I’m not a patriots fan, but I want them to go undefeated. If nothing else, them doing so means that the colts did not, and I’m always happy when bad things happen to the colts.
Why? Because the Patriots have been a thorn in the side of my Steelers. In two of their three Super Bowl seasons, they knocked of my Steelers, in Pittsburgh, in the AFC Championship game. So, yes, I take some satisfaction when they lose. Obviously, they deserved to win the games…it’s just that after they inflicted some small amount of misery on me those two years, I like to see a small amount of misery put on them. I would like nothing more than to have the Patriots be undefeated going into the game against the Steelers, and have the Steelers knock them off…then go on and do it to them in THEIR building in the AFC Championship.
I don’t think that scenario is likely, but boy would it feel good!
Funny thing about this is…
in the '85 Bears season they went 15-1. The only team to defeat them that season? The Miami Dolphins.
The sad part? When the Dolphins went undefeated they only played 14 games in the regular season so while the Dolphins crow about an undefeated record the Bears hold the record for most games won in a season.
We (Bears) SO should have played the Dolphins in the Superbowl that year for payback and not the stupid Pats.
I would like to root for the Pats. They’re almost an organization I can really respect in some ways. But they’re a bunch of classless, cheating, cheap shot artists. Like the Raiders of old - just win, whatever you have to do.
I’m conflicted. There’s always the temptation to see history being made, but I’m not sure that that organization deserves praise and even more historic accomplishments.
From what little I know of Boston fans, too, they seem obnoxious and spoiled. Some weird combination of a sense of entitlement, arrogance, and an unjustified perception (perhaps changed recently) that they’re a tortured, but resilient and strong fan base. Every time I hear one of them complain about how boring it is to sit through a Patriots blowout I want to kick them in the genitals. Their fans don’t seem deserving of such an accomplishment.
I’m a niner fan… so, yeah. We have some problems right now.
I’d like to see the patriots go undefeated this year, if for no other reason than to see Gregg Easterbrook’s (TMQ) head explode.
To what do you refer when you say this? If it’s the video camera thing and nothing else, well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on the relative importance of that in the grand scheme of the Patriots accomplishments in the last decade.
But beyond that? Classless? Cheap shot artists? Which are the classless guys to whom you refer? Tom Brady? Tedy Bruschi? Mike Vrabel? Dan Koppen? Sammy Morris? Wes Welker? Junior Seau? Matt Light? Laurence Moroney? These are guys who don’t get arrested, don’t get caught throwing dollar bills at strippers in Vegas, don’t choreograph elaborate end zone dances, don’t act arrogant and stupid in interviews, and don’t take plays off. Even Randy Moss has turned into a model citizen - his celebrations and his interviews have calmed considerably, and he no longer appears to take any plays off - since he joined the Patriots.
So where is it coming from, this “classless” meme? It’s not from Brady, or from any of the players I’ve mentioned. In a league where the Houston Texans recently scored 28 points in the fourth quarter alone, complaining about them scoring a lot of points is kind of silly. What does the rest of fandom want of this team?
Nah. Easterbrook, that tool, will just maintain that the only reason that they went undefeated was that they cheated, cheated, cheated in every game, and the lack of evidence that this happened is evidence that it happened - oh, and Tom Brady is a poopypants who we should hate because he has a pretty girlfriend!
They illegally mic’d their D-linemen to study the audible calls of the opposing teams. They probably did a whole lot of other sketchy stuff that the NFL is helping them cover up. The NFL asked for documents and tapes to be turned over, and we never heard from them again. Must’ve been pretty bad if they didn’t even try to dismiss it, but instead just completely buried it. They don’t want a scandal for their darling team that’s setting new records every week.
If the organization is clearly willing to do those things, what would stop them from other methods of cheating? Nothing but the threat of getting caught.
Teddy Bruschi most definitely. (Edit: It might’ve been Mike Vrabel. I’d need to watch the game again). He took a deliberate dive into Joe Thomas’ knees at the end of the NE/Cleveland game on a play that was very obviously a spike play. The game was over by that point, and he had absolutely no reason to do that except to try to pointlessly injure Joe Thomas.
There was another play - I can’t remember by who, but I may have a copy of the game here somewhere - where there was another deliberate cheap shot against a Brown in a situation that didn’t remotely warrant it. Possibly more - it’s been a few weeks, but I remember being angered by how deliberately dirty they were playing.
Rodney Harrison is known as one of the dirtiest players in the league, and that’s almost certainly encouraged.
