Drew was a decent QB. Admit it - you, like me, spent 5 years totally jazzed about how he wasnt Ryan Leaf, and then psyched because you knew that with Parcell and Bledsoe and Terry Glenn and Curtis Martin, it was GOING to happen for us
. Truth is, all those pieces and some others around them were good enough to make some more real runs, but the Tuna blew it all up. Not to mention, it's conceivable that if the Tuna's not busy pretending it's the offseason instead of preparing for the biggest game to that date in New England history, we're looking at a ring in the 90s to go with whatever happened thereafter, assuming the latter events aren't butterfly-ef****ed.
I can see it. Parcell backhands emissaries from the NJ Jest and declares he is not finished bringing a championship to New England. The JEST declare him out of the running, he gets pissed and actually comes up with a masterful plan for the Super Bowl. Drew handles the pressure and ends up in an epic QB duel with Bret Favrevruh, finally winning the SB on a last minute drive maybe with a dramatic heave or two toward the end. Madden proclaims, "What Drew Bledsoe just did gave me goosebumps."
Everybody's back the next season, and everybody's hoping the Pats will repeat, sort of like they hoped for Denver, to put the imbalance betweeen conferences in the rearview. The epic rematch continues the Favrevruh-Bledsoe rivalry as they make each other better, but for both of them, that just means gunslingier. There are no Elway Super Bowls as the Bledsoe led Patriots rule the conference with an iron fist, changing the balance of power away from the NFC singlehanded. Denver declines, and while they don't think it's a high priority, they do put more energy into scouting the "next Elway," taking a flyer on one Thomas Edward Brady in the sixth round. The Pats like him too, but draft too low to get him in the 6th, and just can't see it in the first through fifth rounds.
Bledsoe's three-out-of-four performance in Super Bowls fulfills the wildest dreams of Patriots fans, and APF declares that he can die a happy man now that the fore-ordained pairing of Bledsoe and Parcell has led the New England Patriots to repeat performances in the promised land.
Meanwhile ActualBroncosFan inveighs on the need to retire the "cyberhorse" so that the new Brady-Shanahan era isn't saddled (sic) with bad unis to boot, now that the new look has already driven Elway into retirement.
Because we are finishing higher, scheduling dictates we play the Jets on a different week, and Mo shears the aorta of a completely different quarterback on what would have been Pats week. Drew Bledsoe is evenually succeeded by Rohan Davey. After his lone Super Bowl victory Robert Kraft proclaims, "Today, we are all Rohirrim." Then he puzzlingly has son Jonathtan laid out still alive on a funeral pyre. Kraft is sent to recuperate at a day spa in Jupiter, Florida, but nobody looks too closely at the rehab facility and it turns out their form of recuperation is a bad match for his brand of mental illness. With Kraft Sr. around the bend, Kraft Jr. takes the reins....
Never mind. Yeah Drew was good-ish, and a lot of the time whatever else is happening can make it all happen, and in retrospect, you're HOF-good not just meh.
