This One's Optimistic

Rob Gronkowski will play all 16 games (hopefully, all 19 games). The Buffalo Bills will make the playoffs. The New York Jets will win the AFC East. The New Orleans Saints will meet the Denver Broncos in the desert as Peyton Manning breaks all the records he set last year and this time wins his second Super Bowl MVP. Everybody’s optimistic right now, mostly because it’s going to be a lot harder come September.

 

Could Super Bowl XLIX feature Broncos-Seahawks II: The Re-Beatdown? Possibly. Not that anyone outside of Seattle wants to see beloved Metalunan QB Peyton Manning once again handled, humiliated and humbled in front of a hundred million people. Okay, I’d watch that but it falls well short of my dream Super Bowl match-up of the Patriots vs. I Don’t Care (though I’m pulling for the Giants because it would tie up all the loose ends) with Rob Gronkowski setting the record for TD catches in a Super Bowl.

I’m a New Englander by tenure, not by birth. I make this claim knowing full well that many of those born here will never consider me to be a New Englander no matter how long I live here. Be that as it may, I will observe that optimism doesn’t come easy here. The summer is short and plagued by humidity, thunderstorms, flash floods and black flies. Winter is long and harsh and unsympathetic to those unprepared for power outages, 12-16” of snowfall overnight and the inevitable road closures that follow.

We’re haunted by The Window. Tom Brady’s Window. Have the Patriots done enough on defense? Can we count on those second-year wide receivers? Tom can only be terrific for so long. We’ve already heard pigskin pundits and bobbleheads question Brady’s status as one of the game’s best quarterbacks and while those judgments seem premature, how much longer do we have before Bill Belichick steps up to the podium, tears welling in his eyes, to tell us how much he loved coaching Tommy?

We anticipate Cordarrelle Patterson’s breakout season and despite all the success he’s brought to New England we curse Belichick for his failure to produce the deep threat that Brady hasn’t had since Randy Moss fell down and went crazy. Even if Jamie Collins makes the leap, Logan Ryan improves on his surprising rookie season and Josh Boyce catches 35 passes for 500 yards with 4 TDs, there will still be a significant segment of Patriots Nation that will bemoan the lost opportunity Patterson represents, especially if Patterson becomes the featured player in Norv Turner’s pass first/pass deep offense and puts up a 100/1200/10 slash line.

We note parallels between the 2014 and 2004 teams with caution if not outright suspicion. Patriots’ fans have no business complaining about the last decade; ten years of AFC East hats and t-shirts, four trips to the AFC Championship game and two Super Bowl appearances is a record most NFL franchises would happily sign up for without scrolling through the fine print in the licensing agreement (does anybody actually do that?). Still, getting dumped by Kate Upton or Jennifer Lawrence or in my case, Cate Blanchett, no matter how magical that week in Maui was or how wonderful the long weekend at the bed and breakfast in Napa was, it’s still getting dumped. That fourth Super Bowl win has proven to be heartbreakingly elusive. I know fans in Cleveland and Detroit don’t want to hear this and I hardly expect any sympathy but it hurts.

Here we are. Again. Cate Blanchett has been tweeting terrible things about me (and so what if they’re true) and still I’m standing in front of the mirror, applying the Just for Men, ready to risk my heart one more time. I know I shouldn’t say it but…

I’m optimistic.