1990 Pats....like watching a car crash

PatsWickedPissah said:

Remember a Pats coach jumping all over the place as he was electrocuted by an ungrounded microphone?
Those were the days.

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Well, the years between 1967 and 1972 were beyond bad at points, bordering on the surreal, with highlights being the quarterbacking of Joe Kapp, who 90% of patfans posters could throw a tighter pass than, and the psychedelic administration of Clive Rush, already alluded to here.

When almost electrocuting yourself on stage doesn't make the top ten of your most bizarre moments, you know you've got something.

And I'm perfectly serious about anybody being able to throw a better spiral than Kapp, old timers, back me up.

This is a highlight film which actually contains a couple NFL quality spirals. Add on a few hard drinking years to those wobbly ducks in the beginning and elsewhere, and you get to see what passed for QB in those days. Sad part is, he was still better than Taliaferro. Oh, the horror.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiVlcjWBj00

Palm Beach Pats Fan said:

Much later, in 2001, on the day that Bledsoe went down,

it seemed quite possible that we were just about as bad.

The #1 football sportwriter in the nation (by a mile) at that time was Dr. Z, who was the first I ever remember to give a weekly "power ranking" and he put the Patriots at dead last on perhaps the same day that Tom Brady took the reins running the offense in practice for the first time as starter. So when people try to dismiss Tom's unmatched winning percentage by saying that he fell into a great situation when he first became a starter, save this link to show them.

CNNSI.com - Pro Football - Dr. Z's NFL Power Rankings - Thursday September 27, 2001 03:37 PM

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Wow! Thanks for that trip down memory lane.

Joe Kapp threw field goal attempts...that is, you know what FG kick looks like...end over end?...THAT was a Joe Kapp spiral...no bullshyt

I became a Pats fan in 1976, but my first game I went to was in 1990. Saw them lose to the Seahawks. Good thing I was drunk.

Wait, I am wrong. It was 1989 that I saw them lose to the seahags since I looked it up and Jeff Feagles was the punter. I remembered him since he sucked so bad.

I came onboard as a fan with the drafting of Jim Plunkett. Made it through many games on the radio, as I was in the Navy and as an aircrewman, spent many a gameday on patrol overseas or out of Brunswick or Jacksonville. Fortunately, the radioman could usually tune in the game for me and a couple others, and we could listen in through our headsets. Otherwise, it was reading about it in the papers, etc.

I think that the real trainwreck years for me was when Pete Carrol took over. I was so sick watching the Superbowl, both physically and spiritually. I thought we had a chance, but then Howard ran back the kickoff and that pretty much killed the team's spirits. You could almost see it in their faces and demeanors.

But anyway, that bassid Parcells bailed and then Carrol took over. Between the lousy front office and drafting, and Pete's "surf's up, dudes!" attitude, I watched that team get worse every year under his tutelage.

Ah well. We do, indeed, live in a Golden Age. My grey hair and white beard is a testament to what that being a fan did to me, and now it's such a joy to watch this team play.

V/R

robertweathers said:

And I'm not trying to belittle the younger fans by saying, 'I'm older and more of a Pats fan than you', deal but it is a different perspective. Maybe it's more of an appreciation because we remember the Lisa Olsen/Rod Rust, Ron Meyer years or the drug scandal after the 85 SB, etc.

Just like a lot of the younger sports fans never felt the pain of the '86 World Series and how they EXPECT the Red Sox to make the playoffs every year.

Maybe it is entitlement but I think it's more that they just don't know how bad sustained losing periods are. It's bloody as you know but what is even more painful is that your team is irrelevant and no one cares.

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What's interesting about this phenomenon is that it doesn't just exist in the sports world, it also exist, for example, on Wall Street. Many of the traders responsible for overleveraging the securities market in the 2007 crash were too young to remember black October in 1987.

PatsWickedPissah said:

Remember a Pats coach jumping all over the place as he was electrocuted by an ungrounded microphone?
Those were the days.

Click to expand...

