They're chronically involved in controversy, their roster has been decimated by retirement, free agency losses, and injuries, they lack playmakers on offense, their AARP-eligible quarterback just had the worst game of his career yet they're still undefeated, sit atop NFL power rankings, and remain the money makers' favorite to win back-to-back Super Bowls…
Who are the New England Patriots?
Back in 2003, Patriots Nation would've left last week's game pumping their fists. Tough divisional win on the road, dominated by defense and special teams, with the offense doing just enough.
Yeah. That was a long time ago. Last week's 16-10 win over a stout Buffalo Bills team was greeted by sighs of relief and open consideration of existential pigskin doom in the darker corners of Pats Fans' brains.
Entitled?
That's such an ugly word, don't you think?
Spoiled?
Well… Wouldn't you be?
Hurt by the almost palpable sense of schadenfreude emanating from football fans west of the Connecticut River?
A little bit.
I know. Patriots fans aren't supposed to be bothered by the trolls in the comments section and their playback loop of Spygate, Deflategate, or the pigskin pundits and bobbleheads trying to push Tom Brady off the nearest cliff, the backhanded disrespect for and denigration of (perhaps) the greatest sports dynasty in the history of everything...
But we are human beings after all. If you prick us, do we not bleed (silver, red and blue)?
"You just need to calm down," you say. "Count the rings, pet your emotional support llama, and let it go."
And you know what? You're absolutely right.
The expectation that every game should be a 30-0 win, the knowledge that anything short of hoisting yet another Lombardi will be considered a failure, the sense that perfection is no longer an abstract, Olympian goal but an ever-tantalizing lucid dream...
It's a good problem to have, a burden any other fan base would gladly accept.
What can the Patriots and Tom Brady do that would shock and amaze us? Week 14, they could beat the Chiefs 70-0. The Patriots are still the Patriots. Brady could pass for 555 yards in that game. Tom Brady got it done with the likes of David Patten, Kenbrell Thompkins, Jabar Gaffney, and Reche Caldwell; what did you expect? It's a bigger surprise he hasn't done this sooner, isn't it? 19-0? This time the cheaters finished the job. There are no more surprises; just the anxious inevitability of an ending none of us in New England wants to see.
Perhaps that's what's behind our feelings about that game in Buffalo; a glimpse of a dystopian pigskin future that started to coalesce with Rob Gronkowski's retirement announcement and comes into sharper focus with each passing Sunday. The second decade of the Patriots' unprecedented twenty-year run of gridiron greatness was ending. We've lived so well, so long. It couldn't possibly continue, could it? All good things, as they say.
Just please… not yet.
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