Would you rather Pats not make playoffs or lose in playoffs/SB?

[tombonneau]

It's okay to be emotionally invested in the team, but to be too invested is dangerous.

I think last year, after going through the whole offseason reliving the AFC CG collapse in my head, going into the 2007 season with a bunker mentality, dealing with the Spygate scrutiny from the league, fans and media, the addition of unlikable characters such as Mercury Morris and Arlen Spector, with the building pressure of a perfect season on the horizon, and then having it all come crashing down in an instant... it was an emotionally exhausting 12-month period.

After SB XLII, I was a zombie for a week, and then stepped back and decided I needed to chill. Sure, it meant discontinuing visiting other message boards (because I got tired of not being able to get into rational discussions with hoards of anti-Pats people), but I did what I had to do to distance myself from what put me in a furor.

After the Dolphins won this past Sunday, I went back to my room to be alone for a moment while I vent. I angrily threw my Patriots hat to the ground, took a deep breath... and then picked my Patriots hat back up, adjusted it, and exhaled. **** happens and there's nothing you can do about it but deal with it.

It was a frustrating season, watching all the bad breaks from Week 1-Week 17, but it's over and in a way, I'm glad. I wanted the Patriots to get into the playoffs, more than anything, so they could have a shot at the Super Bowl. They didn't get that opportunity and that is disappointing, but nothing can be done to change that. I'm proud of what the team did given the circumstances. It took an extraordinary, fluky set of circumstances for them to miss the playoffs, and we have to be curious how a beaten-up Pats team would have fared against other, healthier, stronger teams in the second season. It would have been nice to see, but we can't.

Long story short, I'm more at peace with how this season concluded than how the previous few have. It's a positive step for myself personally, and I think in the long run the Patriots as a franchise will benefit.

I think what you articulated here is one of the big reasons I wasn't totally devastated when the Pats failed to qualify for the playoffs at 11-5.

You could argue that between the end of the SB and Brady going down in Week 1, no team or its fans have undergone a more excruciating 10 minutes of football than the Patriots. It just took a lot out of me, esp. the Super Bowl.

After enduring that, not making the playoffs is a cake walk.

 

[NJPatsfan26]

Nothing in sports can ever compare to losing a perfect season last year. Even losing to Desmond Howard and the Pack in 31 was not even close to that.

Well with some thankfulness....and karma....that last season was "shot in the leg."

 

[tombonneau]

When I first saw the playoff matchups for the coming weekend, it felt a little like Peggy Lee's famous song, "Is that all there is?".

No kidding. Other teams and their fans might be gleeful that the Pats (and Cowboys) aren't in the playoffs, but I guarantee you the networks and NFL are not happy.

Titans vs. Panthers. Collins vs. Delhomme! NFL Fever! Catch it!

 

[Fanfrom1960]

I don't think you understood what I was getting at. (Which I knew was a risk posting this, as it's a bit hard to articulate.) It's not a question of would you rather the team not make the playoffs or make it to the playoffs and lose. Obviously I'd rather make the playoffs.

The question is, emotionally, was it better or worse when the Dolphins won on Sunday than it was when the Pats seasons ended in heartbreaking fashion each of the last three years in the playoffs?

I get your drift, but still, try this:

"It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

Or, if you still want to get philosophical about it, 11 - 5 and no place to go next weekend sucks too.

 

[PATSYLICIOUS]

I'd rather lose in the playoffs and it's not even close. The anticipation during the week for each playoff game is always worth it win or lose.

And yes the playoffs are going to suck this year. If you try to think of the last exciting SB not involving the Pats you have to go back to the late 90s with Rams-Titans. Not to mention the tuck game which will go down almost as monumental as a SB. Haters can celebrate us missing the playoffs all they want but they're about to find out, the whole NFL is losing here.

 

[PatsDeb]

It's somehow less painful not making it, but I can't say it's better. Anytime I get to prolong watching the Pats play is a good year, with the excitement of maybe winning the SB again worth the couple of weeks of pain following a loss. I love that our team has been RELEVANT, pretty much from 1996 on, with only 1999 and 2000 being truly down years. It's been an amazing run, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. 31 other teams haven't had it as good as us, if you think about it.

 

[Pujo]

"It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

"It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 

[jmt57]

I don't think you understood what I was getting at. (Which I knew was a risk posting this, as it's a bit hard to articulate.) It's not a question of would you rather the team not make the playoffs or make it to the playoffs and lose. Obviously I'd rather make the playoffs.

The question is, emotionally, was it better or worse when the Dolphins won on Sunday than it was when the Pats seasons ended in heartbreaking fashion each of the last three years in the playoffs?

Sure, emotionally this year was better. The Pats won their last game to finish a double-digit winning season that exceeded expectations.

I think what some of the other are trying to say is that the risk of an emotionally crushing loss is worth it, to have the higher expectations that come with being a better team.

 

[Pat the Pats Fan]

I am fine with how this year turned out. With all the injuries, my expectations were not that high.

I was a fan of the Colts growing up in Baltimore in the 60's and this year is actually the reverse of the Colts years of 67-68.
1967 - Colts are undefeated going into the last game of the season, only to lose to the Rams and miss the playoffs. They finished 11-1-2, the same as the Rams. The SB winner that year, the Packers had 5 loses that year.
1968 - Colts lose one game all year, to the Browns, blow the Browns out in the playoffs and then lose to the Jets in SB3.

Missing the playoffs sucked, then and now, but the SB upset was even worse.

 

[alamo]

The last three years I didn't read this board for months after we lost (as some have noticed), it was so painful. But that is because I thought we had an excellent chance at championships. (Not as much in 2005 but we were coming off a SB season so it looked better at the time then it does in retrospect.)

This year would have been Cinderella, but deep down there was no expectation of winning it all, any win would have been gravy. So I would have rather made the playoffs this year and enjoyed the ride.

Also, I wouldn't trade the painful endings of the past three seasons, as low as the lows were the highs were worth it.