Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Victorious

Day 7: Go Pats, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

"How bout them Pats?" I asked Brian this morning, smugly. Well, as smug as one can be over IM.

"They won by the skin of their teeth," he replied, sour grapes from a Bears fan, sure, but I was shocked at his response nonetheless. That' s not how the game felt yesterday, being at the stadium.

I admit, however, I am not an objective observer.

***

There is only one thing I'm clearly better at, to my knowledge, than my dad. And that is sitting in traffic. I've been conditioned to it by now after a succession of long commutes, but he has a very low tolerance indeed.

We were merging onto Rte 1 from 95 on our way to the game when it happened.

"These people don't know it yet," my father said, grimly gripping the wheel as we passed by a line of cars waiting to make the same merge, in an orderly line in the right lane. "But one of them is about to be severely pissed off."

Closer to the exit, he put his blinker on and made to cut into the lane, but he was thwarted by a little compact car that had been his nemesis, off and on, for quite a way down 95. It was driven by someone very short--they seemed from our vantage point to be looking through the steering wheel rather than over it--and very slow. Very slow. They were in front of us in the second lane over, hampering my dad's cutting-off style. As we came to closer to the exit to Rte 1, this person only slowed down even further--but there was no blinker in sight.

"If this person is going straight, I'm going to scream," my dad said, stomping on the brake.

He was, of course. And as he pulled away after thoroughly frustrating my dad's attempts to merge right, my dad shouted after him, his voice rising an octave or two as it does when he is incredulous or frustrated, or, as in this case, both.

"There he goes!" my dad screeched. "What the freak!"

It's impossible to describe how funny it was to me.

"Look at you, the Voice of Reason," he said as we finally made our way onto Rte 1 and into more game traffic. "You're going to be the one going all high-pitched while we're watching the game."

I tell that story for two reasons: one, because he was right, and two, because getting there was like the game itself--maybe not always pretty, but we got where we needed to go.

***

Thing is, I did find that game rather beautiful.

It's hard to pick a favorite moment. The first that springs to mind is Vince Wilfork's lumbering 31-yard run after Roosevelt Colvin muffed an interception. Colvin let go of the ball behind him, and Wilfork seized it, a heads-up play if there ever was one, since eventually it was ruled a lateral, and Wilfork's run to the 15-yard line stuck. The Patriots would score a field goal.

When it happened, everyone--the camera operators for CBS and Gillette Stadium included--was watching Colvin, who stumbled and then ran, clutching his head in frustration, out of the pile. When they tried to show a replay on the Jumbo-Tron while the referees and coaches on the sidelines and the fans in the stands were debating what had just happened, it was Colvin that the camera followed, and so nothing could be gained from the video evidence. The referees eventually had to go to secondary footage recorded by the overhead camera to see what had happened.

Somehow, though a live game lends itself to confusion, I had noticed Wilfork running and was pounding my dad on the shoulder even as he looked around bewilderedly. Now, as predicted, my voice was up an octave. I was babbling a mile a minute, pointing, hollering. He argued back until the run was declared good. Then we celebrated.

But there was also the moment with just over five minutes to go in the fourth quarter when Tom Brady delivered a short pass to Kevin Faulk for a touchdown that proved to be the seal on the game. Normally Brady runs straight for the receiver on such an occasion, but this time he hung back, pointing both arms straight up in the air. At their pinnacle his two pointer fingers stuck out; he stood there for a moment just soaking it in.

As a fan, I see the Tom Brady that takes the podium every Wednesday and Sunday, the GQ cover model with a Boy-Scout platitude for every occasion. So those moments when the other Brady comes out--the trash-talking, hypercompetitive, ferocious alpha male--it feels like I'm being let in on something. Something giddy and maybe even a little obnoxious and not entirely polite. Something I can't get enough of.

But then there was Asante Samuel's interception, probably the standout play of the game--the coup de grace. I managed to get it on film, the one time I've managed to raise the camera and press the button in time at a game.

And there were the little moments here and there. Frozen in my mind is the image of Chad Pennington after Ty Warren all but cut him in half in the first quarter, kneeling on the field and then being escorted to his sideline while around me the bleacher creatures were howling.

Or the moment pre-game when my dad, watching the offensive linemen warm up, said from behind his binoculars, "Modern day gladiators. Those guys know they're going to get their asses kicked, even if they go out and dominate."

***

There was a bloodthirsty, gladiatorial spirit about the game--between the memory of Pennington huddled on the ground and my dad's comment, I can't help but frame it in that context after the fact.

I don't know what it is, either, about Bostonians and New Yorkers, but even in a relatively nonsensical place for it, there was ire and enmity among the opposing fans. Sure, it's playoff football, and a relatively short drive for the opponent crowd meant there would be more visitors present than perhaps provincial Patriots supporters might have liked. And, of course, they are in our division and this season the series between the two teams has been close and bitter, from the head coaches on down.

But at the heart of it you can't help but conclude that it is simply that they are from New York and we are from Boston and therefore, even though Jets fans are not usually Yankees fans but Mets fans, and even though there have been more troublesome teams for the Patriots over the years than the crew from the Meadowlands, we hate each other. Fundamentally. In our brain stems.

Gillette is Romper Room compared to the war zone that was Foxboro Stadium, but you wouldn't know it when the Jets are in town. I have seen visitors in green and white jerseys pelted with rock-hard ice balls, when the weather permitted it. I've seen more fistfights at Jets games break out than at any other kind--even Red Sox-Yankees games at Fenway, though perhaps I just wasn't sitting in the right place.

In this, as in Jets games past, I saw the police make several forays into the upper deck where we were sitting. Fans in both blue and green were being culled left and right from the 300-level population, doing the drunken stagger of shame down the cement stairs following some dust-up or another.

The one time some Jets fans in the very top corner of the third deck started a J...E...T...S, JETS JETS JETS chant, Pats fans quickly picked it up by the end so that the JETS JETS JETS was drowned out by a sneering SUCK SUCK SUCK. For the rest of the game, a man in our section grumbled in the direction of the offending cheerers in the corner whenever something good happened for the Patriots. After the game, I saw a kid packing up a huge banner that said simply, JETS SUCK.

Make no mistake; from the guys in headsets to the guys in baseball caps hundreds of feet above the field, this was personal.

***

So in the end, I have to pick as my favorite moment a totally random one, sometime in the second half. I don't even remember exactly when this took place, or what the occasion was, or even if there was one on the field. The sound man at Gillette started playing the opening of "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns 'N' Roses, a song I think an anthropologist somewhere should be studying, because I have never failed to see a crowd of any size, in any location, but particularly in Gillette Stadium, fail to get whipped into hysterics by the descending notes of the opening guitar riff.

By the time Axl was making his whooping entrance on the speakers, the entire stadium was on its feet, waving the towels we'd been handed as we walked through the gates. No snow to recreate the famous "Rock 'n' Roll No. 3" moment of several years ago, so we made do with a frenzy of twirling white cloths and screams and hollers from the primordial bottom of our guts. All at once, en masse, 65,000 people were hollering and beating their chests like the Scottish warriors in Braveheart.