I, personally, generally don’t have a problem with the Pats scoring a lot. When they put up 38 in Miami in a half and kept scoring I was totally fine with that - you don’t stop going for the throat until the opposing team has no chance of winning. Some garbage time scoring (didn’t they go for it on 4th down when up by 20+ in the 4th quarter a few times this year?) is somewhat poor sportsmanship, but doesn’t bother me 1/1000th as much as deliberately playing dirty and attempting to cause injuries.
I’m willing to accept that individually there are a lot of high character players on the Patriots. They don’t get in trouble off the field, but that concerns me less than how they conduct themselves on the field. And it’s clear that the organization as a whole is willing to do whatever they can get away with - causing injuries, illegal video, illegal mics, who knows what else.
Oh, to add to the cheating thing, there are rumors that at Foxboro it’s not uncommon for the opponent’s coaching radio channels to become mysteriously unusable during critical times in the game.
Edit: Not just at Foxboro, apparently.
From here:
So, in other words, the absence of evidence serves as evidence of literally whatever you want it to? There’s no reliable evidence suggesting that the Patriots killed John F. Kennedy - the evidence that Tedy Bruschi was on the grassy knoll must have been pretty compelling if the NFL buried it instead of just dismissing it.
There are obviously dozens of reasons why the NFL would have destroyed the tapes it confiscated from the Patriots even in the absence of further wrongdoing, but if you’re determined to see a duck, then everything has feathers and a beak.
Also - virtually every player, coach, general manager, scout, retired player, retired coach’s agent - everyone except for Gregg Easterbrook and a bunch of crazy fans - has maintained consistently that: (1) Every NFL team employs similar methods, the Patriots are unique only in that they were caught; and (2) The competitive advantage afforded by this particular method of cheating is minimal. This isn’t Barry Bonds, using steroids which gave him a significant advantage over those many players who did not. This is an NFL team in a competitive environment doing exactly the same things their competitors do, but being singled out because if there’s anything more American than rooting for the underdog, it’s rooting for the collapse of the already-successful.
Again, I have seen crappy, dirty plays by at least one player on every team in football. Why are the Patriots defined by their bad apples but the rest of the NFL is defined by its choirboys?
Agree- seeing a bunch of paunchy and balding 60 year old “men” popping champagne each year the last undefeated team loses is pretty pathetic and sad.
And you also gotta love a team that’s so into it that a false start when they’re up 38-0 elicits an audible “god fucking dammit” from Tom Brady.
Because there is actual, hard evidence that the organization acts outside of the rules and hence encourages it in order to win. To suppose that these unsportsmanlike actions translate to dirty plays is not a stretch. While no team is immune, the Pats consistently appear to a have a disproportionately high number of cheap shots occur by their players.
I agree, but I’d feel much more comfortable seeing the Colts take that from them than this Pats team.
As a GIANTS fan, I do not want to see the Patriots go undefeated. I want to see them lose at least one specific game this year.
Colts, I don’t care about.
Oh boy do the 49ers suck. And the Patriots will get the benefit of it, too.
This is going to be one loooooooong season.
As far as I can tell, this never happens. It’s a bit of an urban legend.
Shit, I hadn’t realized this angle. I guess I have to root for the Pats to lose before Week 17, so I won’t feel guilty about spoiling history when the Giants knock them off.
Is there a place (my Google skills are in need of an upgrade) that lists the NFL fines on a per team or per player basis for the year? I see plenty of individual articles on infraction within a game but no compilation. I’m wondering where Wilfork, Hainesworth, Drayton Florence and other frequenters rank.
Not all 50 or so living members flying in from all parts of the globe to pop chamapgne, but I have absolutely seen Griese, Buoniconti (sp) and a couple of other do it (IOW, just the petty assholes).
I would link the Snopes article, but they don’t seem to allow cutting and pasting.
I’m torn – as much as I’d love it if my beloved Giants were the ones to knock them off their unbeaten pedestal, I’d be a lot more comfortable going into the game if the Pats already had a loss. They’d probably have home-field wrapped up by then, so they’d probably keep the starters on the bench. Given my choice, of course, I’d rather Big Blue take down the full compliment of the Pats wepons (and if I’m really being given my choice, I’d like for them to do it twice this year).
Last week’s TMQ column (sorry storyteller – I like the guy’s writing quite a bit) summed it up perfectly. To paraphrase: “Assuming they both go in undefeated, next week’s meeting between the Pats and the Colts will be a perfect matchup between Good and Evil. The fact that I don’t have to tell you which team represents which side is very telling indeed”.