Burn Your Passport

It was Super Bowl 39. The Eagles were driving in fits and starts down the field. They were down ten points but it felt like it could have been a hundred.

What should have been a thrilling contest felt dull and lifeless. My friends munched on miniburgers and downed beers, already amusing themselves with chatter about surf rock and Space Ghost references. I stared at the TV trying to find something to love about the game.

I knew the Patriots scored 24 points, I just wasn’t sure how. Tom Brady dinked and dunked my memories into oblivion. The exacting nature of Bill Belichick’s disciplined defense sucked the air out of every Eagles drive before the seemingly inevitable Donovan McNabb interception.

I felt numb. When did football turn into this?

The Patriots dynasty, confirmed that night, was built entirely on storylines that played well to the crowd and reducing the game to a series of scribbles on a whiteboard.

One of the reasons I started Fuhbaw, started obsessing critically about football, applying ideas I've stumbled across in the course of my life to a sport that I thought I left behind, is the degree to which I hate the Patriots Way.

It's not that I hate the New England Patriots per se. After years of being a middling franchise, their jump to elite status is encouraging for the bulk of the league's middle class. And Tom Brady's abilities despite his abilities is an entertaining if not entirely too saccharine narrative. Plus, the emphasis on team in a team sport – which if one pays too close attention to the commentary can seem like anything but – speaks to hallowed football principles.

Yet those virtues disguise vices.

(Show me a pre-Randy Moss highlight reel of the Patriots that doesn’t end in a field goal.)

There’s a couple things going on here. Belichick’s brilliant game plans deceive opponents, transforming deficiencies in talent into perceived strengths. A great coaching job to be sure. But we watch sport to witness superior athletic talent on display, not to be duped by the illusion of talent.

To accomplish this, the coaching staff squashes the individual identities of the talent that they do possess. Randy Moss is a notable exception (and perhaps the only reason I can watch the Pats without cringing). It’s one thing to enforce the team concept for the betterment of the team and thereby the betterment of the sport. It’s quite another to strip talent of its uniqueness to maintain an illusion.

It’s the four yard outs and draw after draw. It’s the two-gap responsibilities and cover three shell. It’s bend but don’t break. It’s “just do your job” screamed on the sidelines.

All this translates into boring, belabored football. The victories over such football evoke relief more than triumph, freedom from the low level hum of mind numbing precision.

I feel like I'm constantly tipping my cap to Belichick's evil genius exploits. As a fan, at some base level, one simply desires success, perhaps at whatever cost. But the cost is important.

Yes, we watch our teams and hope they win. But if our teams lose we don’t necessarily walk away with nothing. We still witnessed. We were there. We can remember the beautiful catch improbably plucked out of the air. We can remember perhaps heroics in defeat. We can concede defeat to the superior team or the lucky team.

Why wasn’t there more outrage over Spygate? Because Spygate didn’t change anything. It just confirmed what we already knew to be true. Belichick’s Patriots steal from the sport what isn’t rightfully theirs.

Defensive signals. Victory. Doesn’t matter.

I know this may sound like a diatribe. Perhaps it is. I don’t mean it any outsized outraged way. Belichick is paid to do what he does and he does it remarkably well.

He’s also a fantastic villain. Bloodless, arrogant, intelligent, and frumpy. He’s no hero for sure… but he could be an anti-hero.

This is all to say I won’t be joining my man Zac at Throwing Into Traffic in his measured dreams about Patriots West.

Zac makes several great points. And the language of his dream could come to pass. Matt Cassel in KC and Josh McDaniels in Denver make the AFC West an instantly more interesting division.

But I cannot root for this spread of the Patriots Way. And I may not have to rail against it. Watching Romeo Crennel blow down his house of cards in Cleveland and Eric Mangini jealously guard his toy train set in New York, it became abundantly clear New England's success isn't easily duplicated.

McDaniels could break that mold, he after all opened up the Patriots offense and realized a space for Randy Moss to flourish. But considering the horrendous start McDaniels is off to thus far I can't express any confidence either way.

What I do know, whether it's a culture war or a castle storming, pitchfork in hand I know what side I'm on.