It was impossible not to be caught up in it. It was impossible not to feel the song echoing in my ears and rise along with the rest of the crowd. Not to pump my own fists and yell into the crisp January air, look out over a field of green where my team was conquering its rival, and just be happy to be alive.

Beautiful Day

Originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

...and a butt-ugly football game.

Of course the Patriots decided to show me up when I brought a guest--and a guest from another country, no less--to the game, expecting them to be on their best behavior.

"They are totally going to massacre the Lions," was the hubristic prediction I made to my companion. "Watch."

And then, let's see, what was it? 3 turnovers, 10 penalties, one safety, one interception for Brady, and a partridge in a freakin' pear tree.

Up in the nosebleeds, my fellow plebians weren't so much frustrated...or disappointed...as outraged.

"This is the Detroit. LIONS!!" One guy kept hollering, his voice cracking.

Fumbles, miscues, and all were met with the same phrases, over and over--"You gotta be kiddin' me," and its stronger cousin, "You gotta be shittin' me," and "What the fuck?!?"

I can't say I was immune to it. I definitely repeated all of the above, and added my own "This sucks" on more than one occasion. I have to admit right now that I was completely cocky going in that the Patriots were going to slaughter the Lions the way their namesakes had Christians in ancient Rome. I was confident that my (British--I seem to be a Brit magnet, and have also apparently been elected the unofficial head of the UK / USA sports exchange program) friend would be seeing a clean, crisp, calm, collected, all-day-long country ass-whupping administered clinically by the Patriots to the team from Detroit.

On our way home, my friend, who has lived on both sides of what Brian refers to as the "Mason-Dixon Line" with the Sox - Yankees rivalry, couldn't resist bringing up the Yankees-fan / Pats-fan comparisons. I generally point out when this conversation arises that the overall histories of the teams could not be more different, that the sports are the proverbial apples and oranges, and that as we witnessed by the third quarter of Sunday's game when the howls of despair grew louder and louder in Section 332, the assurance of victory for the Patriots fan has much less depth than that of the Yankees fan.

I will say, however, that there is a certain nebulous sense of a change in karmic direction that has occurred in the collective consciousness of the Patriots fan over the last few years. We have forgotten that the Patriots' rise to greatness didn't come from a steady stream of blowout victories but from a series of "one-game winning streaks". A series of individual, hard-fought games in which no opponent was underestimated, at least, inside the locker room.

Now...

Painful as it is, it may be fair at this point to say that the culture has weakened a bit. Maybe it's a relative lack of adversity that has brought it about...maybe it's that the underdog fuel of the team's competitive fire is missing, just by definition and not for lack of effort to replace it. It may be sad but true that the dynasty era as we know it has at the very least entered a fallow period.

Maybe they're just like habitual procrastinators, those Patriots. Maybe they can't get anything done unless they're under the gun.

Whatever the case: right now, at this juncture of the season, after watching the flat-out terrible way they played the Lions--a listless team performing in a lukewarm stadium on a lazy, unseasonably warm day in December-- I would be flat-out lying to you if I said I thought this looked like a Super Bowl team.

It's a virtual certainty at this pont that they'll make the playoffs. But I just can't picture the Pats squad I watched sleepwalk through the motions on Sunday squaring off against a hungrier team, say, a Denver or even an Indianapolis. It's not the strategies; it's not the personnel decisions; it's not the fans or injuries or the officials. I have been struggling all season to rationalize it otherwise, but right now it sure does look like the problem might be the one thing that has made or broken the Patriots in the Belichick era: the attitude.

Of course, that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't know the whole story about injuries and politics and what's going on in the locker room. After all, last year, we didn't know just how battered and broken Tom Brady really was until after the season ended. And I will admit that I feel terrible pointing fingers at the attitude and competitive zest of a group of people whose job is to sacrifice their physical well-being to win a game. I admit I don't really know anything, which is why I'm equivocating with "looks like" and "maybe", because some other reason could come out and I'll look like an asshole. Or they could buckle down and suck it up and all those other colorful prepositional phrases and I'll look like an asshole.

But it's like I've always said about my habit of hiding in my parents' bathroom during the final minutes of every Pats Super Bowl win: I'd rather look like an asshole and have the team win than save face and watch them lose. So if I've triggered the karmic boomerang with the above pronouncements, so be it. Reverse-mojo has long been my strong suit; I can always claim it was my strategy all along.

But now I'm saying too much.

Anyway, it was a great experience to go to the game with someone who had never attended an American football game at any level. First and foremost because I love being a know-it-all, and anyone who gives me half an opportunity to pontificate on the finer points of the forward pass should have either a well-planned escape route or a pair of earplugs handy. And also because there really is nothing like bringing a visitor into a world you know well; it makes you goofy with pride over the smallest things, ridiculously solicitous of every detail they notice, giddy with the newness it brings to the experience again.

At one point, while the Pats defense was lining up for another series, the Under-Armor drums began to sound from the Jumbo-Tron, boom-ba, BOOM, boom-ba, BOOM, boom-ba, BOOM while PROTECT...THIS...HOUSE flashed on the screen. My friend turned and said incredulously, "This is the most American thing I have ever done."

She's been in the US now for seven years and just got her green card. "I thought I was over culture shock," she said. "But this is something else."

Afterward she was even more impressed when I took her around to see the tailgates. Apparently there's nothing she's seen to compare with it in Britain. She was amazed by the campfires, the lavish setups around the RVs, the television sets and tents and generators set up around pickup trucks, the fact that people pay to sit in a cold parking lot long after a game is over--or sometimes even while the game is going on.

We wandered through the rows of the vehicular encampments. The day had gone chilly very quickly just before the sun went down, and the campfires were blazing out in P10 North. The fields of parking lot around the stadium have always reminded me of a medeival fiefdom with peasants huddled in the shadows of a castle, but to my friend it suggested an even earlier era.

"It's so...primal," she said, watching two huge, very, very drunk men struggle mightily to both smoke pungent cigars and play horseshoes at the same time without falling over.

Sometimes I think I'm not more patriotic about this country because I don't know, most often, what's really particular to this country (though with the odd number of British friends I've acquired in my travels, that is changing somewhat). In fact, I know it's that; I have never felt more American than when I stepped off a plane at Heathrow Airport several years ago and suddenly missed...I don't know what, but I remember being ready to kiss the greasy sidewalk in front of the first MacDonald's I saw when I got home.

The Patriots and the lower-case-p patriots blend together in times like that. Criticisms about some of the same things--entitlement, spoiled-rottenness, excess, even pollution (my friend called the tailgate with all its idling motors "an exercise in global warming")--apply to each. But we were in the car and they were arguing about pass interference calls on the radio, and I was necking down a cold Smirnoff ice while the drowsy warmth of the postgame letdown was beginning to steal over me, and I looked at our glowing Coliseum across the road. It's true; in many ways, we are Rome. And we may yet fall--in fact, we probably must fall--but for now, we are on top of the world.

