I've been as guilty as the next blogger for pushing the 2001 narrative as the context and framework for these 2021 Patriots but really; isn't this just the way the HC of the NEP has been rolling for the last forty years?
Have to admit, I'm really nervous about this Thursday Night Football game against the Atlanta Falcons. Then again, I was really nervous about last Sunday's game against the Cleveland Browns. Could be I'm just a really nervous guy.
And all the bandwagon jumpers, all those pigskin pundits and bobbleheads elbowing each other in the ribs, stepping in front to claim I was the first one to call these Patriots a playoff team, aren't making it any easier.
I didn't just hear you say Super Bowl team, did I?
No! Stop it! I'm sticking my fingers in my ears and I'm singing "La, la-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la, and when they say the party's over, then we'll bring it right back."
I'm so nervous it's hard to enjoy how nervous the rest of the NFL and all of the fans west of the Connecticut River are, right now.
Wait-What? Are the Patriots are good? Again? Just one year removed from losing the greatest quarterback in the history of everything?
Yeah. I'm enjoying it.
Weren't the Buffalo Bills supposed to own the AFC East for the next five years? How did the Dolphins wind up with the third-best Alabama QB? (That's right. I'd take Jalen Hurts over Tua.) How did the Jets (and the 49ers) miss on Mac Jones? Was that another Bill Belichick Jedi mind trick? This is not the quarterback you're looking for. (Okay, the Jets thought Sam Darnold was the answer so, they probably weren't going to get this one right, either. And the 49ers took a hard pass on Tom Brady. So, there's that.) Weren't these same pigskin pundits and bobbleheads convinced, just a year ago, that the game had passed Belichick by; that fullbacks and 260 pound linebackers were quaint artifacts of the days of leather helmets and high top cleats?
Come on. That was so 2020.
This is 2021 and the Patriots are running it back to 2001. Complementary football. Situational football. Bill Belichick is zigging (once again) while the league is zagging. Blah, blah, blah, Ginger. Blah, blah, blah.
I get it. Tom Brady was the magician's left hand we were watching; Bill Belichick was the magician's right hand. A lot of what the Patriots have done over the last 20 years passed unnoticed because Brady was Brady. We were so distracted, so enthralled, so amazed by what Brady did that what Belichick was and is still doing could pass largely unnoticed.
Will those same rats jump ship if New England stumbles Thursday night?
I think that qualifies as a rhetorical question, don't you?
And yes, that's a rhetorical question, too.
Perhaps it isn't Bill Belichick and the Patriots running it back to 2001; it's me.
There reached a point in the Brady era when every game became existential. They weren't just football games. They were inflection points in the pigskin multiverse, potential turning points for the joined legacies of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, microscopic examinations of everything that goes into the good, the bad, and the ugly in winning, another chance for the haters to dismiss their accomplishments as the tainted goods of cheats and liars.
But I still remember the joy I felt in rooting for that 2001 Patriots team. Brady wasn't Brady then; he wasn't even going to be the starter. I had zero expectations. The Pats were coming off a 5-11-0 season and didn't look like they'd be much better than that when Drew Bledsoe went down with an injury. Belichick looked like just another mediocre, retread head coach, far more likely to get fired a second time than to become one of the winningest coaches in NFL history. And yet, there was something about the way they played the game, like they loved the game, like they loved playing the game for and with each other. It's hard to think of the New England Patriots as lovable underdogs, but that's who they were. As a football fan, I felt like every game was a gift. It felt good to root for them.
Yeah.
I feel you, 2021 Patriots. I feel you.
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