Or the plumbing in the new stadium (1971) malfunctioning because everybody flushed at once.......The stadium with metal bench seats that froze your butt on cold days.

live 15 min from the stadium, and my family had season tickets from when the stadium forst opened until parcells left..... tailgating in the parking lot was a freak show.....so much crap would go down and nobody cared.....just pull up the wagon and drag the guy off.....or cuff him to a chain link fence.

the funny part was that as a kid, I never felt unsafe.......every yahoo in the world was there, but by and large, they were good to us kids......

I remember going to the bathroom in the ladies room .... it was a breeze since there were hardly any women there and the mens room was a puddle of pee

to this day, steve grogan, steve nelson, and andre tippett are my favorite players.

Gwedd said:

I came onboard as a fan with the drafting of Jim Plunkett. Made it through many games on the radio, as I was in the Navy and as an aircrewman, spent many a gameday on patrol overseas or out of Brunswick or Jacksonville. Fortunately, the radioman could usually tune in the game for me and a couple others, and we could listen in through our headsets. Otherwise, it was reading about it in the papers, etc.

I think that the real trainwreck years for me was when Pete Carrol took over. I was so sick watching the Superbowl, both physically and spiritually. I thought we had a chance, but then Howard ran back the kickoff and that pretty much killed the team's spirits. You could almost see it in their faces and demeanors.

But anyway, that bassid Parcells bailed and then Carrol took over. Between the lousy front office and drafting, and Pete's "surf's up, dudes!" attitude, I watched that team get worse every year under his tutelage.

Ah well. We do, indeed, live in a Golden Age. My grey hair and white beard is a testament to what that being a fan did to me, and now it's such a joy to watch this team play.

V/R

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I thought Carroll was at the time, the least imaginative coach the Patriots had and that I had ever seen. You were not going to get any surprise plays from him, and this was especially a let down because it came after Parcells who always had a surprise or two and was never afraid of being aggressive. Who could forget his "jap plays"? (He got busted for using that term in 2004, but it had long been a staple in his playbook).

So Pete...what's the story...why are the Pats spiraling downward???

Hey...it's just a small bump in the road!!!...we just gotta CLEAN THINGS UP...yep...CLEAN THINGS UP....run cleaner plays...cleaner routes...just CLEAN THINGS UP

and thus was born the famous Pete Carroll nickname in Section 206...Pete the Cleaner

Joker said:

Joe Kapp threw field goal attempts...that is, you know what FG kick looks like...end over end?...THAT was a Joe Kapp spiral...no bullshyt

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He looked like some longshoreman they found in a bar fight who'd never played and they just told him to throw it or run until he passed the goal line.

robertweathers said:

And I'm not trying to belittle the younger fans by saying, 'I'm older and more of a Pats fan than you', deal but it is a different perspective. Maybe it's more of an appreciation because we remember the Lisa Olsen/Rod Rust, Ron Meyer years or the drug scandal after the 85 SB, etc.

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You don't need to be older to gain that perspective. Just put yourself in someone else's shoes.

As a 25 year old Pats fan living in DC, it also helps to have an equally incompetent franchise around as a constant reminder.

The Skins fans here are already talking about draft positioning. Their discussions are centered around whether they should keep winning games to close the year out on a positive note, or whether they should tank it for a better draft pick. For them, the season is over with two weeks to go.

Meanwhile, we're talking about playoff matchups and fighting for a bye week. And we do it every season. It doesn't end for us after week 17. I don't think a lot of fans realize how cool that is.

Ahhhh....the memories. When the Pats were playing away and the games weren't blacked out and they were on TV my college buddies and I made up a game involving Irving Fryar. He knew he was out of NE when he hit free agency so he was calling a lot of fair catches. In doing so we decided that you had to do a shot of Wild Turkey every time. At 2-3 fair catches a game, including beers that left me a little tipsy by 4th quarter. I'll never forget the '91 season when McPherson and Hugh Millen came to save the Pats and went 6-10. I was at the game where they beat Warren Moon and the Oilers on a lasat minute TD by Greg McMurtry. We stayed in the gravel parking lot drinking a keg after the game.

