Pats fans, we got a situation here
The Gillette Stadium parking lots will be teeming with tailgaters Sunday morning. Nerf footballs will be flying through the air. High-stakes cornhole games will be taking place between tightly packed rows of cars festooned with Flying Elvis logos and “In Bill We Trust” bumper stickers.
And then, at 1 p.m., the House that Robert Kraft, Bill Parcells and Drew Bledsoe Built will be packed and (sort of) roaring when the Patriots open the 2018 season against the Houston Texans.
No doubt about it: Pats fans are ready for some football.
And yet it’s not unfair to wonder if they’ve lost a little of their collective swagger.
There’s no real way to quantify this. There are no charts, no diagrams, no blame pies to make or break the case. And the Patriot Nation Twitter Police are not unlike the Patriots themselves: A force to be reckoned with, still.
But the rumblings are there, and you know it. From the moment Super Bowl LII ended and surprise Philadelphia Eagles hero Nick Foles hoisted the Lombardi Trophy into the confetti-strewn air at U.S. Bank Stadium, Pats fans have been forced to sift through story lines and do something they haven’t had to do since the Kraft-Parcells Blizzard of ’97: Choose sides.
It used to be so easy for anybody with a rooting interest in the Patriots. Bad guys were everywhere and easy to spot, from Commissioner Roger Goodell right on down to the misshapen, ill-dressed sportswriters — especially the national folks — who keep turning over rocks in search of the next hidden camera or under-inflated football. And now?
You have eyes.
You have ears. Consider some of the head-scratchers that have been confronting Pats fans since Super Sunday:
The Malcolm Butler Situation — Everyone seems to know a guy who has a cousin who went to high school with a guy who knows a guy who is a Minneapolis cop who knows the real reason Butler was all but unseen in Super Bowl LII. And yet nobody really knows. The “In Bill We Trust” card is always the play in matters such as these, except for the inconvenient truth that respected Pats receiver Danny Amendola, now a Dolphin, gave an on-hisway-out-the-door interview with ESPN’s Mike Reiss in which he gave his opinion as to why Butler didn’t play: “To tell you the truth, I don’t know why. I did ask, but I didn’t get any answers . . . but I know Malcolm is a great player and he could have helped us win.”
The Alex Guerrero Situation — He’s back. He’s sort of back. He never really left. All that’s known for sure is that he plays a hugely important role for Brady, so much so that were “Tom vs. Time” a movie instead of a serialized Facebook documentary, Guerrero could have copped a best supporting actor nomination. And yet he also worked with receiver Julian Edelman, who has been suspended four games for a PED violation, which leads to . . .
The Asking Brady About Guerrero Situation — It’s likely many Pats fans were pleased when Brady walked out of a media scrum in response to a Guerrero-Edelman question, and then hung up on the WEEI morning boys when a Guerrero question was posed. Fine. And yet Brady has the audacity, in the “Epilogue” to “Tom vs. Time,” to say, “They (the media) want to talk about a lot of drama ... I’m sure a lot of teams have things like that, but ours is just to the 10th degree. I’m learning to deal with it better. I don’t still give a (expletive) that much anymore, about anything ... To worry about a lot of (expletive) that people may say or think or feel, I really don’t care anymore.” If you’re a Pats fan, do you believe Brady really doesn’t care anymore? Nothing will ever change people’s views of what Brady has accomplished over the years, but come on: In this day and age, it’s hard sometimes to take him seriously.
The Kraft-Belichick-Brady Situation — Kraft has always said the Patriots are a family, and in that spirit Pats fans could embrace all three men as a unit. Or they could play make-pretend, anyway. But Mark Leibovich’s book “Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times,” peels away another layer of wallpaper at the family homestead down in Foxboro. Leibovich portrays Kraft as a “whiny star(expletive)” and includes an email from Brady in which he addresses a possible trade of by stating they “can do whatever they want.” And Leibovich, remember, is a Newton native and self-professed Pats fan. In other words, Pats fans, he is one of
There’s much more, such as The Rob Gronkowski Situation, The Josh McDaniels Situation . . . it goes on and on.
The Pats are going to have a down season — eventually — but it’s not going to be this season. Some people, myself included, have them winning the Super Bowl.
And Pats fans will never get tired of the winning. It’s the other stuff that has to be weighing on them.