When will the national sports pundits bow to reality and stop picking against the Patriots in big games? Last week, they said that the Patriots wouldn’t be able to stop the Colts, the highest-flying offense in NFL history, but then the Pats held them to just 3 points.
Okay, but Peyton Manning has a neurosis about the Patriots so it doesn’t count. They really won’t be able to beat the Steelers, who beat them earlier in the year, who are tough and physical, run like crazy, and who had the number 1 defense in the league. So the Pats stopped the run and scored 41 points against them. Every week, the “experts” pick the other team and the Pats go on to prove them wrong. Yes, like a stopped clock that’s right twice a day, the pundits were right twice this year, but does that really count?
What’s impressive is the multitude of ways the Patriots win. One week they rush for 200 yards, the next it’s passing, and then the next it’s the defense scoring or Adam Vinatieri hitting a last-minute field goal. Yet, this team is unlike any other. It’s not a group of overpaid, spoiled superstars. They’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. (In fact, the Pats players’ wives told a Boston sports reporter that they have a running joke that their husbands aren’t on a team, they’ve joined a cult.) Every single one talks about the team before he’ll talk about himself. It’s always about what’s best for the team. Do the fullbacks whine when linebacker Mike Vrabel or defenseive end Richard Seymour come in on special offensive plays? Do the corners whine when wide receiver Troy Brown plays nickelback? No.
My only question is this: Is Bill Belichick Catholic and when he retires can we get him to fix the Church?
I think the Pats may be the beast NFL TEAM ever. That’s TEAM as opposed to a group of players where there may be a good amount of superstarts. There are very few, if any, superstars on the Patriots.
Its funny you should mention Bill Belichick being Catholic. I think he is Methodist, but I was reading an account of how he and his wife took their kids to France for a family vacation. They were having a good time visiting all the sites, museums, shrines, cathedrals, etc. One of the Belichick kids asks, “Who is this guy we keep seeing in the paintings and sculptures?” Bill realizes that he and his wife may have been negligent in the kids’ religious education. This “guy” that the kids asked about was Jesus Christ.
That’s a good story, Dan.
By the way, I think that the conventional wisdom that there are no superstars on the team is wrong. I think there are superstars, they just don’t act like it.
Dom,
The ‘team/cult’ started when the Pats beat my Rams in the Super bowl. The Pats were introduced as a team. No one player was singled out or ran onto the field by himself during the introductions. They thumped “the greatest show on turf” and have gone on to good things from there. I’m rooting for ‘em. Just wish Brady wasn’t from michigan. I’d root harder. (KMac – Illinois ‘79)
By the by, the music site has taken to “popping up” when I click on a topic in the blog. It’s making me want to shoot the next piano I see…
Yeah, I put the ad on tese pages too. I think I’ll take it off and just leave it on the main page.
I might be mistaken but I thought Rush picked the Pats.
Still recovering here from their slaughter of the Steelers…….I felt somewhat better in the middle of the game when someone said Brady was Catholic and had visited the Pope.
Can anyone confirm this?
Yep, had a picture of it on the site after it happened. He visited him after last year’s Super Bowl along with his girlfriend, the actress. In fact, my brother-in-law has been in contact with Brady’s dad trying to arrange to have him come to the Catholic family concert that he puts on every year. Since the concert is in August, the timing is tough.
Belichick took the very bold step in 1999 of defying Parcellls and taking a leap of faith in his own abilities. I thought at the time he was foolish to do so, but I was proven wrong. He’s a great coach.