Couldn’t get a head start on your Christmas shopping the last two days? Still battling a tryptophan hangover and need to catch up on some sleep?

Are you a Patriots fan? Then don’t worry. Sunday is wide open. So is every other Sunday through the holidays.

To hear some folks tell it, there is no point in watching the Patriots play the Eagles today. Or Indianapolis the week after that. Or Washington, Denver, Miami and Buffalo after that.

We won’t know anything about these Patriots until the playoffs, they say. They could win out over the next six games by a combined score of 193-22, and it wouldn’t matter because they have gone 24-8 over the last two seasons and 0-2 in the playoffs.

Of course, anyone who questions the legitimacy of the Patriots performance over the next six weeks will be the first to proclaim the season doomed if they lose to Philly or anyone else (if they lose to the Colts, it will be time to get rid of the coach and the quarterback again).

It’s amazing how much clarity some football fans and experts have after a loss or a couple of losses and how “much remains to be seen” after an eight-game winning streak.

After wins like Monday night’s drubbing of Kansas City, pundits rush to put on a microphone and an IFB earpiece to tell us that we didn’t learn anything about the Patriots because the opponent stinks, and that they still don’t have a championship defense or the offense lacks a deep threat.

There’s nothing wrong with discussing a team’s flaws, win or lose. But now, the Patriots don’t just need to win every week, they’d better damn well prove that they’ve found cures for all that ails them.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that a Patriots fan could take a win, any win, and enjoy it for a week, maybe more. And I’m not waxing nostalgic for the days of Tommy Hodson and Hugh Millen.

It was a lot of fun in 2003 and 2004, when every win seemed like another brick toward building a Super Bowl title. We took great satisfaction in each win not because it was more proof that the Pats couldn’t be beat but because they found a different way to win every week.

But last decade’s dominance and the one-and-done disappointment of the last two years have conspired to make a lot of Patriots fans both spoiled and nervous — feeling entitled to another Super Bowl championship because we’ve still got Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and wondering what’s going to mess it up this time. It’s a dangerous combination that wipes out any sense of perspective during the season. And since it’s pretty much the same as being a Red Sox fan, it is becoming habit forming.

So that makes every game a referendum on the defense, the one thing everyone, understandably, is convinced will ultimately doom this team. Since the defense always gives up yards, if not points, it’s a virtual certainty that when it holds a team like the Chiefs to three points that someone will point out Ben Roethlisberger would have scored more than three points.

No kidding.

How about this? If the Patriots lose to the Eagles today, we can analyze and dissect all of the flaws and fret that they have little more than a month to fix themselves.

If they beat the Eagles today, you can pick apart all of the times they couldn’t tackle LeSean McCoy or Vince Young and how DeSean Jackson burned them deep. Or you can point to the Eagles’ record and declare we’ve learned nothing about the Patriots.

If they win, I’m going to spend next week catching up on some sleep and debating with friends about whether Rob Gronkowski is already better than Ben Coates.

Mind you, if they lose to the Colts, I’m buying them movie passes for Christmas so we’ll have something to do in January.