There are times when you simply cannot give up hope.
There are times when all you’ve got is hope.
The rest of this post is about football.
I’m old enough to remember the’85 Patriots, a memory most football fans refer to as the ‘85 Bears.
Those Patriots were a “team of destiny,” too. They were a Wild Card team. In the AFC Championship they crushed the Dolphins - the only team to beat the '85 Bears in the regular season - in Miami, the place where Patriots fans' hopes go to die a horrible, humid death. That had to mean something! It was going to happen! The laughing stock of the old AFL was going to win the Super Bowl! We invited people over to party with us.
To watch my pigskin heroes suffer, what would be at the time, the biggest blowout in Super Bowl history. The 46-10 loss was a classic example of an “it wasn’t even as close as the scoreboard would indicate” kind of game. Thankfully that record margin of humiliating defeat only stood for a few years, until the 49ers’ 55-10 rout of the Broncos in SBXXIV.
Schadenfreude never tasted so bland, like tears without salt.
I realize, as I write this, that I am no longer friends with anyone who was at my SBXX party.
Probably just a coincidence.
SBXXXI felt somehow fated. Like a sign that the Patriots would never be the star of their own movie; they would always play the villain in another hero’s gridiron journey. My team, it seemed, were the bad guys.
Worse.
Somehow, the run to SBXXXVI just five years later felt different. Maybe I just wasn’t letting myself give in to another pigskin love affair and the inevitable heartbreak that was sure to follow. The memory of having my pigskin heart ripped from my chest, thrown to the field turf still beating, and stomped on by William “The Refrigerator” Perry was still a wound that hadn’t healed.
And then was pissed on by Brett Favre.
That stung.
Imagine playing the villain to Brett Favre. Ouch.
Maybe by SBXXXVI, I had zero expectations. The Patriots had finished 5-11-0 in the previous season, their first with Bill Belichick as their Head Coach. Belichick and Brady weren’t Belichick and Brady, back then. They were a failed-once, second-chance Head Coach desperately seeking redemption, and a second-year, 6th round draft pick/backup QB, going up against The Greatest Show on Turf.
They were 14-point underdogs.
I was only hoping for an ending like that first Rocky movie. I didn’t need the Patriots to win; I just wanted to see them still standing at the end, bloodied, yes, but unbowed in defeat.
Then, something miraculous happened.
The Patriots won! It was the most dramatic Super Bowl ever, literally a last second victory, and my pigskin heroes were, well, the heroes. Those scamps from New England - the gruff Head Coach and the skinny kid from Cali - were somehow every magazine’s cover and every late night TV host's favorite guests. Belichick was dubbed a pigskin genius; Brady was rumored to be dating every blonde starlet in Hollywood.
It was a moment.
Missing the playoffs the next year only seemed to remind me of just how special SBXXXVI had been.
Then something even crazier happened.
Back-to-back Super Bowl wins. An NFL record 21-game winning streak. Belichick became Belichick. Brady became Brady. Their reign of pigskin terror would last nearly two decades, weaving bold red, white, and blue threads into the tapestry of NFL history. Pigskin pundits and bobbleheads might one day be able to appreciate the 2001-2019 Patriots, but the reaction in real time was hardly admiration. They hated Belichick (who seemingly loved being hated) and were jealous of Brady (seriously, who wouldn't be?). By February 2005, the Patriots were once again the bad guys. Whatever the opposite of”America’s Team” was, that was the New England Patriots.
The nation cheered their three Super Bowl losses, and wept following their fourth, fifth, and sixth Super Bowl wins.
The Patriots weren’t simply villains. They were the Alliance, the Federation, the Evil Empire. Pigskin pundits and bobbleheads openly implored the gridiron gods to strike them down, to end the dynastic run, to give Tom Brady a little nudge off that cliff. The Pats were line-steppers, rule-benders, the Cheatriots. Fines were levied, draft picks were forfeited, lawsuits were filed, suspensions were served, and rules were changed, but they just kept winning.
