Not with a bang but a whimper: Is this how it ends for Bill Belichick?

The indignities are piling up for the New England Patriots.

Mac Jones was benched for the final minutes of their latest loss after throwing a comically inept red-zone interception against the Indianapolis Colts. Their bye week featured chatter about whether head coach Bill Belichick would be fired from what once seemed the most secure job in sports. Tom Brady says it's hard to watch his former team now, sounding very much like someone talking about an aging dog that limps around the house and sometimes makes messes on the carpet.

With the 2-8 Patriots heading into a showdown, so to speak, with the 3-8 New York Giants, the talk among the fan base isn't about whether Jones or Bailey Zappe at quarterback gives them the best chance to win. It's about which QB gives New England the best shot at losing in what promises to be a tight race for the first overall draft pick next spring.

And even though the poor form has been going on for a while now since Brady left, it still seems baffling that Belichick is in charge of all this. The greatest NFL coach of all time by some distance - with six Super Bowls and 17 division titles in an era of league-enforced parity - has piloted a slow-motion train wreck, turning an unimpeachable legacy into one that's just a little bit impeachable. Instead of a smooth glide toward the all-time coaching wins record and eventual retirement, the question is whether Belichick will follow Brady in having an awkward breakup with the Patriots - and whether another franchise would give him a chance to get the 29 wins he needs to pass Don Shula for most regular-season victories.

That these things are even being considered is a sign of how much things have changed. The denouement of the Brady-Belichick era in New England didn't exactly end in hugs and kisses, but it was evident that Pats owner Robert Kraft decided he would rather leave his franchise in the hands of a coach/GM in his late 60s than a quarterback in his early 40s.

It seemed an obvious call. As much as fitness nut Brady had defied concepts like "aging" and "the passage of time," Belichick had seen off countless assistant coaches, personnel managers, and players yet kept piling up wins and playoff appearances. Whatever his roster looked like, Belichick would win between 11 and 14 games, make at least the conference championship game, and refuse to answer most press conference questions unless it was about some random Navy graduate on the practice squad.

One of the more remarkable statistics of his time in New England is that the franchise's career receiving and rushing leaders remain players from before Belichick's time. (Stanley Morgan and Sam Cunningham, respectively). He just kept churning through guys with no notable drop-off in results - until now.

One off-year post-Brady was no surprise, and Belichick seemed to have righted things quickly by drafting Jones out of Alabama and returning to the playoffs in 2021. To non-Pats fans, there was the grim possibility that Belichick was about to go on another endless run of success after just one measly down year.

Except his team has regressed mightily since then as Belichick followed strange draft choices with odd coaching decisions and weird management techniques. For a time, it was fair to wonder if Belichick was doing super-genius stuff that the rest of us mortals couldn't understand, but that time has passed. Hiring defensive coaches to run the offense? Giving your young quarterback a distinct lack of receiving weapons? Drafting a third-round guard in the first round? Not quite super-genius stuff. It turns out that the new market inefficiency isn't having worse players than the other teams.

Where it goes from here is intriguing. The Pats will face the Giants and Tommy DeVito on Sunday. Normally, you would expect a Belichick team to beat an undrafted rookie quarterback who still lives with his parents by about 78 points, give or take a touchdown. But even coming off a bye, the Patriots are only modest favorites. A loss would have to be the nadir of Belichick's 24 years in charge in New England, but a win might be worse. The Patriots are several unlikely wins away from even reaching "in the hunt" status, and the best chance for a franchise reset would be to bottom out completely.

But then what? Would Kraft want his famously cantankerous coach, now in his 70s, to start over with another young quarterback? Would he fire him, or does six Super Bowls gain Belichick some sort of immunity or at least an opportunity to part ways amicably? There have been reports that certain other franchises would be interested in his services - the rare coach trade! - but those teams would likely be bad, requiring Belichick to clean up someone else's mess rather than his own. At least we know he wouldn't be shy about cutting some guys.

Maybe it was always going to end imperfectly for Belichick in New England. Shula retired before he could be fired, but his Miami teams were still competitive at the time. Tom Landry hung on too long in Dallas, only to be sacked by new owner Jerry Jones.

Even the architect of the greatest dynasty in sports couldn't keep it going forever. But Belichick is about to coach in a clash of sad sacks in which many of his own fans hope he loses.

It was always going to end, of course. It's just strange that it might be ending like this.

Scott Stinson is a former national sports columnist for Postmedia News.