My pigskin mind is boggled.
The New England Patriots are going to the Super Bowl. Again.
I know pigskin pundits and bobbleheads have been making comparisons to the 2001 Patriots but there's really only one thing that resonates for me. That 2001 New England team came from nowhere, from 5-11-0 to 11-5-0. Then went into the Super Bowl as 14 point underdogs and won. Nobody saw that coming.
Nobody saw this coming for the 2025 Patriots, either. I know, because that's what everyone is saying today, so yeah. Nobody.
From 4-13-0 to 14-3-0? That's just nuts.
Nine wins? Ten wins? Sure. We all could see the schedule, littered with the other last place finishers from 2024. Wild Card playoff spot? Maybe. It would probably come down to tiebreakers but if they got to ten wins, who knows?
Then came the humbling loss at home to the Raiders in Week 1 and I think myself and all my fellow citizens of Patriots Nation reset our expectations. Doubling the win total from 2024 would be great! New England would still have relatively good draft position, plenty of cap space, and would continue the rebuild into 2026 when they could actually compete for a spot in the playoffs. Go Pats!
That was then, as the baritone voiceover would say.
A football season, it turns out, is a lot like a 400-page novel, with enough characters, subplots, and didn't-see-that-coming reversals of fortune to make Dickens blush. For fans of the New England Patriots, this 2025 edition will long be remembered; well-worn paperbacks handed down from father to son and mother to daughter. A football fairy tale, with a brave and handsome prince (Drake Maye) and a wise warrior wizard (Mike Vrabel) on a quest for a magical ring.
They have faced adversity, and they have been doubted, yet they have found a way to overcome the obstacles they've faced, and left the carcasses of the dragons named Chargers, Texans, and Broncos in their wake.
Like any great story, along the way we've seen secondary characters rise up to make narrative-altering plays. There are no blank spaces in this cast of characters. If you can watch an understudy like practice squad DT Leonard Taylor III rise up to deflect what would've been the tying field goal and not believe in fairy tales, you should check your heart, because I think you're dead.
It's insane.
I'm not sure there's any other way to describe it. I've been waiting for the other glass slipper to drop and shatter into a million pieces since the second Buffalo game.
And yet, this is now.
Super Bowl, baby!
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