More turnovers than touchdowns

Brian and Me
Originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

It's that Calvinistic guilt, man.

All week long, everybody in Boston was saying it--the guys on the radio were saying it; the guys on the TV were saying it; the guys in the paper were saying it; hell, even I was saying it: the Bears game was a huge test for this year's Patriots squad. If they lost to the Bears, it would be the fourth loss--and the third at home--to a quality team, and a sign that your 2006 Patriots are probably fraudulent. The corollary: if they could hang with the NFL's No. 1 defense and the team to beat in the NFC, then it would serve as Pats fans' official permission to hope.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my friend Brian, a native of the Chicago area and an avid Bears fan, had been talking shit to me literally all season about football in general, the Patriots specifically, and in the weeks leading up to this particular showdown, about the game. Going in, I knew I was in for a world of hurt if the Bears won--the crap I would have to take from Brian was sure to be immediate, unending, and merciless. He and I had also struck a bet that involved respective No. 54 jerseys and cubicle-decorating for the loser, as well as pride, honor, glory and satisfaction for the winner.

So. The game happened. And we won. And all day on the radio today, on the TV, in the papers, the talk was not of our promised permission to hope, but--what else?--how the Patriots got lucky, all the turnovers, Seau being broken, and woe is me.

I marched right up to Brian in the office and handed him my Bruschi jersey to wear. I put my Brady bobblehead on his desk. I took his picture and posted it on the Internet for all to see. He was a really good sport about it, and by the end of the day...I kind of felt bad.

Like I said. It's funny, how much we New Englanders enjoy kicking ourselves in the ass.

And it's true--it was a sloppy game. Nine turnovers in all, though that appeared to have been the game plan from the Chicago side, and you could see it as encouraging that the Patriots all but matched them in forcing fumbles. And then there was the officiating--the disastrous, outrageous officiating. Don't even get me started. The Patriots offense still stalled at times--note Brady's run for a pivotal first down in the third quarter. Brady is not, to understate things wildly, a scrambling quarterback. The US Postal Service is faster. A snail with a safe on its back is faster. I'm no offensive coordinator, but Brady having to scramble into the jaws of Brian Urlacher doesn't seem like it should be a scripted part of the game plan.

But--maybe because I was actually there at the game, as Patriots fans sent spittle and Sam Adams flying fieldward from the third deck after every horseshit pass interference call, and hollered things like "Break his neck!!" on every third down. Maybe it's because I knew so much was riding on the game that I found myself willing thoughts like "Block the field goal. Block the field goal. Block the field goal." at the field (that one actually worked!). Maybe it's because visions of being forced to wear a Rex Grossman jersey at the office were dancing in my head...

It was a great game. Experientially, anyway--it was an utterly fantastic football game.

Basically, there are two ways to look at it: as a sloppy game, from the offensive side, or as an intense, brutal, hard-nosed defensive masterpiece.

As the game ended on Asante Samuel's third interception of the afternoon, I thrust both fists in the air while screwing up my face in a primal scream of victory, and chose the latter.

Brady's first down--my favorite moment of the season so far, and among my top five favorite Patriots moments ever--can be looked at in two ways, too. The oh-shit scramble of an offense falling apart at the seams, and, yes, a lucky play...

Or a perfect microcosm of the stupendous, inspiring, often magical way Tom Brady makes us believe. Because even if he had to do it his damn self, the Patriots were gonna get that crucial first down. Even if he had to do it his damn self while juking Brian Urlacher, i.e. staring Death directly in the face.

If Urlacher had gotten hold of Brady, I guarantee you we'd have been watching Matt Cassell for the rest of the night, if not longer. Brady had to know this when he read the field and saw no choice but to run, and had to be keenly aware of how slow and unused to running he is. He had to know before he took the first step that he had no business whatsoever doing what he was about to do.

And then he did it.

He faked out the best linebacker in the game, dodged a few other pursuing Bears, and plowed forward toward the red zone with his long, loping, slow-motion strides. After the whistles finally blew, he dropped theatrically to one knee (while beside him, Ben Watson split his sides laughing) and gestured, "FIRST DOWN!"

He just up...and did it.

It's moments like that where that Calvinistic guilt and Irish Catholic pessimism and bleak, wintry self-doubts that form the collective psyche of New England have no choice but to drop, if only for a moment. It's moments like that that sell No. 12 jerseys all over town.

And it's moments like the one where Brian told me about his plan to make me wear not an Urlacher jersey, but a Peyton Manning jersey, that make me stop feeling bad about making him pay up on our bet. And also make me wish I'd picked up the Globe this morning, the better to wallpaper his cubicle with the sports section.

Was a beautiful day

P1010037
Originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

It's not the same place in the preseason, without that cold bite and the buzz of a meaningful game in the air. But it's still one of my favorite places in the world.

Gillette Stadium in the Year of Our Lord 2006 is the reflection of a franchise at the full smooth stride of dominance--or at least excellence--over the landscape of football, and its palatial bulk looks out with similar calm domain over another relaxed tailgate, nary a flake of snow in the air, while on the ground flames lick up from portable grills and Nerf footballs wing lazily between children and men.

After doing the full formal pomp and circumstance of the tailgate ritual last week with Steve--marinated chicken and steak tips on the grill, potato salad, the works--I had settled with my father on a menu of burgers. Potato chips. Maybe a little beer. Keep it simple this week.

But this is my father we are talking about, after all. I had expected, when we finally debarked at our parking spot, to find some freezer-burned thin patties in styrofoam, dug out of the fridge at home.

Nope. My dad had gone out and gotten some half-pound Angus steak burgers, two to a package, that looked much more like meatloaf or perhaps filet mignon. These burgers were so decadently huge, they looked silly on the conventional burger bun. My dad is, above all, an overachiever.

There was also another element of his personality exemplified by the filet-mignon burgers; earlier, I'd found him in the office at the house on stubhub.com finding a Sox ticket for my sister's boyfriend. When he discovered to his shock that the only shipping option was FedEx Overnight for $20, I urged him to just get my sister's boyfriend to pay it, since the ticket was for him.

"Eh, he can just buy me a beer at the game," my dad said, clicking place order.

As he printed out his confirmation page, he turned to me and grinned sheepishly. "I'm a freakin' touch," he said.

We sat back. We waited for the burgers to cook. We watched the drunken idiots across the row from us leer, holler and belch drunkenly. We cracked open the Cape Cod chips. We munched on peanuts, throwing the shells on the ground.

Let's erase the next part. That was the part where I drank some Smirnoff Ice and it disagreed with me, and my stomach was sour for a while. Let's go right from that tailgating scene right up through pre-game warmups to the introduction of the Patriots.

