CHICAGO — Whenever we finally see the whole picture of the 2026 Patriots, whether they become surprise Super Bowl champs or miss the playoffs like chumps, I suspect we will spend as much time revisiting their loss in Chicago as some players did postgame.

“We’re on to the next, man,” safety Craig Woodson told the Herald.

Fair enough.

Because how much was there to really learn from that game?

We are barely a third of the way through the NFL season, a time when pretenders still often masquerade as contenders. The Bears are an unfamiliar opponent the Pats had barely four days to prepare for. They flew to Chicago less than 72 hours after they walked off the field last Sunday against the Jets. Before kickoff, the Patriots lost a sixth starter to injured reserve, and his replacement, Walter Rouse, might not play another snap this year.

Defensively, the Pats missed 17 tackles, more than they have in any other game of the Mike Vrabel era. How likely is that to happen again? Perhaps as likely as Rouse reaching the Pro Bowl.

Yet if the Patriots had won Thursday night, the narrative winds blown out of Chicago would have been strong enough to blow down the Gillette Stadium lighthouse. Meaning, no one would have diminished the significance of the result like I just did. Instead, a win would have been celebrated, and, right or wrong, treated like the Patriots had planted their flag again inside the inner circle of Super Bowl contenders.

The talking points would have sounded something like …

How the Pats persevered, injuries and all, to overcome little rest, long odds and a playoff-caliber opponent.

How at 5-2, the Patriots are again near the top of the AFC, if not the best team in the conference outright.

How they won their proclaimed “identity game” against a Bears team that also fancies itself the most physical team in football.

Let’s stop there.

Several Patriots went on the record this week saying the more physical team would win Thursday. By additionally, and specifically, labeling it “an identity game,” those players revealed two things.

No. 1: That messaging likely came from the top, considering Mike Vrabel often cites the importance of identity and recently had the slogan “Win the Identity Battle” painted inside their home game-day locker room.

No. 2: The Patriots believe they know who they are already, and six games into the season was all it took to get there.

Well, the Bears won, 30-24.

Yet at least one Patriots veteran wouldn’t surrender the most physical team In football belt, even in defeat.

“I still feel like we were the most physical team tonight,” defensive tackle Milton Williams told the Boston Herald after the game. “I felt like we were more physical. We just didn’t execute at the end of the game like we needed to, for the most part. I definitely think we were the most physical (team) tonight.”

OK, well, which is it?

Is Williams right? Were the Patriots wrong to put so much weight on a predictably sloppy Thursday night game against an unfamiliar foe? Was the game not actually decided by who hit hardest?

Or are those comments just sour grapes?

Woodson’s analysis from the same locker room would seem to suggest the latter.

“It was more of an identity game. Whoever was going to be more physical (would win),” he said. “They made more plays than us today, and that’s what it got done.”

Now, this isn’t to pick on Williams, one of the more honest and forthright players the Patriots have. And it’s not to twist the knife on a wounded team that more than deserves to put its feet up for three days, if not longer.

It’s to ask a simple question players insist they’ve already figured out, and one I’m not sure anyone, even them, can answer just yet.

How good are they?

The answer to that question is central to understanding what the 4-3 Pats need before the Nov. 10 trade deadline so they can bridge the gap between what the numbers show and how they see themselves.

Do they need to acquire more and better offensive linemen?

What about defensive linemen, given the available evidence suggests their run defense is middling at best? (Sidebar: if you can’t stop the run, can you actually be the most physical team in football?)

Do the Patriots simply need time?

Time for injured starters like Romeo Doubs and now Alijah Vera-Tucker to heal and return? Time for one of the NFL’s eight youngest teams at the start of the season to build winning habits? Time for Drake Maye to get all the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad red-zone turnovers out of his system?

More than any other player, Maye personifies this analysis problem.

We know Maye is not the quarterback who played like a double agent from Weeks 1-3. He’s also not perfect, which is more or less how he looked Weeks 4-6, when he led an upset at Buffalo, dismantled the Raiders and ruined the Jets.

Ironically, of all the games Maye’s played this year, Thursday’s loss is most telling, even though it was the least telling for his team.

Maye is uber-talented, smart and poised enough to carry the Patriots, as he did most of the night in Chicago. His final stat line was strong: 24 of 31 for 321 yards, two touchdowns, one interception and a passer rating of 117.8. Maye also led the Patriots in rushing with 26 yards total, all off scrambles, plus a touchdown in what was a direct reflection of how little help he had from the rest of his offense.

As a passer, Maye created on his own, too, going 17 of 20 for 241 yards, a touchdown and two sacks, on plays that lasted longer than 2.5 seconds, according to Pro Football Focus. To steal a basketball analogy, Maye is a star point guard who leads his team in scoring and, for one night, was surrounded by teammates who couldn’t stop shooting bricks.

A.J. Brown? Time to get into the practice gym, pal.

Yet the flashbulb memory of Maye’s performance won’t be a daring throw on the run, nor his impossible, game-of-inches touchdown in the first half. It will be that end-zone interception late in the second quarter, a laser fired right at linebacker D’Marco Jackson that felt inexplicable in the moment, unless you believe Maye had somehow and suddenly regressed to his September self right then and there. Or you accept turnovers like that are a part of his game.

“I just, gosh,” Maye said in his postgame press conference, pulling a hand over his face and pinching the bridge of his nose in disbelief. “It’s (one of) those plays I talk about all the time: the plays that can swing the game, can impact the game. That was definitely one of them right there. I wish I definitely had that one back.”

The image of Maye covering his face will stay with me because that’s how I feel at times trying to sort out this team.

Yes, it’s early. And great teams are not defined by games in October, but molded by them; something no one in the organization knows better than Vrabel. So what does he know already about his team?

I asked him that question Tuesday.

“I know we try to get ready each and every week,” Vrabel said. “I know we have a resilient group, guys that care deeply about each other, and that, at times, can play good football and not beat themselves.”

Sure, they can.

But will they?

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