On Patriots and Patriotism
Searching for American values between the hash marks.
1. Patriots.
It was bad enough that we were down 28–3. It felt helpless. Nothing was going right for the Patriots. First the Blount turnover. Then the Brady pick-6, immortalized in the image of Brady crumpled on the ground after failing to tackle Atlanta’s Robert Alford who cruised into the end zone.
This was my fourth Super Bowl. I went alone to the first one in 2008 against the Giants when Tyree caught the ball on his helmet. Jacob was 9 and Charlie was 6. Even then, they loved their Pats but were too young for the journey. Tina told me that Jacob had thrown a chair at home when we lost.
We went to the second one against the Giants in Indianapolis in 2012. I remember at the end when were trying to come back and Brady’s pass to Welker was a bit too high and floated off his fingertips. Charlie was 9 and turned to me and started to cry hysterically. He knew we were going to lose. There was nothing I could say to convince him otherwise. He was right.
Two years ago against Seattle, we were seated in the corner on the Seattle side, surrounded by Seahawks fans when Kearse made that ridiculous catch to set up first and goal at the one.
That feeling, again. Like after the Tyree catch. Like after the miraculous Manningham grab at the sideline. Like when Grady Little left Pedro in for too long in 2003 against the Yankees.
And then like a bolt of lightening, Malcolm Butler jumped the quick slant route and picked off Russell Wilson and we won the Super Bowl. I remember jumping as high as I could off of the concrete and nearly tumbling into the seats in front of us. Screaming at the top of our lungs, “We did it, we did it, we shocked the world!” As metallic confetti dropped from the rafters preserved for posterity:
Sunday night, the depths were deeper. The game was not going back and forth. We never had the lead. It started bad. And it kept getting worse. The Falcons fan next to us got more and more animated. He was tall, about 6'4", and probably my age around 45. He kept hugging his wife next to him as the Falcon’s lead increased. Unlike most of the Pats fans surrounding him — who were decked out in their favorite players jerseys and various Pats shwag — he was dressed like he he had just finished a round of golf.
After half-time ended we were all ready for the Pats to come storming back into the game, but things stayed the same. And suddenly we were half way through the 3rd quarter and desperation started to sink in. Which led to a quiet kind of panic. And then death. We were dead. It was over. Had to stop rooting for them inside. Charlie turned to me again and I shrugged my shoulders. Sad clown smile. What else could I do? It was a great season. The Falcons were too strong, too fast, and we turned the ball over.
The hating on social media added to the pain. I was accustomed to the usual Pats haters who needled about spy-gate and deflate-gate. But there was added venom this year from the affiliation of Kraft/Belichik/Brady with Trump.
Kraft and Trump have been friends for years. Only a few nights ago they dined together at Mar a Lago (“Winter Palace”) along with the Prime Minister of Japan:
Brady has golfed with Trump, and was said to have placed a “Make America Great Again” hat by his locker early in the campaign. On election day, Trump boasted of a letter of endorsement from Belichik. Even though both Brady and Belichik refused to talk politics during the election or since, by not distancing themselves from Trump they would appear to be endorsing him and his policies.
“You gotta play harder, you gotta play tougher.” Tom Brady
And so it was the lowest of the low to not only have invested all of this time and money to bring Jacob and Charlie here only to be 25 points down deep in the 3rd Quarter, but also to see the venom pulsing through my Facebook and Twitter feeds about how the Pats deserved this fate given their complicity with Trump and his perverse brand of patriotism.
And I was spiraling down into this feeling, of losing in so many dimensions, and then something jolted me.
Hightower’s strip sack.
That was the first thing that was out of our control that gave us back a small sense of control. Waiting for a defensive turnover is hard slogging. You want the urgency of the moment to be so strong that it wills a player into a feat of extraordinary influence. But time and again, the subtle intricacies of strategy and technique keep any one defensive player from exerting that kind of on-demand impact.
