Sportswriting 101: Start with a premise that, by and large, favors (or at leasts casts in a positive light) your home team.
Playing the Pats, most seasons, for most teams, the premise is "the game has not been played yet, hence we are still in a state of quantum flux. Whatever the pre-game odds are, there is a chance in excess of zero that we will beat the Pats."
You build on the premise with whatever individuals (Mike Martz, Devin Hester, etc.) are available. You tell a little story about each that is familiar: Martz' system took time to learn and now is working. Hester confers an advantage because you don't kick to him, and confers a bigger advantage if you do kick to him. Rinse, repeat, using every facet of the home team that's been an above-average feature over the season.
You give the opponent his due, and then say it ain't a sure thing. You talk about the opponent's commonly perceived flaws: a 19th ranked run defense, across the whole of the season... not a worse-ranked run defense earlier, becomming a better one in the past few games. Stats are easily manipulable using a favorite but plausible window of time. Run D will always resonate with Chicago, a town that's thrived on D with no O for decades. Just as an average or developing defense is feted in Boston, in Chicago a piss-poor offense becoming respectable is reason to celebrate. NE's suspect defense, a storyline nationwide, is predictable fodder to support the premise (and the writer's bread and butter.)
It's a formula article. The main point of the article is, of course, absolutely true. The whole premise of the article is that since the game has not yet been played, the chances of a Bears victory is in excess of zero.
That's why they play the games.
Okay. Didn't learn a lot. I already know the home town likes to think it's chances are better than other writers acknowledge. I already know that narratives can be spun lionizing the local heroes. I already know that stats can be selected to support the premise.
But if I'm from Chicago, I feel a little better now for a couple of days.
Meh. Pathetic? I am sure it compares well to select Boston columnists during the down years... except in the down years Boston thought of the NFL as the fifth sport, after Baseball, basketball, hockey, and BC football, as I hear it. There's also a "why not" attitude to the article, whereas the Boston sports media seems to now thrive on a "let me be the first to talk about what's wrong with the Pats". The price of winning, I guess.
Just gathering wool... this just doesn't seem all that different from most hometown sports media. You get rah-rah pieces everywhere.
