Subtext is everything. It’s so important that teams will often create one. “Nobody believed in us!” is always good because even the most favored of favorites only get 7-1 odds at best. And “Nobody believed in us!” is a much better rallying cry than “Only 14% of you believed in us!” Winning, it seems, is not the only thing. Winning with a backup right tackle is far sweeter. Beating your archrival with a backup right tackle, a second-string QB and a street free agent wide receiver is a half decaf soy latte with organic raw wild honey. Yum!
Perhaps the best thing about rivalries is that it provides us with built-in villains for our heroes to vanquish on the metaphorical fields of battle. Winning a divisional game isn’t merely a stick count in the Win column. It’s much more than that; more even than the tie-breaker advantage.
It is another small victory in the eternal struggle of Good vs. Evil.
It is savored and celebrated with fine meats and mulled mead (or a medium-well 9 oz. filet with an icy cold dusty dry Absolut martini with three olives). A defeat is a reminder that Good can never rest. It must rise up in the face of the snarling, razor-toothed, spit sprayed jeers of the Adversary and rejoin the Battle for Truth, Justice and the American Way! It must paint its face with team colors like medieval Scots warriors or gather other like-minded individuals together sufficient to spell out the team’s name with large letters painted on the taut canvas of their bellies! It must end all its sentences with exclamation points! It must wear t-shirts with effigies of our enemies captioned with alliterative trash talk!
Rivalries let us satisfy an atavistic impulse toward a tribal identity. They allow us to scratch an itch deep in the lizard brain.
If the Patriots do win the Super Bowl this year – a huge if at this point – I think they will owe a debt of gratitude in great part to the Jets.
The Jets are the Patriots “baby with one eyebrow.” Jets games are the first thing we Pats fans check when the season schedule comes out. They aren’t simply games, they’re events. It’s like a First Battle of Bull Run reenactment in that it has uniforms, spectators and the epic sweep of history but nobody actually dies.
Jets v. Patriots is like Super Bowl Sliders. It’s not a full-sized Super Bowl but it’s still delicious.
When the Good Guys win, of course.
Patriots’ players – and fans – are still talking about last year’s playoff loss. When Patriots players talk about it they say it doesn’t matter. Yeah. Sure. That loss is the opposite of nothing. It’s something. It’s a stinging, suppurating wound that will not close without the healing touch of the Lombardi Trophy.
The Patriots would do their best to simply imagine that every opponent this year is wearing white and green.
Is Patriots-Jets the best rivalry in the NFL? The best rivalry is really a parochial question. Eagles’ fans have the Giants. Chiefs’ fans have the Raiders. Bears’ fans have the Packers. The French have the Germans. I’m just glad I don’t live in the Redskins’ demo. I would hate to have to cross-dress and wear plastic pig snouts while losing games to the Cowboys. Small children would point at me as their mothers cover their eyes and usher them away, assuring them that I was not their Aunt May despite the mustache and thick ankles.
But I get it. When Washington beats Dallas, that floral print dress, the platinum blonde wig, the pearls, the sensible shoes with wedge heels and that plastic pig snout are so worth it.
Thankfully, I put on anything with a Flying Elvis Head logo on it – shirt, hoodie, hat, boxers – and I’m good.
Usually the hoodie.
The hoodie is undefeated this year.
Definitely the hoodie this Sunday.
Best. Pregame Speech. Ever.
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