I Hear You

It's been nearly a week.

I'm still amazed.

The Top 10 Tom Brady Games… So Far popped up in suggestions on one of my recent visits to YouTube. (I'd already watched it. Twice.) I was looking for more hype videos, game highlights, behind the scenes "sights and sounds" videos, and clips of pigskin pundits and bobbleheads pretending they never really doubted Brady and the Patriots. I thought they were smart to add that "So Far" suffix because the 2018 AFC Championship game has to go on the Ultimate Top 10 Tom Brady Games list. (Fight me.) How are Belichick, Brady, and the Patriots doing this?

How, after 18 years, is Brady still hanging Top 10 games on his opponents?

I hear you.

He cheats. He whines to the officials and he gets all the calls. Then he cheats some more.

It does explain everything.

And for those of you west of the Connecticut River rooting for the Other 31, it lets your coach, your quarterback, your team off the hook, doesn't it?

It isn't that the Patriots are smarter, tougher (physically and mentally), better prepared, more disciplined, better conditioned, and more graceful under pressure than your team.

It's that they cheat.

It isn't that Bill Belichick has developed an organization based on roles and responsibilities defined in excruciating detail, created a culture of accountability (Do Your Job!), focused on building a team over acquiring talent, continued to evolve the concepts and principles that drive his offensive, defensive, and special teams philosophy of complementary football, a no detail too small approach to situational football, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the game he coaches.

It's that he's pigskin Satan, with the sub-sub-paragraphs of the NFL Rule Book the contract language he uses to steal the football souls of his opponents.

It isn't that Tom Brady is the GOAT, the living embodiment of clutch; it isn't his finely tuned throwing mechanics, the avocado ice cream, that he won't be outworked, that he literally lives for this, or that he's seemingly impervious to self-doubt.

He cheats.

Oh and he's a system quarterback who just dinks and dunks.

Probably because he's so old.

And his receivers are so slow.

He has to martial what little talent New England has at the skill positions by constantly throwing underneath crossers and checking down to his running backs. And to keep the Pats ineffectual defensive unit off the field.

A team that sucks this hard has to cheat to win. They didn't earn their trip to Super Bowl 53; their win in the AFCCG is "tainted" because aren't all Patriots wins tainted by their cheatery?

I hear you. Oh yes. I hear you.

So do the Patriots.