The team won handily again tonight, this time creaming the Washington Redskins. The crowd was a bit more lively, actually making some noise (if feebly) on some defensive downs. A Redskins fan in a glittery bebe top sat and yakked on a pink Razr, got up to go to the bathroom or smoke a butt or talk some more on the pink Razr approximately thirteen times in the first half; when she wasn't doing all of this she was either gloating or whining at a Pats-fan friend.

But by far the most memorable moment, sweet as it was to see the team of "bebe" get crushed, was at the very, very beginning, when the announcer, bellowing out the names of the Patriots defense, said with extra gusto, "Starting at free safety...number thirty-seven...RODNEYYYYY HARRISONNN!!"

"O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana blared on the stadium soundsystem. Below us was a swirl of color and noise. A chill autumnal breeze blustered around our faces.

"How can you help but get goosebumps?" my dad said.

Football Therapy

P1010186
Originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

It wasn't easy shaking off my Red Sox depression yesterday; I'll admit I was still pouting right up until Steve and I pulled in to the parking lot at Gillette Stadium, rolled down the window to pay, and the first whiff of charcoal, propane and grilling meat of not only the afternoon but the year hit my nostrils.

The wonderful thing about being a fan of both football and baseball is that there are virtually no similarities between either the sports or their attached subcultures--and so each one is an effective palette-cleanser for the other. Yesterday, I marveled at just how diametrically opposite everything about the Pats preseason game is from the Red Sox Experience--from the drive in over a particularly desolate strip of Rte 1 as opposed to through the maniacal traffic jams of Kenmore Square, Comm. Ave and Beacon St, to the elaborate camps maintaining self-sufficiency with their own supplies of food and drink, as opposed to the only options being an overpriced hot dog from inside the ballpark or an equally overpriced meal at one of the surrounding restaurants. There are no restaurants in the vicinity of Gillette Stadium, unless you count the End Zone Motel or perhaps the Burger King about a half mile up the highway.

'Twas the vomit brought us luck

Photos from Boston.com. My photos are here.

It was sometime in the third quarter, just before Tom Brady connected with David Givens in the end zone for the game's second touchdown, that in the row behind us and about five seats over, a young woman leaned forward and vomited, copiously, odiferously, all over herself, her significant other, and the people in front of her.

I had spotted her earlier; she had appeared to be asleep on said significant other's shoulder. It would remain unclear, as he escorted her out of the stadium, whether she was drunk or ill.

While the vomit caused quite a commotion among the people next to us, several of whom had received a portion of the puke down their backs, their attention was back on the field shortly after the barfer left, when Benjamin Watson fumbled the ball at Jacksonville's 12 yard line.

The ball squirted loose and bounced toward the end zone, various Jaguars closing in toward it. Andre Davis got a hand on it, lost it again...

Up until that point, it had been a disconcerting game, to say the least. Brady had been sacked four times, thrown one interception, and innumerable incompletions. The Jacksonville defense had not only manhandled our offensive line, but worse, had seemed to confuse Brady as he let the play clock run down, at one point even gesturing, palms up, toward the sideline in exasperation.

So disconcerting that first the guys next to me called someone at home to see if the TV broadcasters had said anything about Brady being injured, and then, spooked, I called Steve and then Sam to ask the same questions. Nothing. No one had commented on Brady's alternately flat and frantic play so far in the game.

And the X-factor, too, the luck Patriots fans had become accustomed to ever since the Tuck Rule, also seemed to be favoring Jacksonville. Before the girl behind us tossed her cookies, despite their lead on the scoreboard, the Patriots seemed to be floundering.

But the down before Watson's fumble, came the hurl, and Andre Davis finally smothered the ball at the Jacksonville 3, and suddenly both he and the Patriots as a team were stumbling, scrambling, falling, clawing toward the Jaguars' doorstep.

Then Brady to Givens, and suddenly it was 14-3, and Pats fans were starting to shrug their shoulders a little bit, roll their heads on their necks, shaking out the kinks, taking a deep breath, high fiving, laughing the nervous laugh of relief. There it was--the Pats' first break.

As we in Section 332 high-fived and sang along with "Rock and Roll No. 3", some of the puked-upon among us began substituting loud retching noises for the traditional "HEY!" in recognition of the blown groceries that had somehow turned the game around.

But still. Byron Leftwich was eliciting more than a few "dammits" from both me and my Dad every time he took the ball. He and his receivers flat-out punked the Patriots, and even after that second touchdown, we all realized it could quickly be a four-point game again.

And...at least as far as I was concerned, I was still afraid about this game. It's only a matter of time before we're the St. Louis Rams of 2001 and some upstart team is becoming the next us; at least that's the way it feels. And after the way the season had begun...with all the weaknesses...and with the way the Jaguars defense had frustrated the Patriots earlier...

It wasn't until the Patriots next possession that it finally became clear that the New England run of greatness--and luck--continues. Just when I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with Tommy again, he stepped up and hit Kevin Faulk for seven yards, and I suddenly nodded my head in recognition--when Tommy held the ball, he was cooked. When he worked more quickly in the pocket, he had success. But Tommy's used to having all day back there, being able to dodge defenders. In that way, Jacksonville really had thrown a wrench in his gears early on. But he was getting it.

When he hit Benjamin Watson off to the right side on the next play, I nodded again, assuming Watson would be stopped momentarily. Still, the completion had netted at least a first down, and it seemed like Tommy was really catching on. As long as he worked quickly--

But Watson wasn't stopped. He was eluding the defender who'd seemed a moment earlier to have him wrapped up, and then he was dancing along the sideline, and then he was turning a corner and pulling away from his pursuers and then he was reaching his stride almost at midfield and then OH MY GOD he was headed for the end zone...

We were on our feet. I was screaming "YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!" without even really realizing it. My dad was pounding my back as Watson kept running, and running, all the way into the end zone and then through it, capping the longest postseason touchdown reception in Patriots history with a Lambeau Leap into the stands at the South end of the stadium.

It was without a doubt one of the best moments of my life, in ways I'm still struggling to articulate, the way my dad kept whomping his hand down between my shoulder blades like he was trying to make sure I really realized what we were seeing, the way even in all that excitement his focus was on me, on us, the fact we were here together. As Watson did his leap, I all but duplicated it, flinging myself onto my dad and hugging him as the minutemen fired their muskets.

It was one of the best moments I've ever experienced football-wise, to be sure, but it took on even more significance, was all the more joyous and nostalgic and brilliant and unforgettable, because my dad was there. I'll never forget that, jumping up and down with my dad while No. 84 broke free from the sideline and ran toward the end zone, as long as I live.

And it was then that I realized that not only were the Patriots going to win this game,  but that they were...they were...

Before I could even complete that thought, it seemed like, Asante Samuel, who Sam had informed me earlier was being keyed on heavily by the Jacksonville offense in the first half, had sprinted twenty yards before I even realized he'd intercepted the ball, and he took it all the way to the North end zone for another touchdown...

