Whoops!

Completely ignoring what he wrote the day before, Shank writes with great fanfare about the Patriot's second loss of the season.

HOUSTON — Pigs can fly. Republicans and Democrats agree on everything. Larry Bird is buying rounds for the house. Jackie Bradley is a .350 hitter who never strikes out.

And the Houston Texans just beat the New England Patriots, 28-22.

Anything is possible.

DeShaun Watson took it to the Boogeymen Sunday night at NRG Stadium, throwing for three touchdowns and catching another as the Texans snapped an eight-game losing streak vs. New England. Former Belichick protege Bill O’Brien secured his first win against mentor Bill, breaking a humbling and at times humilating 0-5 skid. Late in the game, with the Texans leading, 28-9, Antonio Brown tweeted, “Still I Rise.’’

Funny how we always see a Patriots column from Shank when they lose, isn't it?

He's Got His Number

Thirteen weeks into the 2019-2020 pro football season, Shank writes something complimentary about the New England Patriots:

HOUSTON — New Englanders love this place. This is where 28-3 happened in February 2017 and where the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick Patriots won their second Super Bowl in February 2004. Houston is where the 2018 Red Sox eliminated the cheatin’ Houston Astros in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on a night when David Price beat Justin Verlander. It’s where Larry Bird won his first NBA championship in May 1981 and where Roger Clemens learned how to throw a fastball in the 1970s. Houston was headquarters to our space program when Derry, N.H.’s Alan Shepard walked on the moon in 1971.

And it is the home of the Houston Texans, a sometimes formidable football team that is constitutionally incapable of beating the New England Patriots.

So, here we go again. We are Lucy holding the football and the Texans are Charlie Brown lining up for a kick, ever hopeful that it will be different this time. But everyone knows it will not be different.

Lots of Shank staples in this one - there's a Larry Bird reference, lots of references to other sports and the signature reuse of previous columns, so there's your triple play for the day.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

An amusing tale of two tweets:

Colts are probably better at this hour, but since best thing for Patriots is Houston winning . . . Houston will win. Pats always get the easiest path.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 5, 2019

Yikes. Texans lose.
No layup in Divisional Round for New England.
If Pats want to get to the AFC Championship Game again, they may have to earn it. What a concept.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 6, 2019

Shameless Shank - always trying to have it both ways. What are the odds of Shank calling the Colts 'frauds' and 'tomato cans' by the time Thursday rolls around?

Get Me Rewrite! - III

The New England Patriots won in Foxborough yesterday, a 27-20 victory over the Houston Texans. As is his specialty, Shank focuses on the losing team & coach.

Bill O’Brien is the latest opposing coach to do the Foxborough fold

What was true last year, and the year before that, is still true today. Nothing has changed. The Patriots are going to get where they want to go this year on the merits of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, plus the unwavering buffoonery of their opponents. Like death, taxes, and the first penalty in the old Montreal Forum, you can depend on the guy on the other sideline throwing up on his shoes. Every week.

Sunday’s easy Patriots victory over the Texans was a great case in point. It was more of the same stuff we’ve been telling you for the last 15 years. Smart, accomplished football men lose all of their grid acumen at the very sight of Belichick and Brady. It is a certainty.

As the years have unfolded, the Patriots have become less talented, less deep, and less dominant, but it does not matter. New England can no longer overwhelm teams on sheer ability. But the coaching disparity across the league is greater than ever. The Patriots can always rely on the kindness of the strangers and friends who come into Foxborough with the misguided mission that they can compete based on sheer physicality and football ability.

The Patriots know all they have to do is . . . wait. Stand around and the opponent will self-destruct.

If you get the feeling that you've read this column before, it's because you have.

That's Why They Play The Game

Shank backtracks sharply from a week long belittling of the Houston Texans and a Saturday night of 'tomato can' tweets, and recognizes that things don't always turn out as expected.

FOXBOROUGH — The Patriots lurched to a 34-16 victory over the Houston Texans Saturday night and next Sunday will play in their record sixth consecutive AFC Championship game. A home victory over the Chiefs or Steelers is all that stands in the way of the Pats making it to Super Bowl LI in Houston Feb. 5.

