Dan likes to portray New England fans as little more than infantile sycophants with a lack of perspective. He does it again today with these prominent early sentences:
New England sports fans are lost boys and lost girls. They have lost their leader and their mojo. They have lost their way.
Yes, Dan. A guy I have never met and who has no bearing on my life is my leader.
Dan recovers from his condescending tripe to give a nice recap of the events of the last 48 hours that changed the Patriots season. Of course, it had to come with gratuitous swipes at Patriot Place (and by extension, the Kraft family) and a Bruce Springsteen reference.
This is sort of like going to a Springsteen concert, waiting for the Boss, then hearing a bow-tied announcer tell you, "Bruce cannot be here tonight. Someone else will be fronting the E Street Band."
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the bow-tied bumkisser is actually a Globe manager and he's gonna announce the next round of layoffs instead...
Did Shank help Gerry Callahan write his column today? The similarity in style is scary:
ReplyDelete"The bad news, if you are Tom Brady , is that you suffered the first major injury of your brilliant career and will be sidelined for an entire year. The good news, of course, is that now you can spend more time at CBS Scene, the newest eatery in the Kraft empire and a memorable dining experience for the whole family."
"There was a lighthouse and a catwalk and a shopping mall next door with a fishing pond in it, but as Brady hobbled down the tunnel, there was the familiar gloom of the old Schaefer Stadium."
"The Patriots in the AFC East were like Michael Phelps in the Y pool."
"Well, kids, you want to know what life was like around here Before Brady (B.B.)?"
"Belichick’s record without Brady is so startlingly bad you have to read it twice: 42 wins, 58 losses. In his first year as the Pats coach, he inherited a .500 team from Pete Carroll and promptly went 5-11. He began his second season 0-2 before Mo Lewis removed Drew Bledsoe from the picture, and Brady stepped onto the scene."
Ahh for the glory years of Pete Carroll.
This Brady or Belichick BS is so tiring and exposes the media to be the simpletons they are. Maybe both are pretty good and together they are great.
ReplyDeleteIn the three Super Bowl years, the Patriots defense was 6th, 1st, and 2nd in points allowed. And you can thank Tom Brady, starting... Somebody help me out.
In 2001, the offense was 6th, but was helped by 7 special teams or defensive TDs. The Patriots didn't give up any such TD's. Further, I must have missed the part where Brady ran an INT back for a touchdown in the SB and shut down the Rams offense for much of the night, including convincing Martz to go away from Faulk.
Anon 2:22:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't go that far, considering that most of the NFL is black. Blame is likely to fall upon black players for that simple reason. I don't know that Faulk would have made the block, but Morris did let Pollard get up.
To All:
ReplyDeletePlease read the Op/Ed page in the Globe today (9/9/08). What begins as a recitation of the facts surronding Cassel's ascension to QB ends with — I shit you not — a half-assed allegory about VPs needing to be ready to step into the Presidency. (A Biden plug?)
Are you fucking kidding me? Is this a joke? OB, what the fuck? This is comical.
The Onion is jealous! Renee Loth is a borderline illiterate cement-head who edited the porn pages at the Phoenix, for God's sake. And Marty Baron is a pretentious twat who wouldn't know how to get to Foxborough if Tom Oliphant drove him.
Your pal,
Timmy
For someone who is sometimes painted as a contrarian, his column today is surprisingly similar to the scores of others. Not surprising though--to take a different perspective would require too much effort
ReplyDeleteTimmy,
ReplyDeleteThanks (?) for pointing that out. Somebody on the Editorial Page has a terrible tendency to try to be 'literary' about sports while revealing themselves to be completely ignorant of the facts. I had post about it a while ago.
Check out these statements:
no second-stringer in shoulder pads ever leapt to center stage after such extensive experience as an understudy.
So the ballet writer is doing editorials about football? Jeff Hostetler, you underoo stuffing idiot. Also, Todd Collins.
the archetype of a hero-in-waiting.
Go bother my college English professor. Nobody wants to read it.
and the other demigods of the forward pass
Is Grantland Rice writing for the Op/Ed page?
Anyone who ever waited in the wings for a chance to take the star's place ought to be rooting for young master Cassel when he leads the Pats into the Meadowlands Sunday against a divisional rival that pigskin wits have taken to calling the New York Brets.
"young master Cassel" and "pigskin wits"? Was it 'Let Your Precocious Five Year Old Write for the Editorial Page' yesterday? I hope that sentence wouldn't get beyond the sophomore editor of my local high school paper.
And finally, as Timmy pointed out, the coup de grace:
Contemplating the brusque elevation of Cassel to leading man, politically inclined fans may ponder the fickleness of fate. If only subliminally, they may consider the chance that an understudy standing a heartbeat away from the chosen leader might, at any moment, have to put on a helmet, jog onto the playing field, and take command of the huddle. The understudy had better be prepared.
Yes, the elites can ignore football until they have the chance to make an ignorant and completely offbase comparison in order to further their political point. John McCain was THE FIRST thing I thought of after Tom Brady went down. The backup QB of an NFL team is perfectly analogous to a figurehead constitutional figure.
My other post on strange sports editorials
ReplyDeletedbvader:
ReplyDeleteDemigods of the forward pass.
Jesus, Mary, and the Other One.
Your pal,
Timmy
The other massively disgraced sportswriter--Jay Mariotti--said that 'He's between newspaper jobs.' He must mean the newspapers that aren't dead yet. All none of them.
ReplyDeleteI got the feeling that Shank is quietly enjoying that the Patriots lost Brady. Stuff like this always brings out the smarmiest in Shank. Of course one has to guess Felgie and Bully Borges are enjoying it because they can attack Belichick etc. for it.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised Shank has yet to catch the best Patriots analogy to Curse Of The Bambino - The Curse Of The Jaguars.
...DIDN'T EVEN READ IT...I don't play Shank's game anymore....
ReplyDelete