment of Belichick as the coach of his generation, the David Halberstam book about him staring out from bookstores, the tale of Belichick, the new football genius, born to game plan.

It's all part of the package, right there with the sub-text that says the Pats are somehow different, better coached, more team-oriented, a system more sophisticated than that of most of the other teams, a better organization. That's what winning three Super Bowls in five years does; it creates an aura around everything you do, as though you have the answer while everyone else is working on mysteries without any clues.

That, too, is the Patriots' mystique, and the inherent message is that it almost doesn't matter who you lose off the team, because someone else can get plugged in and the beat still goes on, uninterrupted. So guys come and guys go, but the team rolls on. Charlie Weis goes. Romeo Crennell goes. Eric Mangini goes. But the team rolls on.

That's always been the unofficial line, anyway. Lawyer Milloy goes. Damien Woody goes. Ted Johnson goes. Willie McGinest goes. David Givens goes. Adam Vinatieri goes. Deion Branch goes. Other guys get plugged in. Nothing changes.

Until, of course, it does.

Until the Broncos come in to Gillette Stadium, in what was billed as a big revenge game, and beat the Patriots.

Until you look at the Pats and they seem somewhat diminished.

At least they were Sunday night.

And it's more than that the Broncos beat them on two big pass plays. Or that for the second straight game they had a field goal blocked, a sign of a team out of sync. It's more than the fact that they had only 50 yards on the ground, or gave up too many third-down plays to the Broncos, sure signs of a struggling team. It's even more than the fact that Brady had to throw 55 times, a sure sign of trouble. Or that the only time he really was able to move the team was in the no-huddle drive in the fourth quarter against a prevent defense.

It's that they seemed decidedly ordinary.

That was the most unsettling thing.

Not that one game in September makes a season. One game in September is just one game in September. Remember last year when the Pats got blown out by San Diego at home, outscored by 24-0 in the second half, a game that at the time raised all kinds of unsettling questions? In retrospect, it was merely a blip on the radar screen, soon forgotten as the season went on and the Pats got better.

So was Sunday night just one of those things, or was it a sample of some larger truth, the fact that you can't keep losing quality players and quality coaches without eventually paying some price, however great an organization is?

Would Sunday night have been different if Chad Jackson had been available, if Corey Dillon hadn't had to leave the game?

Is Brady's relatively slow start in this young season just one of those things, or does he really miss a couple of wideouts who can stretch the defense, guys he was comfortable with? Or are the problems more fundamental, simply the fact they've lost too many good players the last couple of years, the game's inevitable erosion?

Questions, questions.

Questions with no answers.

At least not now, anyway.

That's what losing does. It raises questions. It humbles. It hurts. It deflates. It takes the luster off. It demystifies.

Something we're not used to around here.

breynold@projo.com / (401) 277-7340