Italian Pat, I'm late.
When I was a kid and i found out we were going to have our own football team, I was so excited. I would check the paper every day for news and to check Larry Garron's stats. Other teams had names for their defensive lines and I thought ours should too, because we had a great four man line.
When we got Jim Nance I thought we'd really have the team, since we were already good.
I figured a title was just around the corner.
Then Nance got fat, Parilli retired and the Dark Ages came.
The Pats were always entertaining and never more so than when they hired Joe Namath's offensive coordinator, the most sought after assistant in the league. Get the star coach and weaken your opponent at the same time? How could you lose? Enough said about that!
I was never a quarterback savior type and when Plunkett imploded due to lack of support I wasn't surprised.
When they got Fairbanks, they started having some of the best drafts ever, on a par with Parcells and Belichick Pioli. I loved that they spent on the secondary, defense and the greatest Olineman ever.
I knew a title was right around the corner.
Bad breaks, bad calls and the betrayal/force out, whatever. I don't like to dwell on those things.
The coaching fell apart, even with all that talent. Dark days again.
Meyer was fun, telling John Hannah he needed to empty his bucketand hannah telling him what he could do with said bucket. Snowplows andgood times, always entertaining.
A weird mystic coach, a first round QB and a top receiver the next year. check put the 1983 draft Rembert in the 4th, James in the 7th and Lippett in the 8th. That's drafting!
Eason was talented but...? Fryar was crazy talented, but...crazy.
Still, we seemed on the track and I felt a title was just around the corner.
And it was. Sorry, but that playoff run might still be the most exciting I have ever experienced.
James Brown never had payback like that! The Jets, MIAMI!!!, the RAIDERS!! all in their house. Soooo sweet.
Then we recover a fumble, Dawson blows his knee out and Stanley can't catch a sure TD. The dream was over.
Soon, the cocaine thing and Eason slowly regressing into autism pulled the curtain on that edition.
End of Grogan, Flutie flakes and the incredibly inept Mark Wilson were part of the next dark age and I moved to Texas. Ownership hilarity didn't matter, Billy had hung on as long as he could and even built a generic stadium so the team finally had a home. He was cooked.
I remember we beat the oilers to shut my Texas neighbor up (friendly back and forth, what's great about sports). Of course I followed them, but drafts became more important.
So I'm reading the paper one day or listening to the radio or something and it says Bill Parcells signed to coach the Patriots.
If you're not old enough to remember that, you can't imagine how bizarre that news was at the time. I know I checked for misprints, or auditory hallucinations a few times. I can't make a current analogy, but it was like being told the Beatles had been signed to play your high school prom.
The greatest current coach and top gunslinger Bledsoe? Some of the greatest drafts in team history?
I knew success was right around the corner!
Yes it was and we came a return from doing it too. Then Daddy #2 took off on us, after the single most incompetent person I've known was selected to "buy the groceries" over Parcells (two sides to every story).
Poodle Pete didn't do that bad considering he had a rat goading the club house lawyers and a team that couldn't replace any players due to drafts a 3 year old with a dart could improve on.
I always liked Belichick, though he did seem to have trouble working with people. Despite bizarro press conference, the dumping of Grier and giving control of the operations to the obviously intelligent Belichick gave me hope.
I figured success was right around the corner!
I haven't followed them much since, how are they doing?