Over those nearly two decades they played in arguably five of the best Super Bowls of all time. (NFL.com puts 7 Patriots involved Super Bowls in the Top 20 of their Super Bowl rankings; CBS Sports has 5 in their Top 20 with 4 of their Top 5 featuring the Patriots. You cannot tell the story of the NFL without entire volumes of the Encyclopedia Pigskinica being dedicated to the New England Patriots.
The only thing football fans west of the Connecticut River wanted by 2019 was for the Patriots to just go away. Maybe cosplay as the Cleveland Browns for a century or two; at least until their children's children's children were dead and all memory of the Patriots had been lost.
Eventually, the Patriots Dynasty did end and ended badly, as all things do. Brady left and won his 7th ring with Tampa Bay. Belichick left and became a cartoon. Then back-to-back 4-13-0 seasons and no sign of things changing any time soon. After all, the Patriots had won 75% of their games from 2001 to 2019; it was going to take a truckload of 4-13-0 seasons to balance the pigskin ledger.
And yet, here we are.
"The Patriots are back, but this time they're lovable."
Half the Pigskin Pundits and Bobbleheads on the Planet
Lovable?
Well, according to the gridiron cognoscenti, we're about to see that puppy child of a QB, Drake Maye, get rag-dolled on national television. These are the Pyrite Patriots, after all. The Seahawks are 24k Magic. Send the children to bed early, New England; they shouldn't be subjected to the sight of their fathers as they morph from blubbering babies into Gozer the Traveler, vengeful destructor of visual media with whatever blunt instrument is close to hand.
It's time to upgrade to 4K, anyway.
Yeah…
Watching SBXXVI, my fanboy emotions were playing with house money. I'd seen good Patriots football teams lose the Super Bowl twice. This skinny kid from Cali and a bunch of busts and cast offs, who parlayed what surely was an unsustainable series of pigskin events (like winning an AFC Championship on the strength of two special teams' scores), couldn’t possibly win the Super Bowl. It had been a wild ride but I'd always believed the money guys know and the money guys said the Patriots were mortgage-tempting underdogs.
I was actually just happy to be there.
At least, that's how I remember it.
We all know how memory works, don't we?
I suspect that, like today, I was nervously, desperately hopeful. Yes, it would be an upset, but isn't that why we watch sports? We want real life to be like a movie because real life absolutely sucks sometimes.
But whose movie is SBLX?
Will it be The Redemption of Sam Darnold?
That's a good story, too. First round draft pick. Ghost chaser. Bust. Can’t win the big game. Gets a second chance. Gets a third chance. Kicked to the curb by the Vikings after a 14-3-0 regular season, but a one-and-done in the playoffs: Yet another big game loss. He’s picked up by the Seahawks and Seattle posts a 14-3-0 record, but this time, Darnold wins the big game; two of them, in fact, leading his team to the Super Bowl. The biggest game of all.
It’s a good story, for sure.
But I'll be rooting for Sam Darnold to be put in Mike Vrabel's proverbial Waring Blender.
I’ll be rooting for a different happily ever after.
I’ll be rooting for the failed-once, second-chance head coach looking for redemption (and hugs), and his second-year, teenage dream QB with a laser-guided right arm. (Hey, history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme.) I’ll be rooting for the underdogs, the guys the gridiron cognoscenti say don’t even belong here, the team whose every accomplishment has been diminished or dismissed.
So, yeah, I'll be rooting for that huggy Head Coach and the QB from Mayberry, NC. I'll be rooting for the offensive tackle whose arms are too short, for the locker room cancer in remission, for the running back who couldn't hold onto the football, for the rookies, and for the veterans on a second, third, or possibly last chance.
I'll be rooting for the defense that lost their Defensive Coordinator before the season started yet finished Top 10 with a first-time play-caller, then carried an offense that managed just 54 points in three playoff games on this improbable, impressive Super Bowl run.
Because you know what defense does.
And I’ll be rooting for the “Reverse Howie Long.”
Howie Long won SBLI with the Patriots, left in free agency, and won SBLII with the Eagles.
Milton Williams won SBLIX with the Eagles, left in free agency, joined the Patriots, and will play in SBLX…
Like the man said: History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
Go Pats!
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