Swell. But if Saturday’s game made you feel good about your team, you must be wearing Tom Brady’s Under Armour pajamas. Call it a warning shot or a wake-up call. The sloppy slugfest furnishes fodder for those who wonder if the 2016-17 Patriots — now 15-2 — are championship-driven, or merely fortunate sons of the AFC East, the softest schedule in the league, and the presence of the ever-beatable Texans.

Read on for a column chock full of Shankisms and the standard game recap.

Stolen from the comments is a new nickname - 'Tomato Can Dan'. It's catchy!

Great Calls By Dan Shaughessy - II

With the game still undetermined...

Order restored to TC Universe. Pats will win AND cover.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 15, 2017

Great Calls By Dan Shaughnessy

With a four point lead at halftime (and a 16 point spread at the beginning of the game), Shank puts his foot in his mouth one more time:

Revenge of Tomato Cans early here in Foxboro, but it will never last.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 15, 2017

Let The Stupid Tweets Begin! - II

Texans go three-and-out.
Shocker

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 15, 2017

Let The Stupid Tweets Begin!

For the kickoff of the 2016-2017 playoff season, I give you the one and only Curly Haired Boyfriend!

If Texans win the toss, they should take the ball. Truly

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 15, 2017

Anticipation

I'm looking forward to the barrage of tweets from Shank belittling the Houston Texans, calling them tomato cans, discussing the coin flip, the 'double score' and all that, aren't you?

Common Theme Spotted

Maybe I was being too harsh on Shank?

Three Throwgasms

Patriots (-16) 23, Texans 0. Patriots Day comes out tomorrow and the ads are killing me. Marky Mark literally says “They messed with the wrawng city!” As if other cities would be like, “Oh man, someone bombed us. We better not do anything about it.” The fact that Marky Mark plays a composite character who gets portrayed as a reluctant hero and says shit like “We gawtta catch these guys before-ah they hurt othah Sawx fans!” is a fucking insult to real-life events. No one from Boston should ever be allowed to make a Boston movie ever again.

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.

You Missed One, Adam Gaffin

Adam's gonna have to update the chart I referenced below - Sir Shank The Predictable is all over the New England Patriots' next opponent:

Been here. Done this.

The Patriots will finally play their first postseason game Saturday night and wouldn’t you guess . . . they are playing a team with absolutely zero chance to win the game.

Enjoying the spoils of their hard-earned top seed, the 14-2 Patriots will face your friends and mine, the All World Tomato Cans, the Houston Texans.

In a game that could be best described as the NFL’s answer to Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve Show, the Texans beat the quarterback-less Raiders, 27-14, Saturday to advance to the divisional round. New England’s dream matchup with fourth-seeded Houston became official Sunday when Pittsburgh routed the terrible Dolphins.

This could not have worked out better for the Patriots.

I suppose 'tomato can' is an improvement over the descriptor for the last playoff game between the two teams, which was 'fraud'. And so Shank takes his quadrennial shot at trolling and antagonizing yet another professional sports team and the residents of the fourth largest U.S. city.

The 2012-13 New England Patriots just became the first team in NFL history to get back-to-back byes before advancing to the conference championship game.

Could this get any easier?

I mean, seriously? The planets are aligned and the tomato cans are in place. The fraudulent Houston Texans are the only team standing between the New England Patriots and a trip to the AFC Championship game. All the Patriots have to do is beat the terrible Texans. One week from Sunday. At Gillette Stadium.

Pass Go and collect $200. The Patriots are in the AFC title game.

The words are a bit different, but you've read it all before.

To anyone from the Houston area reading this - Shank's just trying to piss you off; this has been his M.O. since I got out of high school thirty-five years ago. Don't let him piss you off too much.

It's A Lock

With the Miami - Pittsburgh game still to be determined (Miami would come to New England if they win this afternoon), Shank's pretty sure the Patriots will be playing the Houston Texans next week. How sure is he? This sure:

Tomato Can Update: Aggregate score of last 4 Pats-Texans games at Gillette: NE 150 - Houston 49. Pats won 27-0 w/out Tom Sept.23 What drama!

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 7, 2017

Feedback is what you'd expect from such a hot take:

@Dan_Shaughnessy Kind of the point in earning the #1 seed you sad sack.

— KDog(@FastGMan) January 8, 2017

@Dan_Shaughnessy @scottzolak Yawn. This was boring 5 years ago. Time for another idea you can milk for a decade, Shank.

