"Do you know how lucky you are?”
“In the Super Bowl Again?”
“ I wish we had a team like that”
You have to live outside New England like I do to truly appreciate what the Patriots have accomplished in the last decade and a half and hear what non-Pats fans say and how they view the team.. As of twelve days from now, there will have been 51 Super Bowls with 102 participants or roughly 3.2 trips per team (give or take, ignoring expansion). Some unlucky souls like fans of Detroit or Cleveland have never sniffed the Super Bowl, fumbling away opportunities. More typical are fans of the Philadelphia Eagles who have made two trips to the Super Bowl, losing both times to the Raiders in 1981 and the Patriots in 2005. Such was the fate of Patriot fans BB (Before Belichick/Brady) In the first 33 years of the Super Bowl era, the Patriots were robbed of one potential trip to the Super Bowl ( Thanks Ben Dreith) and went twice, playing sacrificial lamb to the Chicago Bears 46 defense that may have been the best or the second best defense of all time in 1986 and falling to the Packers and Desmond Howard a decade later…..
Fast forward to today and the Patriots are no longer the Patsies, nomads who once played a home game in Birmingham , Alabama and in baseball stadiums around Boston. They have added seven more trips to the Super Bowl in 16 seasons. Think of that, nine trips in 51 years with 4 championships… ……..For Bills fans who routinely tormented us in the 90’s, a championship is when you actually win a Super Bowl…. And for Jets fans whose team last played in the Super Bowl when Lyndon Johnson was President and men hadn’t landed on the moon, it’s when you’re still playing in February….For Dolphin fans, well they’re playing Springsteen’s Glory Days again and again because that’s how long it’s been since they were even in a Super Bowl.
Think about that, when some teams dream of a trip to the playoffs, the Patriots’ ownership, players and fans have their eyes on the ultimate prize, the Lombardi trophy. Look at the way Coach Belichick handled the Lamar Hunt trophy for winning the AFC, as if it was a lovely door stop.. And the players by and large, for the ones who had done it before, it was a “ been there, done that” mentality knowing that the only truly successful season ends with the team hoisting the Lombardi trophy. While some teams dream of 8-8, or maybe if they are lucky making the playoffs, we know that we are fans of a team is always in contention to win it all and has not played a meaningless game ( i.e. out of the playoffs) in over 15 years…..
When the game was over on Sunday and the Patriots were still alive to fight another day, my wife asked me why I wasn’t jumping up and down. I replied, “it’s not the Super Bowl” and we’ve been in this position many times before. I almost sounded jaded and guiltily wondered how fans in Jacksonville, Houston or Minnesota or Miami , the first two never having been there and the last two having to go back thirty plus years would like to know that feeling.……….
No pink hat here, I sat in the cold rain and snow on the old metal benches at Schaffer, I mean Sullivan, I mean Foxboro stadium or whatever they called it watching what passed for football. I watched as a coach was nearly electrocuted by a microphone at his initial press conference.. I watched another bug out for a return to college on the eve of a playoff game and suffered through 1-15 and 2-14 seasons…. And still I watched and rooted for them… I wore Pats jerseys and dared venture into the belly of the beast at away venues like Jets games and in Buffalo (I’m not crazy enough to do it at the Black Hole).
Like Russell and Auerbach’s Celtic teams of yore., this is a once in a generation run that we should enjoy and savor….
One, because we know not when it will end and two, I so hope they hoist the Lombardi and tell Roger Goodell to shove it. I know they won’t because they have too much class but I don’t suffer from that affliction… I sat in the cheap seats at Super Bowl 49 ( an oxymoron if there ever was one) screaming at Roger Goodell to do anatomically impossible things….a middle aged man in Patriots garb speaking his mind and venting until he lost his voice…..
Venting at someone whose jealousy and petty vindictiveness caused him to lead a witch-hunt framing a Hall of Famer and an organization because he, the Commissioner either didn’t understand science or chose to ignore it….and couldn’t understand why one team constantly rose to the top in a league designed to promote parity. It couldn’t be desire, talent, hard work, coaching and an innate ability to maximize player talents. It had to be something else and a conclusion led them to facts to fit the hypothesis and with willing co-conspirators to give them the answers they wanted…. Sycophants in the press eager to please the honchos at 345 Park Avenue did their part misreporting and failing to correct mistakes. The league made the Patriots sign a nondisclosure clause when they finally released the correct data preventing the team from correcting the narrative…..
Now two years later, the curse of false accusations rises up. Teams that brought the allegations haven’t made the playoffs, a GM who puffed out his chest at his accomplishment is updating his resume at Kinko’s ( sounds better than Staples or FedEx) a league executive who pushed a false narrative is in purgatory in China and only a few heads left remains to roll……. Will it happen? Who knows? I am firm believer in Karma and someday they’ll get his just rewards. Maybe not today or tomorrow……In addition, many who accepted the league’s narrative pushed by ESPN have realized that it was predicated on a lie and the league’s buffoonery was solely designed to punish the Patriots and Brady and by extension Belichick and Kraft for being successful when parity was supposed to rule.
What scares me, no, what causes me to be wary is the thought that since the mental midgets of the league office with their willing henchmen in the press will try some other crap before this Super Bowl to distract the team.. What is there to stop them? The CBA and Article 46 gives the Commissioner nearly unlimited power….. The only redeeming factor is that being outside the Boston area, I listen to people and the consensus now ( finally) is that Brady got screwed and there was no crime. People realize this every time they get into their cold cars on a January morning in the northeast and the lights flash “low tire pressure”…and you know no one tampered with your car overnight… Maybe if the putzes of Park Avenue didn’t take limousines but rather drove themselves, they would understand why air pressure declines in cold weather… Oh wait, they have their evidence, they just buried it when it didn’t fit the narrative……What was the PSI of that subzero playoff game between Minnesota and Seattle last year???? Why didn’t they investigate when the Giants accused Pittsburgh of deflating balls this year??? We all know why and why some teams get preferential treatment and others get hammered….. Just the NFL League office doing League office things………..
As Patriots fans, we are lucky, fortunate and blessed to be fans of such a franchise…. When the UPS delivery man comes in the office , just shakes his head and says, “ Again” referring to the Patriots making plans for Houston and knowing that I am a Boston native transplanted, or when people rolling their eyes when they see my Patriots sweatshirt, it is humbling to know how lucky we are as fans……this fan appreciates it.
Here’s hoping that I can scream at the Commissioner on my TV in twelve days when he is supposed to present the Lombardi trophy and hopefully it is presented to one of the Patriots……..unless of course he finds a way to weasel out, which I expect he will…………………………
