If Patriots Win, Best Area Championship Ever?

[PatsFans.com Article]

It will be the best championship ever if the Patriots go out and finish the job.

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[LurkingLinebacker]

I can't speak much about the numerous championships that happened before my lifetime in both hockey and basketball (the hype, the satisfaction, the emotion I would have felt), but I would at this point rank the 2004 red sox #1 as I'm sure many would.

I've been able to understand the basics of baseball since I was really young. Football, on the other hand, is somewhat harder to understand as a child, IMO. For that reason, I think baseball was my first love and passion. But since early high school, I have got into football... watching hs, collegiate, and professional levels. Still, I am hard pressed to say if a win on Sunday would overtake the 2004 red sox championship.

The manner in which the red sox overcame the odds is part of the reason, coupled with the long wait older generations of fans had to wait and the appreciation that I witnessed what many had not.

Given that those odds were seemingly insurmountable, the odds against the Patriots all season long have been, perhaps, even more insurmountable. Winning 19 games in a baseball season has happened numerous times over the past 35 years (I believe the Oakland A's went the entire month of August without losing a few years back and the Rockies had a hell of a season finish and playoff run), but it has never happened in one football season. Hopefully it will happen Sunday, and then it may overtake the 2004 red sox world series championship in my own baseball-loving heart.

In addition, a win on Sunday would rank high on all-time Boston area wins because it would undoubtedly confirm that the Patriots are a dynasty even in the minds of the biggest Patriot-haters. A Super Bowl win on Sunday would also mark the final chapter in what has been nothing less than spectacular and nearly unimaginable (except in maybe Madden franchise mode)... making it perhaps one of the greatest Super Bowls ever before the game even begins, win or lose.

The manner in which the 2004 red sox won seemed perfect, but a Superbowl XLII win would prove that the Patriots completed true perfection, and that certainly would certainly be worthy of the #1 professional Boston sports team championship run of all time.


Go Patriots, make history.

 

[Seels]

Sorry, nothing ever tops 2004.

 

[apricissimus]

Sorry, nothing ever tops 2004.

I have to agree with that.

 

[oldrover]

Sorry, nothing ever tops 2004.

The 2001 championship was unbelievable. Truly.

That said, I agree completely about 2004. 86 years of frustration, gone.

 

[jscout]

Nope. Not the best ever. Not even close. If the Pats win on Sunday, it'll be a distant 2nd if not 3rd.

Sox in '04 will always be at the top, and by a great margin. The biggest professional sports rivalry in this area, and arguably this country, is Sox/Yanks. In that one season, and in a mere eight consecutive games, the Sox lifted a decades old plight that ran so deep that it even affected non-sports fans in the area. You can feel the effects everywhere you go. No longer do you hear the constant sulking always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is an air of confidence in this city not seen since the Victorian period when Boston was dubbed the "Hub of the universe." Boston is now the "Hub of the (professional) sports universe."

 

[Patradomous]

I respectfully disagree. If the Pats go 19-0 it will be the greatest championship in New England sports. 04 was great but winning 4 games in a row in baseball is not as great as going 19-0. When getting to the playoffs in the NFL is like winning 3 seventh games in a row.
Beating the Cardinals in the WS was anti climatic after beating the Yanks.

Pats will be the greatest team in NFL history if they win....If they they lose they WILL be the Red Sox.

 

[tailwind]

I respectfully disagree. If the Pats go 19-0 it will be the greatest championship in New England sports. 04 was great but winning 4 games in a row in baseball is not as great as going 19-0. When getting to the playoffs in the NFL is like winning 3 seventh games in a row.
Beating the Cardinals in the WS was anti climatic after beating the Yanks.

Pats will be the greatest team in NFL history if they win....If they they lose they WILL be the Red Sox.

Coming back from an 3-0 defecit against your hated rivals (which just so happens to be the biggest rivalry in professional sports) during the 86th year of your championship drought is HUGE. This is after 2003 where the Sox had the Yankees on the ropes in the ALCS only to not get it done in the end (again.) 2003 was supposed to be "the year", then in 2004, the team fell behind to a point where no team had ever recovered, only to storm back and eventually destroy a 100+ win team in the World Series.

