L.T. TAKES SWIPE AT BELICHICK
The guy whom many have suggested should be the face of the NFL showed a little of his ass on Sunday.
Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson appeared to be pissed off about something as he left the field following the Patriots' stunning come-from-behind win in San Diego. He was asked about the situation in the locker room.
"[Y]es, I was upset," Tomlinson said. "Very upset. When you go to the middle of our field and you start doing the dance that Shawne Merriman is known for, that's disrespectful to me and I can't sit there and watch that. And so yeah, I was very upset. And just the fact the way they showed no class at all, absolutely no class, and maybe it comes from the head coach. There you have it."
No class? Hey, L.T., maybe it's just us, but we haven't seen many news items this year about Patriots players taking nandro or buying up the key ingreidient for "purple drank" and shipping it to Houston or getting into shoot-outs with cops or being investigated for importing knock-off athletic shoes that would then be sold to U.S. suckers at full price or driving drunk or doing any of the other things that various members of your team did this year.
And we're not defending Bill Belichick here. We don't like the whole cut-off hoodie look, and not many others do. Though we think that too much was made of him grabbing that photographer last week after beating the Jets, it definitely was something he shouldn't have done.
But there's never been a question about the Patriots being anything other than classy.
So does mimicking Shawne Merriman's "lights out" dance cross the line after the Pats turned the "lights out" on the Chargers' season? What the hell is the difference between the two? Is L.T. saying it's okay for Merriman to show up an opponent with that Tourette's patient on speed routine after making a play because he thought it up first?
It's a stupid argument, and it was a stupid thing for Tomlinson to say.
He wasn't upset because the Patriots were celebrating, he was upset because the Chargers lost, and because his storybook season ended a couple of chapters short.
And there may be an epilogue in this one, in Hawaii. If the Pats should lose to the Colts next week, the head coach of L.T.'s team will be Bill Belichick.
POSTED 11:40 a.m. EST, January 15, 2007
CHARGERS HAVE A SHORT MEMORY
Amid complaints from running back LaDainian Tomlinson and other members of the San Diego Chargers that the New England Patriots celebrated too fervently their unlikely victory over the 14-2 Bolts on Sunday, we've been reminded of the Chargers reaction to a similarly unlikely win from a year ago.
In New England.
After thumping the Pats by the score of 41-17 and shattering the team's 21-game home winning streak, the Chargers were not exactly humble.
"That's a [butt]-whipping," said defensive coordinator Wade Phillips in an article penned by Tom Curran, who at the time wrote for the Providence Journal and who now works for NBCSports.com.
Cornerback Drayton Florence (or is it Florence Drayton?) was less tactful: "F--k New England and their team," he said, before turning to a "collection of onlookers" and adding: "Get the look of shock off your faces. Don't be shocked. We beat your [butt]."
So, you know, maybe a few of the Pats were remembering the way that the Chargers handled themselves in 2005.
And if L.T. is going to get bent out of shape because his opponents do this kind of stuff, we'd like to hear what he's been doing to persuade his teammates not to act that way, either.
Frankly, there aren't many NFL teams that can claim to be, top to bottom, the modern-day equivalent of Fred Blassie. So none of them should ever be *****ing when another squad does what they've surely done themselves at some point in the not-so-distant past.
