Ad Disclosure
The Patriots Haven’t Sucked Long Enough to Deserve Another Super Bowl Berth
Published:
Something’s annoying in the Northeastern United States, and it’s not 14 inches of snow. It’s the New England Patriots going back to another Super Bowl:
Starting with the obvious, these jokers got so lucky in the postseason. If Bo Nix was healthy, the Broncos win the AFC Championship Game. There’s no doubt in my mind. That was a pathetic football game in Denver on Sunday afternoon, just nauseating to watch because you knew Denver was gonna find a way to bottle it and come up short.
These guys also benefited from C.J. Stroud losing his best receiver and then forgetting how to throw the football on top of it. And everybody knew the Chargers were going to Charger in the Wild Card round. Justin Herbert and his 159 passing yards was never getting the job done at Gillette.
You can’t put together an easier path to the Super Bowl than what the Patriots just went through.
On top of that, their regular season schedule was whack. They played the Raiders (somehow lost), Jets twice, Dolphins twice, Saints, Browns, Titans, Falcons, Bengals, and Giants. Their “quality” wins were at Buffalo, at Baltimore, and maybe at Tampa. The next best win was Carolina at home.
But the main point of revulsion is that 31 NFL fanbases were made to suffer through the Bill Belichick and Tom Brady dynasty. Nine Super Bowl appearances between 2001 and 2018. We had to watch these guys in the big game over and over again and only recently did that finally stop. The feeling has not waned after six full seasons of Patriot dreck, nor does the QB change really matter. There’s now a former Patriot coaching the team and “Mr. Kraft” still owns the franchise, which is supported by legions of Masshole fans, so there’s still a lot to justifiably hate about the Patriots.
They simply have not sucked long enough to deserve being good again. Six seasons of failure after all of those Super Bowl appearances is not an acceptable drought. It should have been one of those things where they missed the playoffs for 10 or 15 years in a row before they warranted a turning of the corner. We’re talking Cleveland Browns and Anaheim Ducks levels of irrelevance. Only then would that franchise be allowed to start winning again.
This whole thing really stinks to the high heavens. The Eagles wasted an entire season with that janky-ass offense and then the people of Boston wound up with another championship game appearance. The Super Bowl might not even be worth watching after Green Day’s opening performance (assuming they play nothing that was released after Insomniac).
There’s only one team to pull for in two weeks’ time, and it’s not the Patriots.
LET’S GO SEAHAWKS
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com