Never imagined that we would see this again in our lifetime, at least not while Bill Belichick and Tom Brady were coach and quarterback, respectively, of the New England Patriots.

The three-time Super Bowl champions aren’t being hated, disrespected, dismissed or overlooked. They aren’t being anything-ed.

Maybe that’s the impact of two straight Sundays without the Patriots being on the schedule. Perhaps they aren’t controversial, explosive or star-studded enough.

Whatever the case, New England is 7-2 with a two-game lead in a division it has won 10 of the past 12 years. If the season ended today (I know, I know, if your uncle were a girl, she’d be your aunt), the Patriots would enjoy a first-round bye and the No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs.

All that, and if you dropped in from a decade of captivity on some other planet and figured out how to turn on the HDTV, you would hardly know that the Patriots exist. That goes for both national and regional coverage.

OK, regionally, maybe I understand it to a degree.

September and October were all about the Boston Red Sox and their unlikely, glorious ascent from 69 wins to a third world championship since 2004.

It’s worth noting that I will never forget where I was when I celebrated the signatured moment of the Patriots’ 2013 season to date — Brady’s winning strike to Kenbrell Thompkins for a 30-27 comeback win over the Saints. That’s because I was in the Fenway Park concourse, loitering with around 2,000 screaming idiots as we stopped by TV monitors on the way to our seats for Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

Easy to make room in our hearts and lives for the Sox by putting the Patriots in cold storage until November, right? We are spoiled enough to expect a snowswept division-clincher at Gillette Stadium in December and at least one home playoff game in January, after all.

But I’m not detecting any great spike in enthusiasm now that the champagne has been steam-cleaned from the duck boats.

Yes, Brady looks vulnerable, happy-footed and every nanosecond of his 36 years of age. Sure, he’s working with a cast of receivers that would leave most of us sounding like Jets defensive back Antonio Cromartie fumbling through his 10 kids’ names if we tried to list them all. Of course, expectations take a hit with Vince Wilfork, Jerod Mayo and Sebastian Vollmer all in post-op rehabilitation and sidelined for the season.

All I know is that a Hall of Fame coach once told us you are what your record says you are, and the Patriots are seven-up and two-down in the league that has made mediocrity famous. This, from a franchise that with the notable and ill-fated exception of 2007 is a notorious slow-starter, traditionally reaching its peak between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So now is the time to get on board the wagon, but nobody is.

Certainly there’s no directive to do so from the national media. The Patriots travel to Charlotte for this week’s edition of Monday Night Football, and the Carolina Panthers might as well be playing Middlebury or the Kilpatrick Mustangs from “Gridiron Gang” for all the inattention to their opponent.

Every ounce of pre-game chatter is about the Panthers’ five-game winning streak, the transcendent, otherworldly talents of Cam Newton (sarcasm alert) and how this team is making the locals forget about NASCAR and ACC basketball. I accidentally stumbled into one of thse insipid buy-or-sell, all-or-nothing, answer-the-question-or-die afternoon TV shows this past week, and one discussion point was whether or not the Patriots could score even two touchdowns against the almighty Panthers’ defense.

It would have been hilarious if we hadn’t seen the movie before, or if it weren’t merely an extension of the first two months of the season. Pundits conceded the Lombardi Trophy to Peyton Manning and Wes Welker three offensive series into Denver’s win on opening night. That conventional wisdom prevailed until the Broncos lost to the Colts, who lost to the Rams, who lost to the Titans, who lost to the Jaguars.

Denver and its regular-season legend of a leader are still the darling of all highlights-and-hype programming, but New England is not nearly a close second. Kansas City’s 9-0 start against the dregs of football humanity and Miami’s implosion in the human resources department are far more sexy than anything the Patriots have accomplished to this point, I suppose.

Meanwhile, don’t look now, but the plodding Patriots are on pace to put away the AFC East before mid-December.

Subtracting that monsoon in Cincinnati, New England has put up at least 27 points in every game since Sept. 29, including 55 against the Steelers before the bye week.

Nationally televised games against Carolina, Denver and Baltimore are the only apparent threats on the horizon.

Injuries and instability be damned, this season is setting up like just about every one that preceded it in this millennium for the Patriots.

Continue to ignore them at your peril.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.

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