No Imagination

It looks like Shank's running out of material leading up to Saturday's game.

Has there ever been less drama, hype, or anticipation for an NFL playoff game?

Here in New England, we openly mock the opposition. We ridicule the Houston Texans as a team with no chance to beat the Patriots at Gillette Stadium in the divisional round. The team from the land of “Friday Night Lights’’ will produce “Saturday Night Blights” in Foxborough and everyone knows it.

With all this ridicule, we get no resistance from anywhere in the heart of Texas. The people who cover the team and the Texans fans offer no alternative outcome. They are prepared for a major beatdown. Almost nobody in Houston is fighting back.

You'd think the Boston Globe would ask Shank to quit rewriting the same column, but you'd be wrong. Little wonder, then, that their readership numbers have been plunging for years.