— Andy Johnson 100 (@100Zeus) January 8, 2017

@Dan_Shaughnessy Someone is still bitter that they weren't invited to a breakfast twenty years ago.

— andrew(@adev808) January 8, 2017

@Dan_Shaughnessy @scottzolak Pats can lobby NFL to get better opponents. We can lobby the Globe for better writers. Make everyone happy.

— John Sugrue(@sugruejohn) January 8, 2017

@Dan_Shaughnessy dandid you say this about the Celtics with Bird, since there was 3 teams in the league maybe that could win it? Real ?

— Scott Collins (@ScottyCollins23) January 8, 2017

@Dan_Shaughnessy @scottzolak you are the tomato can of sportswriters

— Mike Doughty (@mdfenway) January 8, 2017

At Least He Was Nice Enough Not To Call Them Frauds

Twitter's One Trick Pony, ladies and gentlemen!

Houston. Texans. Tomato. Cans. It never changes.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 9, 2016

No Laughing Matter

In this week's installment of Patriots columns, Shank gleefully rejoices in his previous trolling efforts:

HOUSTON — We’ve had a lot of fun laughing at the Houston Texans in recent years.

Remember how this went down three years ago? The Texans were 11-1 and came to Foxborough wearing their letterman jackets for “Monday Night Football.” Houston wideout Andre Johnson said it was going to be the biggest game in franchise history. We openly mocked the Texans for their stupid hype of a regular-season game. The Patriots, in turn, mocked them on the field, running to a 21-0 lead in the first 19 minutes. It was 35-7 in the first minute of the fourth quarter. The final was 42-14. It was embarrassing for the Houston frauds.

Five weeks later, the Texans came back for a playoff game and it was the same drill. I wrote that this matchup represented the first time in league history that a team had back-to-back bye weeks to start the playoffs. Arian Foster was so offended he made the Globe column his Twitter avatar. The Texans insisted they deserved respect. We gave them none. The Patriots routed them again, 41-28.

How were we supposed to take the Texans seriously when they had Matt Schaub at quarterback, Fraidy Cat Gary Kubiak as head coach, and bumbling Wade Phillips as defensive coordinator?

Sure enough, a year later the Texans lost 14 consecutive games and everybody got fired.

"Hey - remember that time I wrote a column designed to antagonize an entire city? Good times, good times!"

With injuries hitting the New England Patriots hard going into the latter part of the season, Shank is singing a markedly different tune and is no longer calling opposing teams 'tomato cans':

Things feel different now as the Patriots prepare to play at NRG Stadium on Sunday night. Going into this meeting, the Patriots are a team on the way down. They have lost two in a row. The Texans, meanwhile, are 6-6, hungry, and serious. Patriot Nation is a little nervous about this one. Me, too. There will be no taunting from this space. The wounded, reeling Patriots are on the road against a legit team and fear losing a third consecutive game for the first time in 13 years.

Somehow, this blogger anticipates a) the Patriots winning the coin toss and b) Shank making a stupid tweet or two about it and the game already being over. Same crap, different week!

We Came To Bury Them

Today's 'effort' pulls off the twofer, jumping on the Patriot's bandwagon:

ANYWHERE BUT HOUSTON — Last year, this was fun. The Houston Texans were 11-1 when they came to Foxborough. They were the Next Big Thing in the NFL. They were a team on the rise playing on “Monday Night Football” against a once-great franchise going stale. According to Houston wideout Andre Johnson, it was the biggest game in Texans history. Houston players wore their letterman jackets to Gillette and Football America waited for the torch to be passed to Gary Kubiak, Matt Schaub, and Arian Foster.

And then, the game started. It was an embarrassment. The Houston Texans were the Texas Frauds. The Patriots jumped to a 28-0 lead. Tom Brady was mercifully pulled when it was 42-7. The Patriots settled for a 42-14 win and sent the Texans on the road to ruin.

Less than a year later, the Patriots are flexing their muscles after last Sunday’s dramatic comeback over the Broncos. The 8-3 Patriots are favorites to run the table and return to the Super Bowl.

