FOXBORO -- We can hit you with every qualifier there is.
We can remind you that the Patriots practices that have been held to this point in the year have been held without pads. We can reiterate that a number of the team periods that played out in front of reporters over the last several weeks are, in fact, not competitive. We can parrot Bill Belichick and say that OTAs and minicamp are "teaching camps" not "competition camps."
And yet nothing is going to get the Marte Mapu Hype Train back on the tracks. It's rolling uncontrollably downhill toward some high-end comparisons that no one saw coming when he was taken in the third round out of Sacramento State.