They hate us.

America outside of New England, that is.

OK, that may not be absolutely true for every breathing person — believe it or not, there are beleaguered souls who have never even heard of Bill Belichick — but it is true of all Americans who have an interest in the National Football League. To them, our Patriots are an Evil Empire and we are its haughty and arrogant citizens.

The Patriots can’t lose enough, or by a large enough margin, to satisfy their thirst for Patriots blood. That’s what winning four Super Bowls and creating a Spygate have done.

Yes, Spygate. Sorry I had to bring that up. But my belief is that diehard Patriots fans have never come to grips with the damage Spygate did to the ­image of what should be a 100 percent admirable football team. And Coach Bill hasn’t helped matters with his relentless envelope-pushing in all sorts of football matters. It would be so nice if the New England Patriots stood for football excellence and football excellence alone. Sadly, that is not the case. In the eyes of The Rest of America, the New England Patriots also stand for chicanery.

Otherwise, there would be a huge public outcry over the lud­icrous overreaction to a trivial matter; namely the under­inflation of an unproven number of footballs on the afternoon of the 2014 season AFC Championship game. Something happened; we still don’t know exactly what. What we do know is that whatever happened to those footballs did not affect the game one iota.

The final score was New England 45, Indianapolis 7, and in the game Tom Brady threw the properly inflated footballs far better in the second half than he threw the alleg­edly underinflated footballs in the first half. This is undeniable. So if anyone representing the interests of the Colts tries to say that “cheating’’ had anything to do with a total butt-whipping, feel completely free to laugh in his or her face.

My premise is unshakable. Were this any other team, the matter would have been settled the following day with one phone call.

“Hello, Team X? This is Mr. Jones from the league office. It has come to our attention that someone was fooling around with the footballs in the first half yesterday. Naughty, naughty, mustn’t do. Our stated penalty is $25,000. Put the check in the mail. See ya. Well, gotta go. Time for lunch.’’

And that would have been it. Guaranteed.

Ah, but the accused party was New England. This was Roger Goodell’s chance to placate the other 31 owners, many of whom feel the Patriots were not sufficiently punished for their Spygate transgressions and others who feel there is ­always something off-kilter when they play the Patriots. Some of them would blame the Patriots for global warming.

So from $25,000, the pen­alty any of the other 31 teams would have paid, we got to $1 million, first- and fourth-round draft pick, and a four-game suspension for their best player. At most, the Patriots were guilty of aggressive jaywalking. For this, Goodell has sentenced them from 20 years to life.

This was my belief from Day 1, and nothing has happened in the ensuing 19 months or so to alter that assertion. I don’t want to hear about the cellphone, or what happened to Messrs. McNally and Jastremski. It was jaywalking and it had nothing to do with the outcome of the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was some intent. Fine. Hit the Patriots for $100,000, or maybe even $500,000, just because they’re the Patriots. That would have been appropriate. But what Goodell did was beyond absurd.

There is now only one recourse for both the team and its fandom, and that is to accentuate the positive. We have been wondering what Jimmy Garoppolo has to offer? OK, now we’re going to find out. We’ll have a far better idea if he is the QB of the Patriots’ future in four weeks than we do now. We’ll know what we can expect if something happens to Tom Brady when he does return, and, this being the National Football league, that could happen on any play.

Two things are working in their favor. The first is the fact that the Patriots have constructed a quality defense. The second is that they have been gifted with a manageable schedule in those four Brady-less games.

The wise course of action for Patriots fans is to set the bar low. I, for one, will be perfectly content coming out of Tom’s enforced vacation at 2-2. Winning at Arizona would have been a significant accomplishment even if No. 12 were taking the snaps. For me, that’s a House Money game. After that, shouldn’t they be able to go 2-1 with home games against Miami, Houston, and Buffalo? I just don’t think there’s a crisis here.

Going 2-2 will leave them in perfectly good stead in the division. While I do think the Jets are going to be pretty good (assuming Ryan Fitzpatrick is at least 80 percent as good as he was last year), look at what they’re up against in their first four games: Home with Cincinnati, at Buffalo, at Kansas City, and home with Seattle. I’m calling 2-2. If they can do better than that, more power to them. We’ll see them on Nov. 27 and Christmas Eve. You-Know-Who will be barking out the signals.

By the middle of the season, things will be back to normal. The Patriots will be winning. And people in 44 states to our west and south will be in midseason Patriot-loathing form. Boo-bleepin’-hoo.

Bob Ryan’s column appears regularly in the Globe. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.