We’re on to 2021.

There’s never been a better time to invoke the spirit of Bill Belichick. It’s time to set our sights firmly on the future and put a year filled with misery and fear behind us.

Here’s to better days ahead. And, in Boston, better teams ahead. The performance of the local teams on the field of play has mirrored the performance of America as a whole. They struggled on the field as we struggled through a relentlessly miserable year. So we eagerly – desperately – count down the final hours of 2020 and get ready to celebrate the future.

With vaccines and potential herd immunity on the horizon, it’s nearly impossible to imagine what the 2021 seasons will look like. The NBA is already under way. Playing outside a bubble, the league needed exactly two days before it canceled a game due to COVID-related concerns. The NHL is right behind, ready to open up training camp at the end of the week.

The Celtics and Bruins begin their seasons playing in an empty TD Garden. Both are hoping that changes. “I’m hoping we get fans back to sports soon,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said recently when he appeared on a Boston radio station.

How soon is that? He was noncommittal. There’s just no way to know at this moment.

The specter of months of games without fans was worrisome enough that the Bruins had serious conversations with the Red Sox about playing their home hockey games at Fenway Park. The idea was that fans would be allowed sooner, and in greater numbers, at an outdoor venue. In the end the cost of setting up Fenway was too much, and the actual date fans would be allowed at games was too uncertain.

Red Sox President Sam Kennedy’s main concern is getting fans in the stands for baseball. Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to Fort Myers in about six weeks. Manager Alex Cora recently joined the other 29 Major League managers on a conference call with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. Cora told me the commissioner said to plan on a full season that will start on time. The manager said he’s planning on heading to Fort Myers for spring training by the end of January.

That said, many other front-office members around the game have say they’d be stunned if the season isn’t pushed back. Many believe a one-month delay would allow the majority of the season to be played with a world that has gotten closer to normalcy. Yet players, forced to barrel through a 60-game sprint in 2020, want to get back to a full season in ’21.

It’s mind-blowing to imagine how different the world could be by the end of the coming baseball season. Imagine Opening Day at Fenway in April played before cardboard cutouts, or perhaps a few thousand well-distanced fans. Then imagine a late October World Series game being played before some 50,000 fans happy to be shivering together at a game.

That moment lives only in our imagination. It’s an even bigger stretch to imagine the Red Sox in that World Series. The team will be better, maybe good enough for a playoff spot. Maybe. Chaim Bloom’s plans center around long-term sustainability. Not a short-term championship.

Meantime, the football season slogs along with NFL games being played despite a dearth of quarterbacks in some, and coaches in others. In football, the show must go on. That means we will sit in our separate homes watching Super Bowl 55 as scheduled on Feb. 7.

The Patriots will play their final game more than a month before that. Belichick will finally be able to stop rolling his eyes when asked why he’s sticking with Cam Newton. He may want to turn off his phone if Tampa Bay is playing at home on Super Bowl Sunday. You have to think that’s a possibility after watching Tom Brady throw for 348 yards and four touchdowns in the first half of Saturday’s 47-7 rout of the Detroit Lions.

We can only imagine what Belichick really thinks about the quarterback that got away. It’s not as hard to imagine what he’d say about this lost season.

He – and we – are on to the new year. Let’s hope it’s a happier one.