THIS LAPSED BILLS FAN WON’T BE BETTING AGAINST THE PATS
Counting out Brady and Co. is a dangerous game, despite the desire to see Chargers win
I can’t be the only person who watched the final minutes of the Ravens-chargers game Sunday with a gnawing, growing feeling of dread.
It wasn’t because I had any strong feelings toward the Ravens or Chargers specifically, nor any particular dislike of either. No, it was because Baltimore, after being utterly somnambulant for the first 50 minutes against Los Angeles, was now scrambling around and still alive. I kept having the same thought: good God, the Patriots are going to the Super Bowl yet again.
I can’t be the only person who watched the game this way with some confidence because after thinking I was the only one torturing myself, I have since heard from several who said the same thing. With Baltimore and rookie quarterback Lamar Jackson looking hopeless for most of that game, it looked like a strong Chargers team would be travelling to Foxborough, Mass., this weekend for a date with New England. This was good: no one, outside of Pats fans, wants to see them advance again.
The former San Diegos would at least have a good shot at knocking them off. A miracle Baltimore comeback, though, would have been a disaster. It was obvious through the first three quarters of that game that a smart team had figured out how to stop the Ravens’ run-heavy offence. Pats coach Bill Belichick would do the exact same thing and he wouldn’t be dumb enough, like the Chargers, to let the Ravens hang around at the end.
The Patriots would have been a lock to return to the AFC championship. And then Belichick versus Andy Reid and the Chiefs in Kansas City? Or Belichick versus Frank Reich’s Indianapolis Colts in Foxborough? Neither scenario is the least bit pleasing.
Both scenarios remain, of course, entirely possible. Which is why we, as a society, owe it to ourselves to root for the Chargers Sunday. These are fractured times with polarized electorates and fights over walls and pipelines and the future of our planet and many other weighty things. But surely this is something we can all rally around, if even just for about three hours on a weekend afternoon. Please, Chargers, do this for us.
I’m not sure why, exactly, the prospect of another deep New England run seems quite so unappealing. Sure, there is the fact the Patriots have been to one million Super Bowls (approximately) in an era when it is supposed to be hard to be consistently good. But this has been the case for a long time now.
And, yes, I admit to holding a couple of personal grudges here. I’m a lapsed Buffalo Bills fan, but the scars from all the beatings over the years remain. And in terms of furious pressbox rewrites, few experiences have been as unpleasant as Super Bowl LI, when I had a nice column about the Atlanta win pretty much completed by halftime before the Patriots ruined what should have been a comfortable second-half experience.
But it is more than that. This has felt at times like a watershed NFL season, where the league that constantly scores public relations own-goals suddenly found itself with an offensive explosion keyed by young stars like Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff. The Monday night shootout between those two in November was great fun, the best game in years, and there was no one named Brady or Manning anywhere near it. We have, for a long time now, wondered how the NFL would transition from the old-warrior era of Tom Brady and the Mannings and Ben Roethlisberger and now here were these young guys flinging it all over the place. Football!
And yet hovering around in the background all season have been the Pats. Even with all the changing-of-the-guard stuff happening, there was 41-year-old Brady, allegedly feuding with his coach but still throwing to a collection of small receivers and an increasingly creaky Rob Gronkowski, who now lumbers around like an elephant that has been hit with a tranquillizer dart, but will still haul in the desperation pass on third-and-18 with two defenders hanging on him.
Every time it looked like New England had lost enough games to ensure that it would not have a first-round bye in the playoffs, one of the Houston Texans, Chiefs or Chargers would throw up on themselves to bring the Pats back in line for a top-two seed.
And here we are. Nothing about this Patriots season suggests they should get through the next two weeks to make their third straight Super Bowl and ninth in the Belichick era. The defence has been soft, Brady appears human in the sense he actually ages over time and he has a collection of iffy weapons. When the Pats traded for Josh Gordon, it was easy to imagine a guy who had barely played since 2013 stepping in to become Brady’s key big-game target, the receiver who would go for 175 yards and two touchdowns as Reid was staring at his play card in confusion in the AFC title game. But even that didn’t work out, Belichick turning to his old bag of tricks and this time coming up empty.
Is it a sign this is finally it? Is the most remarkable dynasty in sports about to be finished off by the ravages of time and the salary cap? I imagine most anyone who watches football would like to think so, but I’m not quite ready to believe it.