Something More

Another playoff run, another trip down memory lane. The Tuck Rule. Spygate.

Well, you know what they say. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate.

First it was Don Shula dropping the “Beli-cheat.” Then Belichick goes all Moriarty on the Ravens, his hands in the air like he just don’t care, his I was there in the general’s rank when the blitzkrieg came and the bodies stank grin almost cracking his head open to reveal the face of the devil himself. He made John Harbaugh dance like his trained monkey on the field turf of Gillette Stadium and Ray Lewis’ brain caught fire from rage when he saw it. The Snow Bowl (as it’s known in New England) was 14 years ago. None of that happens without the Tuck Rule? Yeah, that’s crazy talk or put another way, it was just Ray being Ray.

It is hard to simply talk about the game when the Patriots are involved; more specifically, the Belichick/Brady Patriots. Legacies. Controversies. Rivalries. Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England don’t just play to win the game, they play to win history.

How many franchises and their fans would be happy just to be in the conference championship game? If you’re a Pats’ fan, you may find that an absurd question. Happy just to be in the conference championship game? We may have an intellectual understanding of what it means to be a Buffalo Bills’ fan but we have zero feel for the emotional context. How happy would my brother-in-law Scott be if the Bills were in the AFC Championship game today? If they were to make it to the Super Bowl I think he would joyfully party for the full 60 regardless of the score.

If Seattle loses to Green Bay it will be disappointing but it won’t be a tragedy, it won’t be the end of an era; there will probably be a little “wait till next year” swag from the Seahawks. Russell Wilson in young. There will be plenty of opportunities in the years to come for Wilson and Seattle’s Legion of Boom.

The good citizens of Patriots Nation will watch Sunday’s game with a knot in their gut. We will gather together not for celebration but for support, a hedge against our greatest collective pigskin fears, insurance against shooting the $1,000 televisions we just bought for Christmas. Or ourselves. We will apply alcohol in more than medicinal doses. We will chain smoke ‘em if we got ‘em. We will implore the gridiron gods to smile down upon Tom Brady and his perfectly thrown oblate spheroids as if we’ve spent forty years in the pigskin wilderness.

It has been ten years since the last Patriots’ Super Bowl win. They have come close to that elusive fourth ring but the sustained excellence of the Belichick/Brady years feels incomplete, lacking closure, a satisfying ending. We watched Peyton Manning look old and broken down as the Broncos lost to Andrew Luck and the Colts and we fear this is how Brady will go out. We fear that may happen with Brady in another team’s uniform. We fear this may well be the last best chance for Brady, Belichick and the New England Patriots to secure pigskin immortality.

You could make the argument they already have. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are first ballot Hall of Famers already. Brady’s name is attached to just about any meaningful metric for quarterbacks in the NFL record book. We may never see a run like what Belichick has put together ever again. Like ever. It was supposed to be impossible in the salary cap era and for most franchises, it has been. It should be enough but Brady and Belichick know better.

We all know better.