Why aren’t the Patriots perfect every year?
Revenge. Just look at it, say it aloud, let it roll out into the world: revenge. Man, what a word. It’s like there’s a knife hidden somewhere in there, between the letters.
The last time the New England Patriots went on a revenge tour it was awesome to watch. I used to play Madden with my colleague Sean Fitz-Gerald, and one time he just threw the ball up to Randy Moss on long bombs over and over, and I couldn’t stop it. 2007 looked a lot like that, except the physics engine was better in the real world.
Until the Super Bowl, at least. The Patriots were better than everybody until the Giants hit them in the mouth over and over — Justin Tuck should have been Super Bowl MVP — and Eli Manning and David Tyree lucked into some window of spacetime that they couldn’t relocate with all the time in this world or any other. And the Patriots, trying to burn the world after being penalized for Spygate, lost the only game they had left to win. Delicious.
Well, everything old is new again, Tom Brady included. The Arizona Cardinals are the only team scoring more points, but they’ve played New Orleans and Chicago and the 49ers, who are all clown cars on a race track. New England is rolling up 39.7 points per game, against Pittsburgh (not so bad) and Buffalo (maybe good) and the Jaguars (honking sound). In Buffalo they chanted “We want Brady!” the week before he came, and then Brady threw for 700 yards or something.
“When a team was clearly trying to embarrass us, we stood up to them and said, ‘All right, here we are, we’re gonna give you our best shot, regardless of what the scoreboard is,’ ” Rex Ryan told reporters this week. “And we scored three touchdowns to their three points.”
Final score: New England 40, Buffalo Moral Victory.
Bill Belichick is rotating his offen- sive linemen like they’re defensive linemen, and lining up Gronk out wide and Julian Edelman in the slot, and Brady was the AFC player of the month in a month he was supposed to be suspended. New England has the week off, but after that they get Dallas without Tony Romo, the wheezing Colts (who tipped off the NFL on Deflategate), the Jets, the floundering Dolphins, Washington, the Giants, the Bills again, Denver, the Eagles, the Texans, the Titans, and the Jets and Dolphins again. It’s not a stroll through the autumn foliage in Vermont, but which of those teams are, you know, definitely good?
16-0 is never likely, but let’s do it. Let’s see the Patriots rip through the NFL all the way to the Super Bowl, and then it’s a no-lose situation. Either someone topples the revenge machine, or Roger Goodell has to hand the Lombardi Trophy to Robert Kraft and Tom Brady and try to maintain his corporate rictus of a grin while Gronk gives him an atomic wedgie.
I do, however, have a question. The Patriots went 16-0 after Spygate. People seem to think they’re doing the same after Deflategate, though blowing out Jacksonville isn’t exactly the litmus test for greatness. So, they might not be as good as they look right now, but if they are, I guess my question is: Why do they need revenge to do it? Why can’t the Patriots do this every year?
Last week, this space finished 11-5, and rocketed back to one game above .500 for the season. When informed of this trajectory, the wife of this space said, in a bored singsong voice reminiscent of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical, “A monkey could pick these.”