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It will be the best championship ever if the Patriots go out and finish the job.

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LurkingLinebacker

I can't speak much about the numerous championships that happened before my lifetime in both hockey and basketball (the hype, the satisfaction, the emotion I would have felt), but I would at this point rank the 2004 red sox #1 as I'm sure many would.

I've been able to understand the basics of baseball since I was really young. Football, on the other hand, is somewhat harder to understand as a child, IMO. For that reason, I think baseball was my first love and passion. But since early high school, I have got into football... watching hs, collegiate, and professional levels. Still, I am hard pressed to say if a win on Sunday would overtake the 2004 red sox championship.

The manner in which the red sox overcame the odds is part of the reason, coupled with the long wait older generations of fans had to wait and the appreciation that I witnessed what many had not.

Given that those odds were seemingly insurmountable, the odds against the Patriots all season long have been, perhaps, even more insurmountable. Winning 19 games in a baseball season has happened numerous times over the past 35 years (I believe the Oakland A's went the entire month of August without losing a few years back and the Rockies had a hell of a season finish and playoff run), but it has never happened in one football season. Hopefully it will happen Sunday, and then it may overtake the 2004 red sox world series championship in my own baseball-loving heart.

In addition, a win on Sunday would rank high on all-time Boston area wins because it would undoubtedly confirm that the Patriots are a dynasty even in the minds of the biggest Patriot-haters. A Super Bowl win on Sunday would also mark the final chapter in what has been nothing less than spectacular and nearly unimaginable (except in maybe Madden franchise mode)... making it perhaps one of the greatest Super Bowls ever before the game even begins, win or lose.

The manner in which the 2004 red sox won seemed perfect, but a Superbowl XLII win would prove that the Patriots completed true perfection, and that certainly would certainly be worthy of the #1 professional Boston sports team championship run of all time.


Go Patriots, make history.

__________________
There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it's not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together.” --William S. Belichick

Seels

Sorry, nothing ever tops 2004.

apricissimus

I have to agree with that.

oldrover

The 2001 championship was unbelievable. Truly.

That said, I agree completely about 2004. 86 years of frustration, gone.

jscout

Nope. Not the best ever. Not even close. If the Pats win on Sunday, it'll be a distant 2nd if not 3rd.

Sox in '04 will always be at the top, and by a great margin. The biggest professional sports rivalry in this area, and arguably this country, is Sox/Yanks. In that one season, and in a mere eight consecutive games, the Sox lifted a decades old plight that ran so deep that it even affected non-sports fans in the area. You can feel the effects everywhere you go. No longer do you hear the constant sulking always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is an air of confidence in this city not seen since the Victorian period when Boston was dubbed the "Hub of the universe." Boston is now the "Hub of the (professional) sports universe."

Patradomous

I respectfully disagree. If the Pats go 19-0 it will be the greatest championship in New England sports. 04 was great but winning 4 games in a row in baseball is not as great as going 19-0. When getting to the playoffs in the NFL is like winning 3 seventh games in a row.
Beating the Cardinals in the WS was anti climatic after beating the Yanks.

Pats will be the greatest team in NFL history if they win....If they they lose they WILL be the Red Sox.

tailwind

Coming back from an 3-0 defecit against your hated rivals (which just so happens to be the biggest rivalry in professional sports) during the 86th year of your championship drought is HUGE. This is after 2003 where the Sox had the Yankees on the ropes in the ALCS only to not get it done in the end (again.) 2003 was supposed to be "the year", then in 2004, the team fell behind to a point where no team had ever recovered, only to storm back and eventually destroy a 100+ win team in the World Series.

The potential for 19-0 is huge too, but not on the same scale given the relative success of the Patriot franchise this decade.

Saying that the 2004 Sox team was just "winning 4 games in a row" is being completely ignorant to the situation. For any serious Boston sports fan, that week in October of 2004 went from being one of the worst of their lives to the best in the blink of an eye.

Patradomous

Fine, but they had lost three games in a row before.Pats can't afford one loss.
As far as being the "worst week in their lives" can't be very old in Red Sox years.It would have just been buisness as usual if the Red Sox lost a game 4-7.The surprise came when they did come back without their usual spitting of the bit.Instead, the 2nd best team money could buy beat the first best team money could buy.Or as you like to put it a hundred plus win team came back to beat another 100 plus win team.
I was a Red Sox fan before the term pink hat was invented.

The Pats have to operate in a system where everyone has to start with the same amount of money and to go undfeated in a league system that is contrarian to that is a very underrated concept that people don't understand.

Doctor DDS

I have to agree. Nothing will ever surpass 2004 in my mind. A Pats win Sunday would be huge and will certainly stamp this unit as the best or one of the best ever. But this team is already a dynasty (we are not trying to become one) Losing would stink but would be tempered bythe fact that we have won so much recently. Now if we had never won the prior 3 and were in this position my opinion would be much different.