...and taking a huge dump on the Houston Texans at the same time:

And the Texans are a joke. Schaub (eight touchdown passes, nine interceptions) has lost his job to Casey Kasem, err, Case Keenum. Foster is recovering from back surgery. Kubiak suffered a mini-stroke and has been coaching from a booth upstairs. He is expected to return to the sideline Sunday afternoon.
...
Mocking the Texans this year is like doing layup drills with an 8-foot rim. It’s simply too easy.

What about Houston itself? Easy to mock, no?

And easy to write about - Shank nails the triple play!

UPDATE AT 1:25 PM - When Shank says "The 8-3 Patriots are favorites to run the table and return to the Super Bowl", he means tied for third favorites to win the Super Bowl. Or something...

The Houston Schaubs?

Shank is taking the fine art of douchebaggery to a whole new level with this column (emphasis mine):

FOXBOROUGH — The Waltz of the Tomato Cans was everything we expected.

The Patriots defeated the Houston Texans, 41-28, Sunday in the first de facto preseason playoff game in NFL history.

I’m exaggerating, of course. This was not an exhibition football game. This was a certified NFL playoff contest, and the victory elevates the Patriots to the AFC Championship game Sunday night at Gillette Stadium against the Baltimore Ravens. The Bill Belichick-Tom Brady tandem has a chance to win a fourth Super Bowl in 12 seasons.

The Patriots beat the Ravens in the AFC title game last season and lost a 1-point decision to Baltimore in September. Sunday’s rematch could be the final curtain for Baltimore’s Ray Lewis and would give the Patriots a chance to avenge Super Bowl losses in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got great drama, all around.

But Sunday’s victory over the Houston Schaubs didn’t tell us much about the Patriots. The Sons of Belichick were weak on special teams, failed to keep their foot on the Texans’ throats, and have lost All-World tight end Rob Gronkowski for the rest of the season.

Texans Redux

Now that the Patriots / Texans game is in the books, here are some questions I'll pose about Shank's next column. These are not mutually exclusive questions.

* Will he be his usual, insufferable self after correctly calling the outcome of this game? Monkeesfan, let us know what he says on the Gresh & Zolak show tomorrow or Tuesday!

* Will he dump on the Texans, and Houston / Houston fans in general, one more time?

* Will he dump on Bill Belichick because Rob Gronkowski reinjured his forearm and is out for the rest of the season?

* Will he have the balls to trash talk Baltimore and Ray Lewis like he did Houston and Arian Foster?

Shank Doubles Down On The Texans

It looks like Shank's aware of the feedback loop involved with his insult sprinkled column of Sunday, and in response has decided to flip Houston the bird one more time.

My eyes are square. I’ve been watching All-22 film since Monday. I’m doing everything I can to make a case for the Houston Texans Sunday in Foxborough.

I hung out with Gresh and Zo and learned about zero sets, wham blocks, rolled coverage, trail technique, and inside-out coverage. Cover-2 is my life.

I forced myself to watch reruns of a clown show called “Quick Slants.” I memorized the roster of the Texans, even the guys on injured reserve. I think I can predict Gary Kubiak’s seven inactives for Sunday.

As the ultimate sign of respect, I plan to change my column avatar to an image of Arian Foster.

No arrogance or condescending attitude here, agreed?

But wait - there's more! Note Shank's lack of balls use of the passive voice in the first following paragraph, painstakingly avoiding ownership of his use of 'tomato cans' and 'frauds' in that Sunday column.

This has been an emotional week for the good folks of Houston. They apparently felt disrespected when it was noted that the Texans are frauds who have no chance to beat the Patriots. A couple of references to “tomato cans” got everybody all excited (please don’t tell them I didn’t vote for Craig Biggio or Jeff Bagwell). Next thing you know, a full-blown media war broke out.

No need for that, people. Let’s cease and desist with the “you’re fat — you’re ugly!’’ stuff. This need not be personal. I like tomato soup. I even like Houston more than most travelers. I’ve been to Roger Clemens’s Spring Woods High School. I watched “Urban Cowboy” and “Apollo 13” numerous times. I’m one of the few fans who know that “Tin Cup” was shot in Houston.

We have fond memories of Super Bowl XXXVIII in February of 2004. Patriot Nation had a wonderful time when Houston served as the Super Bowl’s host city. Reliant Stadium is a terrific facility with great sightlines.

Did I mention a patronizing attitude on Shank's part? Like it needs to be brought up...