Patspsycho said:

What's interesting about this phenomenon is that it doesn't just exist in the sports world, it also exist, for example, on Wall Street. Many of the traders responsible for overleveraging the securities market in the 2007 crash were too young to remember black October in 1987.

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It's one reason, among many, why the world should not be ruled by young people. Seriously. The accumulated wisdom of our nation's seasoned citizens is often scoffed at by younger people, and that's a major mistake.

TheComeback said:

You don't need to be older to gain that perspective. Just put yourself in someone else's shoes.

As a 25 year old Pats fan living in DC, it also helps to have an equally incompetent franchise around as a constant reminder.

The Skins fans here are already talking about draft positioning. Their discussions are centered around whether they should keep winning games to close the year out on a positive note, or whether they should tank it for a better draft pick. For them, the season is over with two weeks to go.

Meanwhile, we're talking about playoff matchups and fighting for a bye week. And we do it every season. It doesn't end for us after week 17. I don't think a lot of fans realize how cool that is.

Click to expand...

Agree. A good friend of mine is a die-hard Houston Texans fan. Even though his team is playing a 3rd string Qb, he has hope- and that is a powerful thing in sports.

He logs on to patsfans.com and if he didn't know any better he'd believe that the Pats are the JAX Jaguars. The reason is that he just doesn't understand how almost unattainable our expectations are.

What a great thread! I remember the Jim Plunkett years. I remember the Patriots being #4 in Boston with only a cult following. I remember when the idea of just making the playoffs, of having Curt Gowdy or **** Enberg actually calling the game was a thrill. Let's put it this way. When the Patriots clinched playoff spots in 1976, 1978,1982, and 1985, all home games, I had to listen on the radio because the games didn't sell out!!! In 1985a all I wanted was one playoff win. When Mosi Tatupu clinched the Dolphins game and I could say..the Patriots are going to the Super Bowl..it meant all things in the world was possible. Younger fans have NO idea. In 1993 when it looked like they were headed to St Louis most people didn't care. I remember that. Then..Bob Kraft bought the team. Suddenly we realized we did indeed have a team. We had Bill Parcells. We had Drew Bledsoe. We won our last 4 games. And the mania started! People go back 11 years. I go back to 1994. Kraft said he wanted to be like the 49ers. In 18 years the Patriots have made the playoffs 13 times, won the division 11 times, been to the AFC title game 6 times, been to the Super Bowl 5 times, and won 3 times and we still have this year to go. Appreciate it, because when Belichick and Brady go it ends. That's sports.

Wayback machine ON

Back in the AFL days Patriots under Mike (Heh, heh Bob) Holovak get to the AFL Championship. Unfortunately San Diego is there with Keith Lincoln RB and Lance "Bambi" Allworth at WR. Smoked us big time 56 to whatever.

I went to a Buffalo playoff game at Fenway Park in the snow where Cookie Gilchrist and Elbert "Golden Wheels" Dubenion kicked our ass. Post game some gang of thugs jumped friends of mine outside the park and put them (friends were not small guys) in the hospital. The good ol' days.

In the 18 yrs. since that 5 yr. stretch, 2 losing seasons.
In the 13 yrs. before the 5 yr. stretch, 1 losing season.
The late 60's early 70's were the other doormat yrs.
But both on and off the field, even with talented teams, the Pats seemed
to have had more bizarre disasters then any other team in pro sports I can think of. It seemed like they were regularly national laughingstocks. Certainly
folks laughed when they found out you were a Pats fan.

The 1990 Pats team was atrocious. I loved the Pats back then but the Bruins ruled Massachusetts back in those days.

Rod Rust got screwed over while the inmates ran the asylum. The Pats were a disaster back then. They brought in MacPherson in 1991 and somehow won 6 games. Then the relocation rumors became very loud.

Thank goodness the NFL stepped in and pretty much forced Orthwein to sell the team to Kraft before he moved it to St. Louis.

My Mum bought me a used book a few years back called, "The New England Patriots Triumph & Tragedy." It was written by Larry Fox and released in 1979. The book sums up how dysfunctional the Pats were back then. The scary thing is the book was written before the '80's and early '90s.