No Tomato Cans This Week?

Shank's apparently finished his Christmas shopping and is back to write a column about tonight's Ravens - Patriots game, heavy on past history and light on everything else:

Bill Belichick cares about football history more than any coach in the NFL. He’s speaks minimally on the current state of his playoff-bound Patriots, but get him started on Amos Alonzo Stagg, Paul Brown, or the 1941 Detroit Lions (for whom his dad Steve was a fullback) and stand back for a discourse that will have the depth of a Ken Burns documentary delivered with the eloquence of Winston Churchill.

All of which makes New England’s “Monday Night Football” match with the Baltimore Ravens much more interesting than your run-of-the mill routs that have dotted the Patriots’ 2016 schedule with alarming and boring regularity.

Sorry, folks - no Clive Rush reference!

By the way, how many 'blowouts' do you see in the 2016 Patriots schedule? I see four or five, not as many as Shank's trying to make you believe.

There's a shift in the middle of the column, as Shank needs to downplay the previous 13 games the patriots have played this season:

History suggests that the Patriots have reached the end of the Tomato Can Road (really, could they have faced more impotent offenses, horrible quarterbacks, frightened coaches, and teams whose best player was injured?). This entire Patriots season has been nothing more than a layup drill with an 8-foot rim. Week after week we have learned nothing about the Patriots.

Remind us again, Shank and the Boston Globe - how many beat writers do you have assigned to the Patriots, and they've managed to learn nothing about this team in over three and a half months? How can Shank write such drivel with a straight face? Is this what's now being called 'fake news'?

He then goes on to recount the history between the two teams that he probably copied and pasted from previous Ravens - Patriots columns, then concludes on this line of bullshit:

It’s all about the history when it comes to the Patriots and Ravens. The games are generally good, but some of the history is bad. Which is why we can’t wait for Monday night.

'The games are generally good', except for Shank's prediction about the previous game between the two clubs:

@Dan_Shaughnessy @GreshandZo yup, rip the oppenentso you can downplay the Pats success or destroy them if they lose. Trolling 101

— Josh Hubbard (@Bet_on_Hubb) January 13, 2015

...and that's how Shank plays the game, folks.