You could argue that it was Devonta Freeman’s mistake as much as it was Hightower’s accomplishment. The Falcons’ RB had ran around and through the Pats defense all game, but he was rushed onto the field to replace the other RB Tevin Coleman who had come up limp on the previous play. Clearly, Freeman was not ready for his blocking assignment when the ball was snapped. And in that brief moment of not being sure whether to block or head out into the flat as a receiver, Freeman didn’t see Hightower coming onto him like a truck.
Meanwhile, Chris Long was also putting pressure on Ryan, reaching through the line with his tatted right arm, distracting Ryan from Hightower who had already jumped up to knock the ball out of Ryan’s arm before he was set to throw, spinning the ball onto the turf where 300lb DE Alan Branch flopped onto it.
We were woke.
Now it was just about two drives.
The histrionics on the Pats sidelines about never losing hope, and believing until the very end, stopped. Brady simply told them “Gotta lock in now. Laser focus.” There were no more images of Patriots players with their jaws dropped staring up at the scoreboard. Brady huddled with McDaniels behind his clip board, one play at a time. We no longer required a special break to win.
Atlanta’s secondary was exhausted. They had already been out on the field for more than sixty snaps, more than most full games. They came out so fast and aggressively on this biggest of stages, and for three quarters they had taken away our short inside crossing game by jamming lanes and jumping routes. As McDaniels described after the game, they shifted their offensive strategy to medium out-routes where Falcons defenders would have to chase us out of bounds.
And so the Patriots marched down the field twice at the end of regulation, each time punctuated by the further inevitable impossibility of a successful two-point conversion. Every receiver executed and contributed: Mitchell, Amendola, Bennett, Hogan, White, and of course Edelman with the most exciting catch I remember in the past 30 years (since Phelan caught Flutie’s hail mary to beat Miami in the Orange Bowl in 1984).
We watched Brady march his offense down the field to tie the game. I stopped thinking about Trump. Coincidentally, he had stopped watching the game around that time as well:
Momentum is strongest when it rebounds back from fear.
I am not sure how it functions in the context of submission.
We tapped out.
And then we won.
And in between those two states, for what felt like hours, we were stuck in shock at how our narrative had gone so wrong.
Meanwhile, Brady was coming up with a new one.
“Let’s go boys, it’s gonna be a hell of a story.” Tom Brady Mic’d Up
And indeed the team rumbled to our corner for the final drive. Once we won the toss it felt inevitable. I looked at the Falcons fan on my left, his careful hair buried in his hands like he knew they were going to lose. And we hadn’t even made our way down the field. Time sped up. As the gears in motion had been wound up to snap back like this from sure defeat. Just grinding, nonstop. Always grinding to the very last possible instant. Don’t assume any ball is dead until you hear a whistle. And like that, James White dug his way into the end zone.
And we booed Commissioner Goodell, the evil autocrat who had banned Brady for four games at the beginning of the season and took away our first round draft pick and one million dollars from Mr. Kraft. But none of that mattered now, as we were just howling at the moon with the rest of the massholes who had made this trip.
While we were documenting the experience, that we had watched and now felt and wanted to store forever in the memory bank of happiness, Edelman was still grinding on the field. Like some crazed veteran soldier who was in the shit for too long and didn’t believe that the war was over until he heard it from his commanding officer:
This is the Patriots way. The physical and emotional character of these players that put aside so much of what tempts almost all of the other teams so that they can come together on the field and execute their game plan. Under the supervision of one coach, Bill Belichik, with an Offensive Coordinator in Josh McDaniels and a Defensive Coordinator in Matt Patricia, with special help from their 68-year old Offensive Line Coach, Dante Scarnecchia.
Or as Brady crystallized the essence of being a Patriot in his Instagram post the day after the game:
I could not have said it better, except for the part about rules. Coming from one of the most disciplined athletes we have ever seen, playing for a coach who is legendary for being strict, what does he mean “no rules you have to buy into.” I thought that was the whole key to the Patriots success. Maybe he is saying that anything is possible and we need to suspend our assumptions and let the truth reveal itself. It sounds so positive, and was backed up by such incredible discipline and focus over the course of the entire season. Can we trust this to protect the value of truth which seems to be eroding a little bit every day thanks to Brady’s golfing buddy.
The next post On Patriotism coming in a few days…
