The Pats haven't won since spygate: setting the record straight

Deus Irae said:

The horse is dead

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The horse is so dead its on the flaps of the package of envelopes I bought yesterday.

AndyJohnson said:

Neither.
I didn't read it, and asked why you would bother.
You said its in the 2nd paragraph THEN I read it and it still doesn't explain why you would create a post about Spygate to complain about why people are talking so much about Spygate.
Sometimes you need to just realize that people are telling you what they think about your post, rather than trying to create some kind of conspiracy theory about why people are always lying when they post in response to you.

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Right...because I usually think or claim that people are lying in their posts to me. Like that's actually ever happened before.

As in, never. I wasn't even assuming you were lying here. It was just an option on the table. Glad to know it was not true. Though my explanation in the 2nd paragraph was certainly sufficient. I gave two reasons: (1) I was venting, which was therapeutic for me. And (2) I wanted to offer clear and compelling evidence that the claim that the Pats haven't won anything since spygate is a false claim.

I accomplished both. Now maybe you aren't a fan of either of those reasons, but I couldn't possibly care less about that. I was just pointing out that you asked a question that you would have known the answer to had you read all the way down to the second paragraph.

MSU said:

I don't know the exact name of the code or rule they violated ...blah...blah..blah..I'm a troll...

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They were not following the NFL field operations guide, which outlines procedures for mowing the grass, snow removal, specifications for field illumination, mandates for proper water drainage, and also specifies things like locations where cameramen may operate

These "Pats haven't won since spygate" arguments just don't need to be addressed, IMO. They're made by people who are envious of a team that continues to have success year in and out.

Even if we'd won this year, the argument would now be that the Pats only have one "legitimate" Super Bowl, are overrated, probably cheated again, etc.

Frankly, these people are just stupid. Had the ball bounced our way as little as one or two more times, we'd have won at least one of these Super Bowls. That's hardly evidence that the Patriots "need" to cheat.

ivanvamp said:

Right...because I usually think or claim that people are lying in their posts to me. Like that's actually ever happened before.

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Dude, you just posted that there were 2 possibilities to my posting
A) I was lying that I read it
B) I was lying that I didnt

As in, never. I wasn't even assuming you were lying here. It was just an option on the table.

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You said there were 2 choices, both of which meant I was lying.

Glad to know it was not true. Though my explanation in the 2nd paragraph was certainly sufficient. I gave two reasons: (1) I was venting, which was therapeutic for me. And (2) I wanted to offer clear and compelling evidence that the claim that the Pats haven't won anything since spygate is a false claim.

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And my response was very clear, why bother bringing up a topic if you are angry the topic keeps coming up.
As an aside, they haven't won a SB since, and the common misinformed argument is that the SBs are tainted because they wouldn't have won them otherwise. Your diatribe, in fact, supports the idiots.

I accomplished both.

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Venting yes, debunking the argument, no as I stated above.

Now maybe you aren't a fan of either of those reasons, but I couldn't possibly care less about that. I was just pointing out that you asked a question that you would have known the answer to had you read all the way down to the second paragraph.

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Thats the point, there really can't be a good answer to why you are bringing attention to something you are complaining is getting to much attention, which brings us back to where I came in.

Diude, you are entitled to type whatever you want, but so am I. There is no need to get angry or turn it into a 50 post exchange of you think you have a good reason to bring attention to something you want to go just go away, and I don't think there is a good one.
Lets leave it at that.

AndyJohnson said:

Diude, you are entitled to type whatever you want, but so am I. There is no need to get angry or turn it into a 50 post exchange of you think you have a good reason to bring attention to something you want to go just go away, and I don't think there is a good one.
Lets leave it at that.

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LOL. Okay Andy.......

MSU said:

No, he definitely choked. The game would've been an almost certain win barring a miracle from the Giants. He dropped the ball, he choked.

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Dropping a ball isn't necessarily choking. If you want to deal in "facts," you might want to re-think your word choice.

If you want to listen/read 6 months from now you will still get people saying the same tired stuff. So my advice is not to listen or read anything that has to do with *******.