The potential for 19-0 is huge too, but not on the same scale given the relative success of the Patriot franchise this decade.

Saying that the 2004 Sox team was just "winning 4 games in a row" is being completely ignorant to the situation. For any serious Boston sports fan, that week in October of 2004 went from being one of the worst of their lives to the best in the blink of an eye.

 

[Patradomous]

Saying that the 2004 Sox team was just "winning 4 games in a row" is being completely ignorant to the situation. For any serious Boston sports fan, that week in October of 2004 went from being one of the worst of their lives to the best in the blink of an eye.

Fine, but they had lost three games in a row before.Pats can't afford one loss.
As far as being the "worst week in their lives" can't be very old in Red Sox years.It would have just been buisness as usual if the Red Sox lost a game 4-7.The surprise came when they did come back without their usual spitting of the bit.Instead, the 2nd best team money could buy beat the first best team money could buy.Or as you like to put it a hundred plus win team came back to beat another 100 plus win team.
I was a Red Sox fan before the term pink hat was invented.

The Pats have to operate in a system where everyone has to start with the same amount of money and to go undfeated in a league system that is contrarian to that is a very underrated concept that people don't understand.

 

[Doctor DDS]

I have to agree. Nothing will ever surpass 2004 in my mind. A Pats win Sunday would be huge and will certainly stamp this unit as the best or one of the best ever. But this team is already a dynasty (we are not trying to become one) Losing would stink but would be tempered bythe fact that we have won so much recently. Now if we had never won the prior 3 and were in this position my opinion would be much different.

 

[apricissimus]

I respectfully disagree. If the Pats go 19-0 it will be the greatest championship in New England sports. 04 was great but winning 4 games in a row in baseball is not as great as going 19-0. When getting to the playoffs in the NFL is like winning 3 seventh games in a row.
Beating the Cardinals in the WS was anti climatic after beating the Yanks.

Pats will be the greatest team in NFL history if they win....If they they lose they WILL be the Red Sox.

The point isn't that they made an amazing (and unprecedented in the history of baseball) comeback against the Yankees. The point is that they finally won after 86 years, having come incredibly close on a few occasions and having many great teams in that span.

Of course 19-0 is amazing, but it won't be as emotionally gratifying as the Sox in 2004 because we've almost gotten used to Super Bowl victories.

 

[Patradomous]

The point isn't that they made an amazing (and unprecedented in the history of baseball) comeback against the Yankees. The point is that they finally won after 86 years, having come incredibly close on a few occasions and having many great teams in that span.

Of course 19-0 is amazing, but it won't be as emotionally gratifying as the Sox in 2004 because we've almost gotten used to Super Bowl victories.

Honestley, i respect understand those opinions completley.
I think of being a RS fan for over 40 years I got burnt out by them.In 04 I was more like "its about time" especially after still being discusted with them for 03.
For me it will be either the 01 Pats or the 07 Pats as my favorite championship.

 

[Tommysgirl]

I can't ever compare them. I have a special place in my heart for the championships of the 80s Celts and the Sox and Pats of this decade. I couldn't possibly say which was best. I just thank them for all the joy they have given me. How lucky we are that we even have to argue about which Championship is the best, we are truly blessed.

 

[tailwind]

Fine, but they had lost three games in a row before.Pats can't afford one loss.
As far as being the "worst week in their lives" can't be very old in Red Sox years.It would have just been buisness as usual if the Red Sox lost a game 4-7.The surprise came when they did come back without their usual spitting of the bit.Instead, the 2nd best team money could buy beat the first best team money could buy.Or as you like to put it a hundred plus win team came back to beat another 100 plus win team.
I was a Red Sox fan before the term pink hat was invented.

The Pats have to operate in a system where everyone has to start with the same amount of money and to go undfeated in a league system that is contrarian to that is a very underrated concept that people don't understand.

You just don't get it. Trying to minimalize the accomplishments of the '04 Sox by saying "the Pats can't afford one loss?" Come on. They're different games. Baseball hinges almost entirely on the pitchers on the mound, and there's different guys up there every game. To make it comparable in football you'd have to rotate Brady, Cassell, and Gutierrez.