In many ways it reminded me of the Patriots' home opener last year against the Colts, the way I'd been so pessimistic early on and the way the Patriots had just risen up and not only overcome what had been holding them back but demolished it, obliterated it, left it in tatters...

As with that game, Willie McGinest also figured heavily in the end. Leftwich joined Peyton Manning among the quarterbacks who probably see No. 55 coming at them in their dreams. Along the way, McGinest broke the all-time playoff sacks record (16) and the postseason single-game sack record with his 4.5 takedowns. Meanwhile, at 10-0 in the last four seasons, the Patriots became the team with the most consecutive postseason victories ever. Tom Brady surpassed Bart Starr for quarterback, ditto.

I mean, the Patriots didn't just win this game. They squashed it. They minced it. They left scraps of it hanging from the goalposts. They littered the ground with its corpses--they scorched the earth and sowed the fields with salt. So dominant were they that by the end, from where I sat high above the ground in Section 332, frozen vomit splattered about nearby, you could feel how the word was going out, over the news wires, over the TV stations, via whatever networks exist behind the scenes of the NFL, that something fearsome was stirring again in New England...

Pregame ritual

Space-age long underwear (top and bottom) from Eastern Mountain Sports? Check.

Sweatpants? Check.

Jeans? Check.

Long-sleeved t-shirt? Check.

Huge hooded sweatshirt? Check.

Battered Tom Brady jersey? Check.

Patriots fleece? Check.

Head sock? Check.

Sweat socks? Check.

EMS Mountaineering socks (certified to -50 F)? Check.

EMS Mountaineering boots (certified to -75 F)? Check.

Gore-tex shell? Check.

Patriots knit cap? Check.

Gloves (2 pair)? Check.

Hand and foot warmers? Check.

Beer? Check.

Burgers? Check.

Cheese? Check.

Buns? Check.

Chips? Check.

Soda? Check.

Chili? Check.

Hibachi? Check.

Plates, cups, forks, spoons, knives, napkins? Check.

Patriots blanket? Check.

Binoculars? Check.

Camera? Check.

Freshly charged batteries? Check.

Tickets? Check.

GO PATS.

What Richard Seymour Said

Or, How Sports Talk Radio Ruins Everything

Hello, my name is Beth, and I'm a recovering sports talk radio addict.

It used to be I never went anywhere on four wheels without WEEI, and sometimes never went anywhere at all without being plugged in to Boston's flagship AM sports station. I looked forward to the Whiner Line every day, often refusing to leave the car before it was over, even though I was idling in my driveway, finally at the end of another long commute. If I heard something particularly interesting early in the day, I'd sometimes even sneak out of work to click on the radio for interesting developments. This was especially true for the Red Sox hot stove and / or football season, i.e., this time of year.

Last year, though, something changed. Last year I began to realize there was a pattern: something that was hypothetical, theoretical speculation on Dennis and Callahan had a tendency to become solid fact that called for vengeance by the Big O Show.

There was no one moment I can point to where I switched the channel and never looked back; it happened gradually. And the more I avoided sports talk radio, the less I could stand to listen to it when I went back. I would have formulated my own opinions, from watching the game in question, or talking with people online, and by this past Red Sox season, there were times--Mannygate springs to mind--that I would find myself appalled when I even got wind of what was being talked about over on 'EEI.

I've had my talk radio sobriety for almost a year, and I've gone from an addict to a casual user to an occasional user to a teetotaller to a full-fledged member of the Ladies' Temperance Union. I wish I could go around to elementary schools and perform skits warning the pupils about the dangers of sports talk radio. It will turn your brain to mush, I would tell them. It will make you start to think 92 RBI by the All-Star Break are meaningless compared to "character issues" that are one part muckraking journalism to one part rumor-mongering to two parts pure speculation and assumption.

...or it will harp and harp and harp and harp on issues where there is but a grain of truth until an incident becomes a multi-episode drama complete with "--gate" nickname.

But Sunday night, sitting in the car out in the snowy Gillette Stadium parking lot, waiting for Tom Brady's press conference, I put the radio on WBCN. To busy ourselves before Brady's appearance, Kristen and I ate taco dip and played "Who Would You Rather Do?" with athletes. Eventually we got so swept up in our conversation that I'm pretty sure we missed the press conference, but in the course of half-listening, I wound up being inadvertently exposed to What Richard Seymour Said-gate.

See, if I'd kept my sports talk radio sobriety, I might never have known about this. Or I'd have dismissed it, seeing it on another blog (I don't read the Herald or Globe either, for pretty much the same reasons).

But hearing it on the radio...I can't un-hear it. I can't un-hear it and I can't un-think about it, so I'm very sorry to be starting my post about an otherwise lovely afternoon at the stadium by addressing What Richard Seymour Said-gate.

What Richard Seymour Said

So, here's What Richard Seymour Said (as quoted by the Herald)

Richard Seymour ripped into the quiet Gillette Stadium crowd yesterday, saying the Foxboro faithful were “spoiled” and that they made more noise for a visiting Victoria’s Secret model than the three-time Super Bowl champions.

“It’s really disappointing,” said Seymour following the Patriots’ 16-3 victory over the Jets. “The loudest they ever got was when there was a Victoria’s Secret model (Gisele Bundchen) on the scoreboard. They don’t know when to cheer. You look up and you see half of the stands empty.”

Seymour offered the remarks without being asked, indicating a level of frustration that went beyond the words. Several times during the game, the defensive lineman could be seen exhorting the crowd, only to be greeted by relative silence.

Seymour’s complaint has been echoed by other Patriots players over the last few years, as the open ends of Gillette and the close proximity of the club-level seats (where many fans opt to stay inside) have conspired to give the Pats one of the worst home-field advantages — in terms of crowd noise — in the NFL.

There was one occasion during the 2003 season when a game against Tennessee coincided with a Red Sox playoff game. That led to a weird happenstance where the crowd erupted just after a Steve McNair touchdown run (at the same moment, David Ortiz had doubled in the winning run).

“They all should have been at the baseball game then,” said Seymour, recalling the story.

“Coming from Arrowhead (Stadium in Kansas City) last week, it’s obvious how important the 12th man is,” added Seymour. “That stadium is probably the loudest in the league. So to come from that to this . . .”

When asked why the Gillette fans were so quiet, Seymour said: “They’re spoiled.”

All I can say to that is this:

Sunday morning I got up at what is, for me, the ass-crack of dawn on a weekend and drove in the snow down I-93 to Brookline to pick up Kristen. She and I then drove down 128 to Route 1 and then to the stadium, but we couldn't get in, because we were too early. The parking lots were not open. We sat and waited in the parking lot of a gas station for about an hour.

Once we got to the parking lot, we had nothing to shelter ourselves with, so we cooked all our tailgating food in the snow on a portable Hibachi. We ate in the car.

By the time we'd climbed to the tippy top of the stadium, we were soaked. It was about 24 degrees Farenheit. We sat down more than a dozen stories above the field while the snow came down, on ice-encrusted seats--ice-encrusted seats we'd paid $75 a pop for.

