DHL Dan CCXXXVII - Staying In The Past

Kind of sensing a theme with these last two columns...

It’s still weird, five seasons post-Brady, to be on the outside looking in during NFL playoffs, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while reminding myself that nobody knows anything when it comes to betting on the NFL playoffs …

▪ Five seasons into our post-Brady world, it’s still weird to be on the outside looking in during the NFL’s biggest weekends of the year.

I still have flashbacks of walking across the sprawling acres surrounding Arrowhead Stadium en route to the AFC Championship game in January 2019. Eyeballing thousands of festive/frozen Heartland fans, many barbecuing ribs and blissfully boasting about how they were going to beat the Patriots, I remember thinking, “Poor dopes and losers. These people have no idea what they’re in for. They think they’re Super Bowl-bound, but they don’t stand a chance. Something hideous will happen to their team at the end of this game and the Pats will prevail.”

Sure enough, that’s how it went. What appeared to be a game-losing Tom Brady interception in the final minute of regulation was negated because Chiefs pass rusher Dee Ford lined up offside. Ford’s transgression had no bearing on the turnover, but it gave the Patriots the ball back. Naturally, Brady tied the game, then won it in overtime when … you guessed it … the Chiefs lost the coin flip and never touched the football.

Read on for unsurprising digs at - you guessed it - Robert Kraft. Talk about never letting go!