The Boston Globe Declares the Patriots Dynasty is Officially Over. Again.
Dan Shaughnessy in The Boston Globe – It was great while it lasted, but even a pigheaded Patriots pigskin buff must acknowledge that the dynasty is over.
There was a time, not long ago, when there was a Patriot Way. Now the Patriots have lost their way. They are just another … playoff team, and not a likable one at that.
That black night in the desert in [the] Super Bowl … the Patriots have been outside the circle of NFL royalty. This is the way the late commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned things when he pushed for parity at the exclusion of excellence. …
“I’d have been booing us, too, the way we played,’’ said quarterback Tom Brady, the man who best knows that this was not a team of nobility, effort, and hard work like the teams he led in the last decade.
This was bad. It was the Winter Un-Classic. Through the golden years at Gillette the motto has been “do your job,’’ but … [i]t was clear Brady was hurting all along.
Brady soldiered on, but he knew the mystique was gone. Without calling out his teammates by name, he spoke of the seismic shift. He spoke of the important elements of past champions – “mental toughness and leadership and discipline and commitment’’ – and said those were things “we displayed at times and certainly didn’t display at other times. I think that’s something that we all reflect on, and individually, that’s what we have to make more of a commitment to each other.’’
It’s all right there, folks. In Patriots code. From the consummate leader of this team. …
But this was a horrible season for the once-infallible Belichick. He shed too many defensive veterans at once. He acquired too many guys who failed to buy into the system. … And yesterday, by his own admission, he was outcoached. …
Pitchers and catchers report Feb. 18.
The Globe columnists are not alone in declaring this is it. The Patriots Dynasty is at last at its end. The “It’s Over” talk has dominated football news over the last two days, from headlines to the talk show scrolls to sports radio.
And as much as it pains me to admit, I have not heard the case made that this is the end of the line for the Patriots hasn’t been made any better than by Dan Shaughnessy here. The Patriots Way has lost its way. Brady is hurting. His teammates lack mental toughness and leadership and discipline and commitment. It’s been a horrible season for Bill Belichick, who let too many veterans go and replaced them with too many guys who haven’t bought into the system. And he was right in saying he was outcoached. The argument that this dynasty is dead has never been made so eloquently.
Except for this little detail:
Oh, damn. I’m sorry about this. I gave it a quick read and didn’t realize it was from nine years ago. Though in total fairness to me (and I truly believe in everyone always being totally fair to me), it reads exactly like what was in the Globe and everywhere else yesterday. Declaring the end of the dynasty is a time-honored tradition in New England. And nobody has recycled his own lazy, perfunctory “End of an Era” dreck more times than the Curly-Haired Boyfriend. It’s a simple matter of substituting new names in for the old, Mad Libs-style, and ta-da! Instant hot take, as fresh as January of 2010.
In a way, I get it. Keep saying that something is going to die and eventually you’ll be right. Then you get the bragging rights of being able to say “See? Told ya!” Therefore making yourself look like a prescient genius who all along knew more than the man who built and maintained the dynasty. I get it, but I think it’s a weird way to go about it. I mean, if I buy my kid a puppy I don’t remind him every day that some day it’s going to die just so 12 years down the road I get to say “See? Told you they don’t live forever! I know all about dog lifespans!” I simply love the puppy.
So while I’m as freaked out by back-to-back road losses in December, one on freak occurrence, desperation, 15-lateral play in Miami and the other a sloppy 8-presnap penalty shitfest with four 1st downs called back in Pittsburgh, you’ll have to pardon me if I’m not joining the Doomsday Cultists who’ve been declaring the Dynasty over almost since it began. All they’ve done since January of 2010 is make the playoffs every year, go to the last seven AFC championship games, make it to four Super Bowls while winning two. And, assuming they win the next two games, will give them more average wins since that was written (12.75 per season) than they had in the nine years before it was written (11.3). Track records like that get quarterbacks and coaches in the Hall of Fame, but for Brady and Belichick it’s just what they’ve done since their era “ended.”
In Bill We Trust. I’m not leaving this wall.