The entire time we sat there, our toes and fingers first stinging, then freezing solid, our only concern was what was happening on the field. We hollered, we high-fived, we swore and stomped, we peered through field glasses and, in my case, the lens of a camera to further capture the experience.

To have What Richard Seymour Said be the first thing you hear about directly after a day like that is, as you can imagine, a bit of a slap in the face.

Did the stadium empty out quickly? Yeah, even I noticed that. But I noticed it because I was in my seat until the clock went 0:00. Actually, we didn't leave the stadium until Tom Brady, one of the last off the field, trotted back toward the locker room. We wanted to stay and see if Tedy would visit his FULL TILT FULL TIME people (he didn't).

"Okay, then," my father said when I told him this. "He's not talking to you."

I don't know why that doesn't make me feel better. But it doesn't. I can't un-hear it, I can't un-think about it, and I can't stop revisiting Sunday's game for evidence to shore up the overwhelming, instinctual, and immediate anger I felt hearing Seymour's comments.

Tent city...a little slice of heaven

Still. It was Kristen's first NFL game, and should be honored as such. So let's at least try to move on.

Between the two of us, we had prepared a sumptuous, elaborate tailgate, and had a highly boss parking spot. However, our lack of tarp / tent gave us away as amateurs, as we poked gingerly around the furiously steaming Hibachi set up on a card table. We even went so far as to out out our chairs as if we were going to sit in them; I think, in the end, Kristen sat in one for a picture, and that was about it.

I had been hoping against hope (and the fact that I'd found a bathroom at the gas station we'd waited at before parking) that I could avoid the Handy House. I'm sure there's no one who loves port-o-potties, but every time I go in one for some reason I think of that one scene in Schindler's List...okay, I'll stop.

Anyway, I debarked the car and picked my way between the cars and trucks (mostly trucks) toward the port-o-potty, which was, as usual, an unpleasant experience, but I at least got a nice tour of the full parking lot along the way.

Picture, if you will, a camera trained on me, hovering above me as I deduce that unless I wanted to end up stepping into someone's roaring charcoal fire, the best place to walk is between the front bumpers of the various vehicles. As I weave past the Tacomas and Tahoes picture that camera zooming out, until you just see the white of my hat and the blue of my coat and the lines between the cars are clear. As I nearly trip over someone's generator, let the camera zoom way back, back and back and back...

What you'd see is an enormous tent city, looking like a gathering of post-apocalyptic refugees, blue tarps and red and black pickup trucks from horizon to horizon. Some tailgating groups even fly flags, the Irish flag, Patriots flag, American flag and Jolly Roger most popular. Here and there are bonfires that would probably be visible to a plane.

Inside that tent city every kind of grillable food is being seared, every smokable plant being smoked with vigor, every potable form of intoxicant not to be left behind, and binding the mosaic of aromas together is the sharp smell of charcoal briquettes. Soon booming over them all will be Gil Santos' deep gorgeous voice, previewing the game.

I know of two forms of sports-related heaven: Fenway Park at August twilight and Gillette Stadium on a snowy December Sunday morning. Both delight every one of my senses. Both make me feel like the true meaning of life is just snapping into focus for a sweet instant. Both make me not only tempted to believe in God, but that the scene I'm witnessing is, as has been said about beer, "proof that He loves us and wants us to be happy."

What does Richard Seymour know?

Anyway.

On being an insufferable know-it-all, and a brief digression on the evolution of the Brady Mystique

If there was anything better than just being there, it was that I was able to introduce Kristen to the experience. Bringing someone new into an environment like that helps you see it with new eyes. It also helps you become an insufferable know-it-all.

"It's going to be like a million degrees in there," I told her for about the 50th time as we entered the Pro Shop. "You might want to remove some layers."

I'm sure she would've done so if she'd had a full range of motion in her arms.

So we sweated and wandered through the Pro Shop, sneered at the various pink and pastel merchandise, and left. Whoopee. The Pro Shop gets old fast (quoth the insufferable know-it-all).

We went to the first-level field entrance, the one the players come out of through the big helmet to start the game, but before the helmet was inflated. We stood with a handful of other fans along a fence, gathering like birdwatchers chasing the ivory-billed woodpecker, and between silent strangers there was an unspoken shared mission: to see, to touch, to be near, to witness Tom Brady.

I've been coming to this stadium since 2002; at the time Brady was still relatively unproven, still subject to the "flash in the pan" line of criticism. I found him beauteous and studied him in minute detail through binoculars, but gruff-voiced men could still be heard growling out scoffs through their moustaches and pining for the days of Bledsoe when No. 12 took the field.

In this past, his pregame routine consisted of a Very Serious series of stretches. He would come out onto the field in a knit cap, jog, stretch, run, stretch, throw, stretch, put his helmet on, stretch...

By two seasons ago, the routine was to come out to a subtle appreciative roar of recognition from the crowd. Perhaps a wave. I forget when he started wearing the helmet at all times, but it may have been around then.

By last season, people had started to gather like birdwatchers long before pregame. Nothing overt, no new signs that said "MARRY ME TOMMY", no fainting fans...but you could feel a buzz in the stadium before HE entered, could feel eyes and binoculars and telephoto lenses searching the field. You could feel the whole stadium leaning in, gawking, craning its neck, searching for HIM to appear. When he'd appear, a great HURRAH would go up. Sometimes he'd wave, sometimes not. Sometimes he'd go through his Very Serious stretching routine, sometimes not. He began to gladhand a bit more with the other team.

But every so often, he'd forget himself in warmups, and he'd do a strange little dance to the thumping hip-hop pumped into the stadium, a dance I can still see in my mind's eye when I hear the right song. A far cry from the awkward, jerky white-boy dancing he'd done at Government Center at the end of his parades--a more fluid movement, a more organic dance, a dance that just burst out of him, uncontainable and graceful. The dance of someone at home, with no one watching. You felt like this was HIS house, and you were just being allowed to hang out in it, and you know, you were okay with that.

This year, as in 2002, there's a sour note being struck somewhere. Somewhere along the line the joyous HURRAH at Brady's appearance has given over to embarrassing hysteria. He wears his helmet at all times during warmups and, if yesterday's game was any indication, uses his erstwhile stretching time for hand-shaking and backslapping with opposing coaches and various dignitaries paraded past him on the field. Tom Brady didn't warm up this past Sunday; he held court.

It's different right now. You can still feel that energy before HE enters, can feel that searching, that anticipation, like this whole absurd castle is just waiting to let itself exhale at the sight of HIM...but there's starting to be something perverse and oppressive about it. There's a darkness to it, a darkness that suggests that maybe it's for the best if the Patriots tank this season, and Brady can fly a little under the radar for a few months, because at moments like that pregame last Sunday it feels like whatever Golum-like fixation on him as THE PRECIOUS has the potential simply to crush him, and then collapse in on itself entirely.

House party gone wrong?

