Well not really a hater. I more so hate a particular breed of Patriot fake-ass fan that's materialized in the last decade. I saw a gaggle of them at the sports bar yesterday--the sort of mofos in Moss jerseys who don't know the half about John Hannah, Steve Grogan or Ronnie Lippett.
Anyway, I think anyone who truly hates the Patriots should be really upset about Tom Brady's injury. As my good friend (and die-hard Bills fan) Eyal Press said to me yesterday--if you're a true fan, you to see your team beat the Patriots at their best. You want to take on the Franks under Charlemagne, not under Lothar. Manning's Super Bowl is special because he beat Brady on the way. Ditto for the other Manning and the Giants. The first Dallas Super Bowl of the 90s would not have sucked if it hadn't been Jim Kelly or even Thurman Thomas out there.
Basic decency aside, I can't see how any real fan of a team, or any fan of the NFL, could want to see Tom Brady out for the season.
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Thanks, TNC. Lifelong Pats fan. 5 years old at the Bears SB crushing. Cried. You know what though, let's see what this team can do. Let's see how they can rally. Let's see how the coaches can play to whatever strengths we have left. Don't count us out!
I still hate Ben Dreith.
The new Patriots insta-fans are the same dudes who, in the mid-80s, suddenly showed up to work with a Chicago Bears tuque claiming they'd been fans all along.
Amen
I'm a devout Patriots hater, although I probably dislike their obnoxious (bandwagon portion anyway) fanbase more than the team itself.
For years I've been yelling out of frustration to "knock Brady out of there" but it was just that, frustration.
You never want to see guys get hurt and you always want the best players to play, for everybody's sake. Tom Brady is one of the top 2 or 3 players in the entire league, it's not quite the same when he's not around.
The Pats aren't done though, their team is constructed well enough that they can win 10 or 11 games with just adequate QB play. I don't see a Super Bowl appearance, but who knows?
Lothar was underrated. Better-than-average legs and great downfield vision.
Mad love for name-checking John Hannah. I think growing up in the 70s, Alabama was one of the few places you could be taught as a child to idolize an interior lineman (between John Hannah and Dwight Stephenson, it was inevitable that I would become a Hogs fan. Erm, Skins fan).
As bad as it is to see Brady go down, I can't shake the feeling that if it had been Peyton, we'd be on 24-hour "AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE" alert from ESPN and the NFL Network.
What, no love Andre Tippett, HoF linebacker and black belt in Karate? I had a picture of him posted in my room as a kid, one side making a tackle and the other side in his gi chopping throwing a dude down
Even the most basic acolyte knows Andre Tippett. Had to be obscure to prove my pigskin cred.
jon, your GOP-style ressentiment does you a disservice. The media is not out to get you.
- Dave, still walking on air after last night's Bears whupping of the Colts.
They should bring back Testaverde.
Do I want to see Brady out for the season? Of course not. Do I want to hear the already-begun "asterisk season" talk from Patriot fans? No. This was a significantly weaker team even with Brady, and if you're going to start with injury hypotheticals you may as well rewrite the history of football.
Freddie writes: ""Do I want to hear the already-begun "asterisk season" talk from Patriot fans?"
I'm right here in Massachusetts and I haven't heard or seen anyone saying anything of the sort.
"This was a significantly weaker team even with Brady, and if you're going to start with injury hypotheticals you may as well rewrite the history of football."
Since "significantly weaker team even with Brady" is itself a hypothetical, this makes no sense at all. You've been equivocating too much with Megan.
All this foot/ankle/knee stuff is starting to sound like Montana's back/elbow issues during the later 80's. Lets see if Brady can come back and respond like Joe did.
I'm sure I was the only one who, as soon as Bledsoe went down in that fateful Jets game in 2001, predicted Tom Brady would lead the Pats to a SuperBowl (I'm a die hard Michigan fan). So let me be the first to day: don't count out Matt Cassel.
Everyone name checks John Hannah.
That's just weak sauce, Coates.
If you want to know a Patriots fan who's been through the rough years, ask them about Zeke Mowatt and Scott Sisson. They'll tell you what it was like rooting for the 'Zo and how it felt like a gift from the gods when the Patriots signed Bill Parcells and drafted Drew Bledsoe. There was a time when you could make the argument that Ben Coates was as good as Shannon Sharpe, and that the Patriots could have won Superbowl XXXI if Parcells wasn't job shopping and the Pats didn't effin' punt the ball to Desmond Howard.
tom brady got what he deserved.
he's scUM after all, and the patriots have a long history of cheating anyway.
couldn't have happened to a more deserving franchise or player.
Any team that has Rodney Harrison playing for it gets no sympathy from me when it comes to injuries. I only wish it was his knee that was blown out. Karma's a B once it turns on you and it appears that the Gods have stopped smiling on the Pats..
