We should’ve known.
We should’ve known that when Brady didn’t show up for OTAs, it wouldn’t matter in the end; that when they started the season 2-2, were blown out by a former Belichick assistant, lost two back-to-back games, and finished with fewer than 12 wins for the first time since 2009, it wouldn’t matter in the end. They are the New England Patriots after all, quarterbacked and coached by the greatest ever to do it.
But we took the cheese. I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure there are plenty of you out there like me. Coming into the playoffs, I hoped for a Super Bowl appearance, but I thought New England’s chances were bleak––and if the Pats made it, they’d get blown out by the Rams or Saints, right?
I forgot. I forgot that New England faced a 25-point deficit in the waning stages of Super Bowl 51 before the greatest comeback in playoff history unfolded. I forgot that Belichick’s defense was stranded at the two-yard line in the dying seconds of Super Bowl 49 before Malcolm Butler burst through to make the game-clinching interception. I forgot that this very franchise trailed the Baltimore Ravens by two scores in the 2014 divisional round before Brady flipped the switch. And on, and on...
The great ones have an uncanny ability to turn it on when the money’s on the table, when the stakes are the highest and the lights brightest. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are no exception, and damn anyone who doubted they’d do it again. In the last two weeks, the Patriots have executed near-perfect game plans, designed by the most brilliant football mind of our time and carried out by the same guy who’s been leading the charge for nearly two decades: number 12.
Brady, Gronk, and Edelman look healthier than they have all season, and the defense and offensive line are rounding into form at just the right time. And me? I feel like a fool. Of course they’d go on smashing records and expectations, leaving fired coordinators in their wake. After years upon years of fairytale endings, why would this season be any different?
Cherish this. I truly don’t believe we’ll ever see this sort of sustained, systematic dominance again in professional sports. Supermax contracts, Bird Rights, and salary caps are just the latest efforts to obtain parity in today’s pro sports leagues, and these regulations will only get tighter. I don’t know when the clutch throws will cease, the timely defensive plays will be no longer, or the good graces of the football gods will stop smiling down on Foxborough, Massachusetts, but for now, the Patriots have done it again.
In other news, Rob Parker and Max Kellerman may be in assisted living by the time their prognostications of Brady’s decline are proven correct.
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