And hey. Maybe the whole thing's spun just a little out of control, like a house party just before the cops show up. Maybe what was a wild good time in full swing has gotten just a little scary. Maybe everyone needs to call a cab home and sleep it off for a while, and we'll reconvene here next year, same time, same place, same channel, 14-2 and a Super Bowl, sure, but for right now, that half a bottle of Jaeger we all drank is making us a little slow on our feet, a little overindulged, a little more likely to projectile vomit.

Spoiled? Nah. More like...overserved.

That's why it was fantastic to be there with Kristen, to point things out to her, to see her eyes light up at the sight of, say, David Givens flexing milk-chocolate biceps on the field in practice or Tedy Bruschi doing high leg-kicks. At least there was someone there who wasn't incessantly comparing things to Before and mooning about the current mood on the field, unlike, say certain insufferable know-it-alls I could name.

But still. Further evidence of a house party out of control: I haven't seen behavior like what I witnessed in our section toward the end of the third quarter since the last time I crashed a kegger at Fitchburg State. First there was the throwing snow, as per tradition, but then there was the discovery that said snow could be made into rock-hard ice balls, and that exciting contests could then be held to see who could actually fling an ice ball so that it hit the field, and much fun and beanings of unsuspecting people on the levels below were had.

Until the same ice-ball flingers realized that unsuspecting Jets fans representin' in their jerseys made for much easier targets than the field.

That's about when the police got involved.

I don't know what was more irritating: the fact that the throwers were surprised that it was they, and not the throwee, who were escorted from the premises, or the fact that virtually everyone else in our section felt compelled to stand, turn their back to the field, and goggle at the spectacle, shouting encouragement or condemnation.

There were a couple of good heckles and nicely shouted one-liners--"Nice punt, douchebag!" being our favorite; it just has a nice ring to it--but by around the third quarter, all was inanity. The Patriots had just scored a touchdown after a lengthy drive to put the game in the bag, and as if on some cue, the entire Gillette audience had given itself permission to either take off, or act like burnouts at a SlipKnot concert.

Okay, so maybe Seymour had a point.

But it's not like he said. It's not spoiled-rotten people sitting back and ho-humming over another win; it's more sinister than that. It's people unused to excess demonstrating an utter inability to cope with it. It's Good Times Fatigue. It happens to the best of us.

Oh yeah, there was a football game too

Anyway, burnouts or no burnouts, the Patriots won tidily, 16-3, as it should be against the 2-9 Jets. I only heard Ty Law's name called once. Despite giving us a huge scare in the third quarter when he rolled onto his back wincing in pain and was slow to get up, Tom Brady played all 60 minutes and looked decent. Our O-line is still for shit and our secondary got picked apart a few times, but the return of Givens and Dillon bolstered the offense considerably. Kristen got to see a Patriots win and experience a weather game. Ted Johnson was honored in a lovely ceremony at halftime. Adam Vinatieri broke Gino Capilleti's scoring record as a kicker, and we listened to his South Dakota accent in his press conference while we had taco dip.

But then, right then, goddamnit, I had to go and hear What Richard Seymour Said. I had to look back on the experience and rethink the whole thing. I had to think about the fact that one of the guys I was shivering in my seat to cheer for pretty much thinks I suck, and I had to think about why. Worst of all, I had to admit that in some ways, maybe not about me individually, he's got a point...and wonder what's happened.

See how sports talk radio ruins everything?

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Full photo album here.

Kristen's account here.

"Sons are for fathers the twice-told tale."

Just after the third quarter began, I hobbled on blistered feet to the third-level concourse at Gillette Stadium in search of popcorn. (The blisters were courtesy of traipsing around the North End the night before during Kristen's birthday festivities in The Wrong Shoes. More on that soon.)  As I took my place in line at one of the concession stands, Tom Brady was sacked on third down for the third time in four series and the second time in a row. My command to "keep No. 12 clean and upright for once" toward the O-Line pre-game appeared to fall on deaf ears today.

Still, the score was 14 to 7, and I thought I'd only be in line a few minutes since I'd waited for the halftime rush to subside. It appeared I was right when I first got in line; there were only about ten people ahead of me, and it was a stand where no assembly was required for the workers: aside from pouring sodas, their only duties included grabbing pre-wrapped, boxed and packaged things from shelves and bringing them to the counter.

Once again, however, the Gillette Stadium concessions staff proved to be the slowest thing in the stadium, and given Tom Brady's mobility as a rusher, that's saying something.

And, of course, as soon as I got in line, unable to see the television monitors from where I was standing, I proceeded to miss five first downs by the Saints, which drew them up to the New England 43 before the Patriots defense finally decided to show up and force them out.

As I stood, tapping my gloved fingers impatiently on my leg, watching a concession worker manage to take five full minutes to deliver a man three hot dogs, the Pats failed on two straight passing plays, but then Patrick Pass ripped off a 31-yard run to move the chains.

As the next person in line had to be nudged by the person behind him before he approached the counter, there was a roar from the stands. My dad would tell me later that they were reacting to a 60-yard touchdown pass from Brady to Andre Davis that put the Patriots up 21-7.

When I had left the stands, there was 13:20 remaining in the third quarter. Once I had refrained from ripping the soda cup out of the hands of the slackjawed concession worker (he had been distracted--no, held rapt--by a conversation happening next to him, and had stood for about thirty seconds with the lid poised over the cup) and huffed my way back up the stairs to the seats with my popcorn and Pepsi, there was 4:13 left in the third quarter. If you consider that football time is about twice to three times as long as regular time, you can see I had a ridiculously hard time getting a stupid popcorn. And in so doing, I had missed the best Patriots series of the game, on both offense and defense.

In case I wasn't aware of this, my dad spent most of the rest of the third quarter and about half the fourth quarter reminding me. Thanks, Dad.

After I returned, things of course went pear-shaped again. Brady spent most of the rest of the game attempting to recreate his long bomb to Davis, and failing (in fairness, this was due at least once to the fact that the yellow flags stayed firmly in the officials' pockets despite flagrant pass interference by the Saints' cornerback, a non-call that did not go unnoticed among the crowd). Brady also appeared to be hobbling slightly, favoring his left leg, and I hear tell there's something wrong with his right shoulder. Insert string of colorful expletives here.

Until the final plays of the game, the only memorable aspect of the second half after that was a spectacular tantrum by Saints DE Will Smith (#91 on your program), who stood accused of a personal foul for "kneeing a player while he was on the ground." Smith then immediately racked up a second personal foul by telling the referrees what he thought of them, their mothers, and their lineage in no uncertain terms (it was silent on the Jumbo-Tron replays, but I got the gist of what was being said anyway). After finally being dragged toward the sideline by teammates, Mr. Smith incurred his third and final personal foul when he ripped off his helmet and chucked it about 20 yards (minus the bounce).

Said the referree into his booming stadium microphone shortly afterward, "Defense, Number 91, has three penalties; however, only one can be enforced." The officials enforced the first personal foul for fifteen yards and left it at that. It was the general assumption that Smith had been ejected, but he came out for the next series, to a welcome from Patriots fans I'll just leave you to imagine.