But no one will take my advice anyway and there will be another thread about this in a month or so. My automatic reaction is to move any thread having to do with ******* to the PS. But it's the void period in football until 10 more days, so what the hell.

ivanvamp said:

Within the last day, I have heard no less than 10 people say/write, "The Pats haven't won anything since spygate". I'm sick of it and - if for no other reason than that it's therapeutic for me - want to put that tired old line to bed.

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Your points are all valid, but unfortunately it will likely never happen for a couple of reasons.

First, there is the group of people (fans and players) that want it to be true so bad in order to make themselves feel better about their own team that they are never going to look at the facts objectively.

Second, there is a group of players and fans that are going to bring it up specifically to try to get under the skin of the Pats and their fans.

Third, there is a group of fans and players that can't be bothered to form an original thought on the subject so they just parrot what someone else says. What you see on message boards and hear on sports talk radio is not representative of sports fans as a whole, but that 0.01% is all we see and hear, so we tend to assume that they represent all sports fans; however this is not the case. Is a neutral city fan going to bother to post on a message board about the incident? Of course not. Is a fan of another team who has an axe to grind going to do the same? Absolutely.

Fourth, let's not forget the role of the media and the impact they have on shaping opinion. If they are to write that the event had minimal impact and it's not worth talking about then (a) that will generate zero interest, which negatively impacts their income, and (b) they have to go find something else to write about. They have a business to run and audience quotas to meet; as such it's not about telling the truth, its about maximizing profits. Stirring the pot does that, and no subject stirs the pot more than this one does. Talk about it in a 'tsk, tsk' manner and the boss is off their backs, ratings are up - and the audience repeats the opinion because they don't see the opinion as being poisoned due to business-related reasons.



As for the 'haven't won anything' line, there is a distinct difference between the word 'anything' and 'everything', but those people that love to throw that phrase out there blur and ignore the two. Unfortunately it is an unrealistic standard to reach, and I am sure that even if the Pats were to win a championship in the near future it would not change their thought process. A team should on average win a championship once every 32 years; why should it be presumed that the fact that they have not won once in five years 'proves' anything? Especially when you also consider the team was without its best player one year, had nearly complete turnover on the defense since then, and yet still came within one play of winning another championship not once, but twice?

One last thing to consider: did all these people that bring this up suddenly hate the Pats in September of 2007, but loved the team prior to then? Of course not. That to me is proof that ***gate is simply an excuse to justify their hatred of the Pats, and not at all a reason for that viewpoint. To any objective fan, the overall record since the start of the 2007 season shows that the filming had extremely minimal, or no impact on the team's previous success; if it had they would have immediately faltered to a sub-.500 club.

I already posted this once, so I'll repeat. I think ivamamp is making some good points. I think you can cut people off with that argument shortly and sweetly. Just say, "They've been in 2 Super Bowls since Spygate." The retort is going to be, and they lost because they didn't have game film. Your response is then simple: "They didn't have gamefilm on Philly or Carolina either!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

MSU said:

You can write 10 paragraphs on the matter if you'd like. But the fact is the Patriots haven't won a Superbowl since they violated the leauge code of conduct for cheating. Facts are facts. If Welker didn't choke we wouldn't have to worry about this.

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Your post is attempting to create a cause and effect relationship where none exists. You are dealing with correlation here and committing the common logical fallacy of "cum hoc ergo propter hoc"--with this, therefore because of this. The Patriots may not have won a SB since they were punished for filming in an unauthorized area, but the violation is clearly not why they haven't won. They also haven't won since Obama became president or Ted Kennedy died or since I bought my last winter coat, but I don't think there's causation involved in any of those correlating factors (well, maybe the coat). This kind of thinking is one reason why humans remain as primitive and superstitious as they are. Just look at all the crazy reasons proffered throughout history for why eclipses happen to get an idea of how this fallacy works to the detriment of logic and clear thinking.

MSU said:

Patriots were caught cheating in 2007 and lost a draft pick, paid fines, and received suspensions. That's a fact. My apologizes for the confusion, I don't know the exact name of the code or rule they violated because its not exactly the most important info in this whole thing.

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what suspensions ?