Joel,
You'll have to come harder than that son. Tough times? Zeke Mowatt? What you know about curse of Craig James? Sam "Bam" Cunningham? Or Scott Zolak? I'm not even a Pats. But come on duke don't you know what happens on this site? If my Atlantic overlords would let me get away with it, I'd just write about the NFL.
Could I save my friends like Jim further embarrassment in their lives? OK, you're classy enough to celebrate a man's injury. Congrats to you for that. But please don't use complex religious terms like "Karma" to justify your own asinine understand of how the cosmos operates. Educate yourself: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7425203.stm
"Basic decency aside, I can't see how any real fan of a team, or any fan of the NFL, could want to see Tom Brady out for the season."
Is the word shadenfreude in urban dictionary?
TNC and Joel, bah to you both. You don't know from tough times until you've gone from Air Coryell losing to Cincy in the mother of all Ice Bowls, losing under Al Saunders, losing straight through the Henning Years, and then finally your boys make it to the big show under Bobby Ross --
and damn if Jerry Rice doesn't burn the secondary for two TDs in the first 100 seconds of the game, setting up the most one-sided SB in NFL history.
That's pain you can believe in, my friends.
I'll admit at times I've wished for similar or worse injuries to happen to Peyton (and now Eli of course). But I never actually meant it -- that was just the rage and envy talking. Some of the Colts-Pats matchups have been among the best games in the history of the league. Why would I want to see a backup in that role, even if it meant an easier path toward another trophy? I think if Brady haters thought it through they'd come to the same conclusion.
By the way add Russ Francis to the list. Also Ronnie Lippett had Fred Marion's help for a few year there, and he was no slouch.
Speaking of hating and schadenfreude, I have a love/hate relationship with sports, because televised sports a substance that I tend to abuse. Perhaps for that reason I’ve embraced schadenfreude. I root negatively.
Sports are rife with hateful schmucks - in the owner’s box, the press box, on the field, behind the bench, everywhere. Winning is everything in their world. So I take pleasure when they lose.
Also, rooting against teams from large markets factors in my perverse sports fandom hierarchy. So does rooting against white hopes.
The media moguls won last year when the Giants' from the NY mega-market advanced to the Super Bowl, but at the same time they lost Bret Favre. Two weeks of drooling over golden boy Tom Brady was insufferable enough. (It’s not about Favre and Brady. It’s about the white hope phenomenon that attaches to them.)
David Tyree is from my home town, but in the end I found myself rooting against the king of the wound-too-tight macho nerds, Tom Coughlin.
If we're namedropping old Patriots, three words
Hart Lee Dykes
That kid was a superstar in the making, played 1 1/2 seasons.
Plus his college recruitment 3 schools put on probation, so you gotta respect his gangsta.
Can't forget...
Raymond Clayborn (who got knocked the fuck out by Will McDonough), Garin Veris, Cedric Jones, Stephen Starring, Robert Perryman, John Stephens, Tom Ramsey (who had exactly one good game as a Pats QB).
Don't make me take it back to the 70's with Harold Jackson, Horace Ivory, Mike Haynes, Steve Nelson, Tim Fox etc etc.
I love defense, and love watching defenses knock the crap out of offensive stars, and I don't mind seeing a player forced to leave a game because of a hard hit. But when it goes from "shaken up" to "injured" that's a different category. There's probably some hypocrisy in that view, since the weekly beatings these guys endure do lead to health problems during their careers and for the rest of their lives, but football's a brutal game and I doubt that's going to change.
But, in any case, there's nothing to like about what happened to Brady. Not only is he a great player who's going to lose a season of his career, he didn't even suffer the injury as a result of some great defensive play. It was just a freak thing.
It's too bad, because I don't like the Patriots and it's fun to root against them when they're at full-strength. Now I'm kind of at a loss. If they do poorly, well, that's to be expected; they're missing their leader. But if they do well I can't see myself rooting for them as if they're an underdog.
I still haven't seen real confirmation that he's done for the whole saeson. Any chance he could be back for the playoffs?
TNC:
Why be a wet blanket? Schadenfreude is an essential part of being a sports fan. Besides, Brady didn't die, he wasn't maimed, he didn't lose a limb, he's not confined to a wheelchair the rest of his life. He hurt his knee, and he has awesome health insurance. While he recovers, he gets to do so with a supermodel.
Conflating this with Republican ressentiment is silly.
My best friend is a Packers fan. I am a Bears fans. We are both huge Obama supporters. He understood my pure, unadulterated hate for Brett Favre. His hate for the Bears is not as deep as mine for the Packers because the Bears haven't been that competitive during the Favre era. But if the tables were during, he'd be praying that Brian Urlacher would be kneecapped by a stripper. This is part of what being a fan is all about.
Now I get to laugh at Pats fans. Not Brady, or his teammates, but every single smug, over-confident Pats fan.
