Patriots vs. Ravens
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| Someone needs to trap and tag that thing on his head. |
I hate Curt Schilling’s ol’ Republican ass for the hand he had in swinging Massachusetts to the dark side.
I hate Kevin Garnett. Oooh, I hate KG. He was a mild- mannered statesman when he was losing in Minnesota, but oncehe won one title, ONE TITLE – bare minimum for a player of his talent to sleep at night – in a Boston uniform, he was suddenly a junkyard dog frothing at the mouth after every layup or defensive stop.
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| Would you look at this...oooh, I can't take it! |
I hate Kevin Garnett. Oooh, I hate KG. He was a mild- mannered statesman when he was losing in Minnesota, but oncehe won one title, ONE TITLE – bare minimum for a player of his talent to sleep at night – in a Boston uniform, he was suddenly a junkyard dog frothing at the mouth after every layup or defensive stop.
I hate Belichick for cheating, and that mainstream sports coverage has asked us to forget as much despite the fact that this is football, not baseball. In this game, cheating is, in fact, cheating.
I hate Tom Brady’s hair. I hate that the NFL invented a rule to protect him and his dainty sensibilities from being injured on the field again. I hate that he married Gisele, who I like to imagine he’s not even attracted to (yes, somehow he's the only one) but married out of a need to attach himself to the consensus #1 A+ Cream of the Crop supermodel because for him, winning is everything .
I hate Tom Brady’s hair. I hate that the NFL invented a rule to protect him and his dainty sensibilities from being injured on the field again. I hate that he married Gisele, who I like to imagine he’s not even attracted to (yes, somehow he's the only one) but married out of a need to attach himself to the consensus #1 A+ Cream of the Crop supermodel because for him, winning is everything .
I hate Boston sports, thoroughly, always and forever, but it occurs to me before I leave to watch Sunday’s Patriots vs. Ravens game at Hamilton’s Bar in Capitol hill that there may be at least a couple reasons why one could probably stand to hate Boston teams a little less …in case the spite is costing you sleep or something.
First, and I’m talking about the Patriots here, they embody what football's about.
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| Schilling (right) with Emperor Palpatine |
Wait, what? The Pats are the devil. True, but let me explain: football isn’t a team sport so much as a machine sport. Team sports involve humans working in concert. Chemistry matters. Personalities matter. In team sports, the team that’s been together longer usually has an advantage that’s evident in their style of play if not always the game’s outcome.
Machine sports – and I should say machine SPORT, singular, because I can’t think of another game quite like football in this regard – involve a collection of replaceable parts. With the exception of maybe three positions on the field (quarterback, left guard and a shut-down cornerback), football players are not only highly replaceable, it’s almost a given that they will be replaced for financial reasons.
Take the Patriots’ Vikings’ Randy Moss. He's up for a contract extension this season and wants more money. In fact he wants something in the range of Tom Brady money, which, you know, is called Tom Brady money for a reason (did you hear he’s married to a Gisele?), and when the Patriots had had enough of his talking about it, they traded him to Minnesota for a third round draft pick.
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| "Say it with me, Randy. T-O-M B-R-A-D-Y M-O-N-E-Y. You can't have it." |
Only in the NFL would this not be considered absolute, mind-blowing insanity. One of the game’s top (albeit declining) receivers traded for a guy who at the moment is eating cereal in a Big Ten college dining hall. Done and done. Put a bow on it. And only the Patriots could have made it look this easy. Once they got rid of Moss, they simply reacquired Deion Branch, their receiver from four years ago – a guy who was done, by most peoples’ assessment. And lo and behold, Branch has a nine catch, 98 yard day in his first game back for New England, leading Pats fans to ask “Randy who?”
This is why I like but don’t love football. I prefer games where the name on the jersey matters. But if you love football, you ought to at least admire that the Pats have for a long time now been making the right calls as to who they can do without, and when to start doing without them.
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The other reason why you can stop hating Boston sports quite so much?
They’re just not that good. Not any more.
Red Sox? Comatose.
Celtics? On their last leg, with an average roster age of 55.6.
And the Patriots. OK this is where my premise gets shaky. They’re 4-1. They’re the only team in the league to average over 30 points a game through the first six weeks. They’ve beaten a couple strong teams in Baltimore and Miami and, as discussed, have dealt with Randy Moss’ departure as well as any team could.
But look under the hood of this thing and you’ll see that they have the 30th ranked defense this year, which is antithetical to what Belichick teams have been about in the past. Their running game is suspect. And, most importantly, no one’s afraid of them. Teams want to play the Patriots this year. And I don’t mean that in a you have to beat the best to be the best sort of way, but rather that other teams sense that the Patriots’ brand is stronger than the actual team, and beating them is an opportunity to get respect without having to topple an actual giant. Understand that these things only last for so long. What the Patriots are (a good, but not great, team) will eventually eclipse the lore of what the Patriots used to be (three Superbowl titles; undefeated regular season) and that, you may be surprised to find, will be a sad thing for everyone.
Take this week’s game against the Ravens. I’m at Hamilton’s, a diveish bar in Capitol Hill. Imagine my beloved Grevey’s from last week, and know that Hamilton’s is its diamtetric opposite: loud, intense, packed with Pats fans slash Hill interns, a combination so obnoxious it defies reason. But it doesn’t take long for me to see that beneath all those layers of J. Crew, these kids are nervous. As they should be. The Ravens, it turns out, are pretty good when I’m not looking. They spanked the Pats in their house in last year’s playoffs and the fans here are still a little thunderstruck by it (it was the Pats only home loss in the last three years). In fact no one relaxes until after the Ravens first play out of fear that there’d be a repeat of that playoff game, when on the first down, Ray Rice (a bad, bad man) ran 83 yards for a touchdown. Sure enough, the Ravens run on first down, only this time Rice is only good for a two yard gain. Ah. Collective sigh of relief. There's a real humility among this group, something conspicuously absent from Pats fanhood just a couple years ago.
It turns out to be a great game. A defensive battle -- which plays into the Ravens' hands, one would expect, except eventually someone has to put points on the board and the Patriots get the last word today (a game winning field goal in overtime). Hamilton's goes nuts. A guy wearing a Wes Welker jersey drums his hands on the bar for a solid fifteen seconds, looks around, pleading pathetically for others to join him. They do. Of course they do. Playoff-demons excorcised, it doesn't look like anyone's going anyhwere soon. It's a party. I love parties. If it were any other team i'd have ordered a second beer and blown off the work I'd planned for later that afternoon, but this is a Boston pah-tee (I haven't heard one Boston accent since I've been here, disappointingly), my resentment's building, and I should skeedaddle before I'm tempted to remind them that they beat a team whose quarterback went to the University of frikkin Deleware.
Anyway. The point remains: for the time being, the Patriots are gatifyingly contemptible. Enjoy it while you can for all good things, including a nice hardy hate, come to an end.
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