It Is What - Well You Know The Rest

Hate the Patriots if that's what you want to do. Use "because they're cheaters" like Michael Scott used "that's what she said" if that stops your inner child from sobbing.

Sticks and stones, brah.

 

So, here's the deal fellow Pats fans, as if you didn't know. We're on our own.

I used to have friends who were fans of other football teams. Fine people I could talk to about the game we both loved.

They're all dead to me now.

I've stocked up on bottled water, canned goods, beef jerky and vodka. I've buried a large tank for gasoline in my back yard and purchased a 7500W generator so the extra freezer I installed in the basement and filled with frozen pizza and tater tots will never lose power.

I want Bill Belichick to stop being so nice to the media. Seriously. He actually still answers some of their questions with words forming sentence fragments. Enough! Have one of the quality control coaches bring a cardboard standup with your most sullen facial expression on your 2D head and flip-flops on your 2D feet and set that cardboard Belichick in front of those microphones and cameras.

I want Robert Kraft to do what the rest of us do when it comes to Roger Goodell.

We all go to our jobs every day and have to work with people we loathe and despise. Yes, we're professionally polite to them. Okay, we do occasionally get caught rolling our eyes after they say something egregiously stupid (or whatever, I'm not really sure I was listening). We respond to their emails. Eventually. (I like to mark them for follow up in three days because that's the unofficial/unwritten cultural norm where I work – call or instant message if you need a response right now, send email if you can wait 1-3 days for an answer – and not answering at all would be a total dick move.) We don't go to lunch with them. We don't hang out in the same part of the room when we're having drinks before a team dinner. We hang with like-minded people who loathe and despise the same people that we do. We find a seat at the table so we don't have to sit next to them or across from them and we silently thank our high school geometry teacher as we ensure we won't have to feign any interest in their incessant stories about the health issues of their purebred dogs (or whatever, I'm not sure I was really listening). These are the people that make you doubt the Theory of Evolution. They should've been de-selected generations ago. We're angry, disappointed, frustrated, confused by this day-to-day world of quiet desperation we live in.

That's how I want Robert Kraft to work with Roger Goodell. Don't get caught in a photo op with Goodell but if you do, don't look into the camera; look off to the left somewhere. Think about some other place you'd rather be. The next time you're asked in whatever variation, what you think of the job Roger Goodell is doing, look at your watch and say, "Oh, my, look at the time. I hate to cut this short but I've got somewhere else I need to be that isn't here right now." Or say, "You have to admit, he's got the trains running on time." (Nobody should ever be compared to Hitler. Mussolini on the other hand? I say yes.) Or say, "Well, I think Roger Clemens belongs in the Hall of Fame and I think someday he will be – wait, what? Oh, Roger Goodell. Oh, look at the time. I hate to cut this short but I'm on to someplace else that isn't here right now."

Be professionally polite. Answer his emails. Eventually. (Remember to flag them for follow up after three days). Do not sit next to or opposite him at dinner. Same rule applies to lunch and breakfast.

Laugh when your fellow owners call you to complain about the unprecedented, draconian punishment Goodell has handed down to them (I'm looking at you Clark Hunt). Give them a little Bobby Z. "How does it feel? How does it feel? To be on your own? With no direction home? Like a complete unknown?" Then cackle and remind them to call you again when Hell freezes the fuck over.

And Tom Brady? Keep posting pictures of your impossibly beautiful family on Instagram. Keep shredding defenses on Sunday and in the postgame press conference the league requires you to have, answer every question with "Weren't you the shitbag motherfucker that called me a cheat and a liar? And now you want me to cough up a quote as clickbait for your pathetic pseudo-journalistic excuse for a blog? Mark Wahlberg and some of his friends from the old neighborhood would like to see you in the parking lot. They don't like to wait. You should go now if you expect them to take it easy on you. Really. I'd go now if I were you."

Because we're all on our own here in Patriots Nation. It is what it is. We're us. Everyone else is them.

Let's start acting like it.