Oh, and when a referree took to the microphone again after Belichick challenged a call to reverse the ruling on the field. After reviewing the play, he said, "the runner's buttocks hit the ground before the ball came loose."

Imagine being a referree, on the mic in front of 68,000 people, and having to think of the appropriate way to say "his ass was on the ground."

Imagine actually uttering the word "buttocks" in front of 68,000 people.

"Ah yes," quipped the guy behind us. "The old buttocks call."

The real excitement, though, came in the waning seconds of the fourth quarter, when the Patriots' decimated secondary (helped generously by the linebacking corps) bent, then broke, allowing the Saints a touchdown and then several shots at the end zone. Ironically, it was a member of that much-maligned secondary, Eugene Wilson, who intercepted an attempted touchdown pass at the literal last second to put a merciful end to a disconcerting game.

"They're just bad," my father finally concluded of the defense. "They're just...bad."

"Is it a mental thing, like they don't know where they're supposed to be?" I asked. "Or a physical thing, or...?"

"Kind of both," he answered. "Mentally, they're not all that bright, and physically, they don't react as quickly."

In fact, it was only miscues by the Saints, including several passes that simply dropped out of the hands of the receivers, and the fact that QB Aaron Brooks missed a wide-open Zach Hilton during the final scoring attempt ,that kept the defending world champs from overtime against one of the bottom-feeders of the league.

"I don't get it," I said to my dad in between nail-biting in the fourth quarter. "We still have Seymour, and Tedy, and Vrabel, and McGinest..."

"They're all up front," he pointed out.

"But Asante Samuel and Eugene Wilson..."

"They're nickelbacks at best. At best," he said. "They're definitely not Rodney Harrison or Ty Law."

"But these other guys...we've always picked guys off the scrap heap," I said.

"Yeah, to fill certain gaps," he countered. "But never to play everywhere."

He's got a point. And Tom Brady would point out during his postgame press conference that the Pats have also lost four offensive linemen, two running backs, three out of five receivers and two tight ends this season.

In retrospect, the effect of this was borne out in a play that puzzled me at first. "What's wrong with him?" I'd asked my dad, bewildered, as yet another passing attempt to Davis missed its mark.

"He doesn't know the kid," my dad shrugged.

Sometimes I guess it's that simple.

Even more disconcerting, there doesn't seem to be any hope in sight, either. No one's going to trade with the Patriots, even if we had something they wanted. There isn't anyone coming back from the DL--they're all on injured reserve, the guys like Harrison, their seasons over. This is what we have to work with, for better or for worse, and from watching today, I have to say it's probably going to be worse.

My dad had summed it up best during our tailgating before the game, in the VIP lot, thanks to some friends of his who'd won a ticket package and brought us along--the height of luxury for those of us used to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the vast expanse of plebian parking.

"I don't know," he'd said. "But something tells me we won't be seeing a 2005 banner up there."

("If we were playing the Colts today," he added, post-game, "We'd have given up 60 points.")

I hate it, but he's right.

(Speaking of things I hate, after much complaining from New Englanders, CBS decided to put the Indy-Cincy game on...and the Colts are still ahead. Stupid Colts. I hate the Colts.)

Still, all in all, my first day at Gillette this season was a good one. It was a beautiful, sunny 50 degrees. Our VIP parking got us in and out fast, and we enjoyed sumptuous grilling before the game among the smells of charcoal, lighter fluid and wood smoke I've come to associate with the place. And getting to watch a game with my dad while he patiently answers my questions, hearing his witty remarks and knowledgeable observations, is of course more important than the final score.

My father and grandfather used to do these things together--go to games, talk about the team, argue good-naturedly over their players and prospects. I like to think he and I are carrying on that tradition in some form.

It seems, in general, that no matter where they are for the game, in the third deck among the beer-drinkers or pacing the sidelines, fathers are important to the people who love sports. The two things--fathers and sports--seem naturally prone to conflagration. It's a threadbare subject on this blog, I know, but I keep coming back to it in different ways.

According to Bill Griffith of the Boston Globe, Bill Belichick is not only no exception to this phenomenon, but perhaps its most shining example. As he wrote about the Belichick autobiography, The Education of a Coach:

Belichick didn't seem the ideal subject nor [David] Halberstam the ideal author for an 'as told to' book; however, the 'education of a coach' approach seemed to work. "I think his decision to cooperate was because he felt it would be an homage to his father, a coaching lifer and the best scout of his era," said Halberstam.

So far, reading this book, it has seemed to live up to that vision of it as an "homage." I'm only on page 73, but already the book has been 75% about Steve Belichick rather than his son Bill. For instance, on page 73 itself:

Scouting seemed to come so naturally to [Steve Belichick], not so much an end in itself, as someof his colleagues who watched him thought, but more accurately as a game within a game, one which he was always determined to win. Most of the other scouts were assistant coaches who did not really want to be scouting. They wanted to be back with their teams on Saturday, watching their handiwork in action, and their work habits showed it. They were, Bill Belichick remembered from watching them when he was a boy, "all so casual about it, talking to each other, paying attention but not really paying attention, doing a lot of coaching small talk, gossiping really. Not really paying attention to the game, but thinking that they were. Instead they were halfway interested. There were a lot of questions they would be asking each other, like 'Hey, did the guard pull on that play?' It was like a social occasion for them, and they would be ordering hot dogs and coffee. And, by contrast, he was always working. Every minute. He was like a hawk up there. And by watching him, I learned to see the game, how well prepared you have to be and how quickly your eyes have to shift."

Watching through my binoculars this afternoon, I had noticed that throughout the game today few people ever seemed to talk to Bill Belichick as he walked the sidelines. He hardly ever seemed to speak into his headset, either. He just walked, his graceless, ambling walk, eyes trained on the field. I had thought it odd.

He was, his son said, "the first great scout." "What I learned, going with him," Bill Belichick added, "was that it was not just a game, it was a job."

He was always working. Bill remembered one year when he had been allowed to make the trip to Philadelphia with his father, to scout Penn. They were the first to arrive and Steve did not waste a minute, immediately checking out the players in the pregame drills, the punters, how long they held the ball, how they dealt with the wind, and finally what kind of returns they were setting up on punt returns. There was, Steve Belichick taught his son, always something to learn.

Listening to the postgame reports on WEEI on the way home from the game tonight, we heard the news: Steve Belichick passed away last night, due to heart failure. He was 86.

"I coached this game with a heavy heart," Bill Belichick told the media. "My dad passed away. I found out about it the middle of last night."

But he was out there, pacing the sidelines, eyes trained on the field today. The depleted Pats struggled down to the wire, but they won thanks to their tough, smart leader in the frumpy grey hood.

Of the son, the same thing can be said as was said about the father: Belichick is always working.

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Title quote by Victoria Segunda, Women and their Fathers, via Quotegarden.