I've Got a Bad Feeling About This

I know this is the kind of statement that makes Patriot Haters spit teeth and bleed from their eyes but I have a really hard time dealing with loss.

Until recently, it hasn't happened often enough for me to get used to it. To develop the coping mechanism necessary to get over it.

How do you do it, Jets fans?

(As a Patriots fan I'm contractually obligated to take at least one shot at the Jets whenever I talk football.)

Even less frequently (until recently), the Patriots were losers in back-to-back games. They did so quite often with an unnerving indifference to how the game of football is played in 2020, and again over the first month and a half of the 2021 season. 

Along the way, it's become obvious that these New England Patriots must play perfect - or near-perfect - football in order to win. 

I suppose that's really a truism for all teams in the NFL. 

The Patriots lost last week to a Colts team that has 7 pro-bowlers, I say that because it feels better losing to a team with 7 pro-bowlers but really the Pats lost because they had a punt blocked, turned the ball over, and played terrible, horrible, no good, very bad football. That same weekend, the 10-win Cardinals lost to a Lions team with 0 pro-bowlers and who doubled their win total for the season in the process. Why? How? That's right. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad football.

This is especially hard to take when you know your team is capable of playing better than that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad football you had to watch last Sunday. It's like a hangover that lasts a week.

Or your entire life if you're a Jets fan.

(Ba-da-bing!)

Maybe 10 years of the Patriots wandering in the pigskin wilderness would've been better for my cardio-vascular health. How did we get back to the point this quickly? Where the losses feel existential and the wins are little more than a momentary relief? Are happiness and optimism dead?

Don't answer that last question.

Anyway, here we are, with my gridiron heroes coming off a loss, having to play the division rival they embarrassed just three weeks ago, short-handed from injury and COVID, with first place in the AFC East and the fate of Western Civilization hanging in the balance.

I just realized how the joke construct using "the fate of Western Civilization hanging in the balance" has become a quaint callback to a time when Western Civilization was a thing worth saving. (So 20th Century.) Good times. Well, for some it was a good time. 

Perhaps the best analogy for the 2021 Patriots is Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: You never know what you're going to get.

I just hope it isn't the Orange Cream for Patriots Nation when New England plays Buffalo this Sunday in Foxborough. The Orange Cream is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad candy.

Go Dark Chocolate Caramel!