It wouldn't have been "business as usual" if the Sox had lost. It would've been absolutely brutal, the 2nd year in a row of an agonizing defeat to the Yankees with a team that was good enough to go all the way. In football terms, that's two years in a row of the 2006 AFC Championship game. If that 2006 AFCCG occurred before the Pats had ever won a SB, you'd have been crushed.

Why make excuses for the lack of a salary cap? It's just as hard to build successful baseball teams as it is football, it isn't about money. It's using revenues to build a successful franchise, as in baseball, teams that don't draft well never win. The Yankees haven't won a title since they started throwing money around like water, it's no different than how Snyder runs the Redskins. It doesn't work.

You can think what you want, but you're clearly in the minority here and you don't have a very good grasp on baseball.

 

[oldskool138]

Fine, but they had lost three games in a row before.Pats can't afford one loss.

But then they won four straight sudden-death elimination games (two by walk-off hits in extra innings in the wee hours of the morning.). That's pretty damned impressive.

19-0 would be great, fantastic and unbelievable. It would rank as the #2 sport's moment in Boston history...or 1A.

 

[BTTA]

I respectfully disagree. If the Pats go 19-0 it will be the greatest championship in New England sports. 04 was great but winning 4 games in a row in baseball is not as great as going 19-0. When getting to the playoffs in the NFL is like winning 3 seventh games in a row.
Beating the Cardinals in the WS was anti climatic after beating the Yanks.

Pats will be the greatest team in NFL history if they win....If they they lose they WILL be the Red Sox.

Nothing the Pats ever do will cause hundreds of people to go to the grave sites of loved ones to talk about how "they finally did it, and I wish you were here to see it."

No group of Patriots players will be as beloved as the key '04 Sox players - Varitek, Shilling, Manny, etc.

This comparison has nothing to do with how hard it is to win the championship - that's an irrelevant metric for this question. The only informative way to answer the question is to look at the historical and emotional impact on the region. It has nothing to do with how we feel individually. The Pats will never be able to match the Sox impact here.

I'm a huge Pats fan. They would have to lose ten Super Bowls to ever approach bringing the ironic and odd combination of pride, loyalty, embarrassment, and frustration that the Sox generated. Could any other team, in any sport, in any region, match it? I doubt it.

 

[BeantownRox]

The 2001 championship was unbelievable. Truly.

That said, I agree completely about 2004. 86 years of frustration, gone.

Without a doubt.

 

[BeantownRox]

But then again, I have to agree with Brady as well - (to paraphrase slightly) "The best one is the next one".

 

[bobgeorge]

Read Dan Shaughnessy this morning, more or less copied the premise of my article.

Obviously he is pro-Red Sox all the way. Not that I'm not, but I think this championship, if they get it, would mark the time and outdo even the '04 WS win. It won't diminish the importance and the impact of '04.

I also believe that all of us may not fully realize the complete impact of a 19-0 Patriot team because we've all seen 3 other Super Bowl wins recently. If you remember the Celtics during their run, one title after another was nice, but after a while you perhaps thought "Yeah, yeah, we've been here before...". Maybe some of you feel that way this week.

I am trying to be visionary and look down the road. 19-0 may be a great accomplishment in ALL sports and not just football.

Bob G

 

[Lansdowne]

19-0 would be the greatest single-season accomplishment of any Boston sports team. However, '04 Red Sox will still hold the title for largest impact. '01 Patriots, '03 Patriots, '04 Patriots, and '07 Red Sox all felt euphoric as a fan, but '04 Red Sox was something that transcended all that.

It felt as if all Red Sox fans won the lottery at the same time. In an instant, your life has changed forever. The guillotine above every living Sox fan was vanquished. I also think the uphill battle against the Yankees in the ALCS that year, along with the heartbreak the year before, amplified the jubilation among the Red Sox crowd.

Should the Patriots win Sunday, it will be the most gratifying victory I've ever experienced as a fan of this team for a multitude of reasons. This season was personal for all of us, and will hold a special place in our hearts, all respect due to the previous 3 championships.

The '04 Red Sox, though, is what I'd describe as the pinnacle. Maybe some day, Cubs fans will know what it felt like for us the night our team won it all.