The Patriots losing was always a possibility. It didn’t come out of nowhere like Super Bowl 42, where Patriots fans were so overconfident that we all felt like the Captain of the Titanic. “What do you mean the boat is sinking? It’s unsinkable.”
Unfortunately this Patriots team had pretty evident holes in the hull and they leaked in the fourth quarter. They lost, it sucked, we move on. It’s all you can do.
Don’t blame Wes Welker, the throw wasn’t that good. Don’t blame Tom Brady, he got us there. Don’t blame the defense, they performed better than expected. Don’t blame Coach Belichick, well except maybe for poor drafting.
Let’s not forget, the Pats were on borrowed time to begin with. It took 3 consecutive miracles to get to the Super Bowl, 2 by Sterling Moore (everyone forgets the great deflection after he knocked the ball out of Lee Evans’ grip), and one by poor Billy Cundiff.
It was a fun season. A flawed team lost to another flawed team.
I’m moving on, and I can deal with it.
What’s harder to deal with is not having football in our lives for the next 6 months. Sure we’ve got March Madness on the horizon, The Masters, Opening Day, the NHL and NBA playoffs. There’s a lot of stuff that’s coming up, but none of them are as much fun as professional football.
I used to be a baseball first guy. The Red Sox have always been my first love, but as I’ve gotten older the Patriots have become more and more important to me and they now possess the No. 1 spot in my heart. The Sox are a close second, but the Patriots lead the way.
Part of the reason that the Pats are at the top is because the NFL is so much fun to follow. Thanks to fantasy football and the once-a-week scheduling, I feel like I have a good grasp on every team. I know the most important players for each club. It’s an easier league to follow.
The baseball season is a grind. Once we reach August the games all kind of blend into one. By that time you know who most of the playoff teams are going to be and which teams are awful. Heck I can sit down and watch a Cleveland-Arizona NFL game and get lost in it. I wouldn’t even stop flipping the channels to watch the Indians play the D-Backs.
The Giants are proof positive that a team can get hot late and win it all in football. Yes the Cardinals did something similar in baseball this year, but to watch them rally from 11 games back late in the season, plus play all of those playoff games you would have had to have devoted something like 60 hours watching baseball over three weeks.
Who’s got that kind of time? I wish I did, but this 99-percenter has other commitments too.
With football, to follow your team, its a 3 or 4 hour block once a week. It’s manageable. It’s usually on Sundays, a day of rest for most of us. It’s perfect.
Over the next 6 months there will be plenty of other stuff to fill our time. Soon the grass will turn green and I will be coaching Little League and watching my daughter play softball games. We’ll be able to go the beach, take the dogs to the park and grill cheeseburgers on the deck. The warm weather is a great distraction, and it’s the best time of year to do stuff.
But a part of me will long for the cooler weather that follows and sitting on my couch with a bag of chips and the Patriots on the tube. Football, I will miss you.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