I once made the mistake of entering a Boston-themed sports bar here in Santa Monica. It's across the street from a Philly bar (since LA has no NFL team, and since many people from LA are from somewhere else and retain their childhood sports loyalties, local bars have done well when they pick a team). Sometimes I'll go into the Philly bar not hiding the fact that I am a Bears fan, and unless Philly is playing Chicago, or unless they are both fighting for the same playoff spot, they are fun. Drunk, obnoxious, but generally good sports.
I went to the Boston bar last year to meet a friend. The Pats were like 13-0 at the time. The Bears were 5-8, and no danger to make the playoffs. While waiting for my friend I got into into a conversation with a Pats fans. I let him know I'm Bears fan.
"DA BAYAHZ? DA BAYAHZ FAHCKIN SAHCK!"
That attitude is not isolated. "You're team sucks." That is the basic attitude of every N.E. fan at that bar. It's the reason why, while Brady lay on the ground holding his knee, N.E. fans held their breath while much of the rest of America smiled.
And maybe, just maybe, the WWL will cover other teams besides N.E. (though I feel that Favre and the Jets will soon be overplayed on ESPN). And Bill Simmons . . . Ha!, I just might start reading him again.
In his prime Babe Parilli was one of the best AFL QBs. And Parilli to Cappelletti is still probably the best Italian-American passing combo pro football has ever produced.
Wilfork.
It was just about a year ago when Vince Wilfork intentionally lunged for the knees of the QB of my beloved Bills' on the first play from scrimmage. This was the Superbowl-bound Pats player purposefully injuring the QB of a team that posed no threat for the season, early in a game.
Now, is it Karma(tm)?
See, I love shadenfreude, but I don't see much to love about someone getting injured in a legitimate play. I could see people getting excited over the Super Bowl loss-- that was more than fair-- but someone getting hurt doesn't feel like cause for celebration. And yeah, he's got a great rehab team, and yeah, his girlfriend's hot, but that feels more like sadism than shadenfreude.
It's a game. Root for Brady to get sacked and intercepted.
Apologies for the multiple posts. I just beat my browser half to death, and I think it will behave itself now.
Shine -- you nailed the accent, I'll give you that.
But da bayahz DO fahckin sahck, so YOU'VE got to give me THAT.
I've been following te Pats since their 1st year in the league. Brady's injury depresses me when it comes to the playoffs, since I don't see how they can get back to the Superbowl w/o him. Strangely enough, however, I'm now looking forward more to the regular season -- seeing how Cassel develops, what Belichik has up his sleeve, who else can step up. With Brady in there and their soft schedule, they were just going to plow over people. Now it gets interesting.
What, no Stanley Morgan love. Shit, who was the other WR they had all those years--can see his face. I think he ended up with the Redskins
And yeah wasn't Hart Lee Dykes that burner they had at WR?
I was just discussing this with my husband (he's a pats fan, I'm a colts fan... yeah it's rough) and as much as I despise the nonstop Pats love, and many of the Pats themselves, I think this sucks. Last night while I was cursing out my Colts, I happen to look over at my (very depressed) husband and realize that, whilst he was pretty sucky, I still HAD my superstar quarterback. I'm sad for all pats fans right now, even the obnoxious ones.
Yeah but everybody should know Morgan, I put him in Tippett territory. I was trying to be more obscure with it.
Dykes was their 1st Round pick in '89. Had a pretty good rookie year, missed part of '90 but was better known for getting beat down at the Providence nightclub when Irving Fryar had to pop the trunk to save him, and got arrested on weapons charges.
Blew out his knee in training camp in '91 and then tried to come back in '92 and wrecked his knee again.
A 6'3 cat who could move, who when he did play got stuck with rotating QB's (Eason, Grogan, Marc Wilson, Tommy Hodson). Him and Bledsoe would have been the AFC's Aikman to Irvin.
I miss those old Pats unis, those things were off the hook.
vanya says: "Parilli to Cappelletti is still probably the best Italian-American passing combo pro football has ever produced."
Nah. You're forgetting Dan Marino to Mark Duperoni.
Mike,
Thanks man. Was thinking about Irving Fryar. I never knew about the nightclub story. Did Fryar actually pop off? Or did he just have to pull out and threaten the dudes.
As a Frank (haha, you get it), I deeply enjoyed your comment on you want to beat Karl der Grosse, not his son foppish son, Lothar.
Hell, I'm just busting out the truly darkest days of Patriots lore; the Victor Kiam years. People think the Patriots are populated by douchebags these days, but that's almost 100% to do with their recent string of success.
There could not have been a more despicable team than the 1990 New England Patriots. From Victor Kiam down to the pre-evangelical Irving Fryar and the aforementioned locker room flashers...
Almost as much fun as the Dino Radja / Todd Day Celtics...