The following teams have not won a superbowl since 2007:

The Arizona Cardinals, the Atlanta Falcons, the Baltimore Ravens, the Buffalo Bills, the Carolina Panthers, the Chicago Bears, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Browns, the Dallas Cowboys, the Denver Broncos, the Detroit Lions, the Houston Texans, the Indianapolis Colts, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Miami Dolphins, the Minnesota Vikings, the New England Patriots, the New York Jets, the Oakland Raiders, the Philadelphia Eagles, the San Diego Chargers, the San Francisco 49ers, the Seattle Seahawks, the St. Louis Rams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tennessee Titans, the Washington Redskins

Clearly they were all "cheating" and are all terrible teams since they never won anything since the league ruling.

I think the better discussion topic is that the Jets haven't won a Super Bowl since Watergate.

Saints haven't won since bounty gate

MSU said:

You can write 10 paragraphs on the matter if you'd like. But the fact is the Patriots haven't won a Superbowl since they violated the leauge code of conduct for cheating. Facts are facts. If Welker didn't choke we wouldn't have to worry about this.

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You're a douchebag.

ivanvamp said:

Within the last day, I have heard no less than 10 people say/write, "The Pats haven't won anything since spygate". I'm sick of it and - if for no other reason than that it's therapeutic for me - want to put that tired old line to bed.

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I suggest you stop caring and listening to what a bunch of morons say in the comments sections of blogs and website. Any fan who has half a brain will tell you that the Pats are one of the most respected franchises in the NFL. If they bring up spygate, it's mostly as a tease. If you're hearing things differently, I suggest you start conversing with smarter people.

Rob0729 said:

I think the better discussion topic is that the Jets haven't won a Super Bowl since Watergate.

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Not quite correct. It was years before Watergate, January 12, 1969. Watergate began with the break-in in June of '72, so it was actually at least 3 and 1/2 years before Watergate. Not trying to be picky, but 3 and 1/2 years counts in this derby, at least to me. Think of it this way: the Jets haven't won a SB since 7 months before we landed a man on the moon.

Jackson 2 said:

Not quite correct. It was years before Watergate, January 12, 1969. Watergate began with the break-in in June of '72, so it was actually at least 3 and 1/2 years before Watergate. Not trying to be picky, but 3 and 1/2 years counts in this derby, at least to me. Think of it this way: the Jets haven't won a SB since 7 months before we landed a man on the moon.

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More than 70% of the population was not alive the last time the Jets won a SB

ivanvamp said:

...
So, since the first quarter of the first game of 2007, the Pats have won nothing, right? Well, except for this:

- 64-16 regular season record, an .800 winning percentage...

- 4 division titles....

- 2 AFC championships...

- Gone 4-4 in the playoffs over that time...

- Regular season + post season record over the last 5 seasons: 68-20 (.772). ...
- Came within about 1:30, and two amazing catches, away from adding two more SB titles. Great plays by the Giants, but both of which were historically great plays. ...

Bottom line: the whole "they haven't won anything" since spygate is a complete crock. ...

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You're preaching to the choir here.

This thread violates a fundamental principle of NFL fan behavior, which states: "Haters don't care about facts. They just want to hate."

A hater's reply to the OP's points would be simply, "Yeah, but in the previous six seasons they won three Superbowls and only lost one playoff game, so the 'cheating' had to have helped them when it counted.

You and I might know that that's an example of that old logical falacy "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." (Loosely translated, just because something happens after something else doesn't mean it happened because of it.)

You and I can recite facts until we are blue in the face or the cows come home (a choice of cliches there!) and it won't make any difference to these people.

We simply have to accept that Spygate will be a drag on the legacy of the Brady/Belichick era for the forseeable future and probably beyond. In a sport and league where greatness is parsed in terms of split-second reactions and decisions, something like Spygate will always be a subject of conversation when trying to differentiate among the "great" coaches and teams.

The absolute tragedy of the entire mess is that it was an unnecessary, self-inflicted wound by Belichick, which could only have been the product of arrogance.

The NFL had decided that, while it had looked the other way long enough when it came to the common practice of filming from the sidelines during a game, that the practice had to stop and so issued a directive to that effect.

For reasons fully known only to himself and certainly not adequately explained by his "Oops, I misunderstood the memo" excuse, Belichick chose to ignore that directive and to do so in the Lion's Den of the Jets' home stadium against a team now coached by his former Assistant who had left on bad terms.

We just have to accept that and realize that people who want to believe false things of the Pats as a result of the incident are not going to be convinced by fact or reason.