Prime Time

A few months ago Shank predicted seven wins for this year's New England Patriots. Currently sitting at eleven wins, his attitude towards the team has changed quite a bit:

Drake Maye, Mike Vrabel certainly have these Patriots ready for prime time

Back in prime time on “Monday Night Football,” the Patriots thrashed the New York Football Giants, 33-15, Monday at Gillette Stadium.

This means 10 straight wins for the 11-2 Pats — the best record in all of the NFL — and a legit shot at the top seed when the AFC playoffs begin next month.

“Players are coming in here each and every week and practicing and executing,” said first-year coach Mike Vrabel. “Ultimately, it’s on the players. We try to give them a plan they can execute. I’m proud of them and happy they can have some success.”

Extending Thanksgiving weekend an extra 24 hours, quarterback/MVP candidate Drake Maye (24 for 31, 282 yards, two touchdown passes) carved up the New York turkeys for another easy win against a pathetic NFL wannabe.

“Drake is ... realizing what he can be and the impact he makes on this offense,” said Vrabel. “We are very appreciative that he’s our quarterback.”

To some people, the Patriots have suddenly became a very good team. Then there's Shank:

The Patriots have a well-earned bye week. No game Sunday. The bad news is that the March of the Tomato Cans — easiest schedule in NFL history — is suspended for a couple of weeks. They will be legitimately tested twice in December, with a home game against the Bills on Dec. 14 followed by a rugged road trip to play the smashmouth Ravens in Baltimore.

The Other Type Of Shank Column

By now we're all familiar with one type of Dan Shaugnessy column - the ones where he's second guessing a team / coach / player and / or crapping on the team's ownership. Today we get the opposite type of column, the heads version of the coin. When a team's on a winning streak, their opponents all of a sudden turn into small aluminum things!

Maybe we shouldn’t be thinking playoffs for the Patriots just yet, but their softer-than-soft schedule says otherwise

The Patriots just enjoyed their best win in five years, are over .500 after five games for the first time since the Brady era, and we are seriously talking playoffs again.

Not a moment too soon. The Red Sox thrill ride has been over for a week, and with the Bruins/Celtics launching seasons of low expectations, the Patriots have come to our emotional rescue.

Sunday’s wildly entertaining 23-20 victory over the unbeaten, Super Bowl-favorite Bills at Highmark Stadium put Gillette back on the NFL map. After two straight 4-13 campaigns and five years of front office frostiness, draft day boobery, personal vendettas, and abject incompetence — patterns and pettiness that put the franchise on the road to irrelevance — the Patriots are a team on the rise.

The prudent thing, of course, is to pump the brakes and remind everybody that the 2025 Patriots couldn’t beat the awful Raiders, losing 20-13 in Foxborough Sept. 7. Two weeks later, they committed five turnovers in a ridiculous 21-14 home loss to the Steelers.

The lords of television buried the Patriots in the anonymous 1 p.m. Sunday slot for at least 13 weekends. And they did it for a reason; the Patriots were not expected to be interesting.

But thanks to Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye, they’re suddenly a must-watch. And thanks to the easiest schedule these eyes have ever seen, the Patriots are a threat to return to the postseason and possibly even contend for first place in the AFC East.

It’s all about the schedule, people.

Seriously. Not enough has been made of the clear path the Patriots have been handed.

Welcome to the March of the Tomato Cans, 2025.

THat's right - it's not because our team's good; it's because everyone else sucks!

DHL Dan CCLXII - High Hopes

In this week's Picked Up Pieces column, Shank's feel good team this week is... the New England Patriots?

Despite back-to-back 4-13 seasons, the Patriots are somehow the feel-good team of New England, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces on the road to Cooperstown …

⋅ The Patriots are coming off back-to-back 4-13 seasons. They’re working with their third head coach in three seasons and have a second-year quarterback with only 13 NFL games under his belt. They haven’t won a playoff game since Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and Ernie Adams copped Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta 6½ years ago.

And yet, they are the feel-good team of our traditionally cynical sports region.

True fact.

The Bruins are a mess and Spoked-B fans are calling for the heads of Cam Neely and Don Sweeney.

The Celtics won a championship a little more than a year ago, but Jayson Tatum is out for the year, two starters have been traded, another pair of regulars left via free agency, and the team is expected to sink to the middle of the Eastern Conference. The NBA’s dreaded “second apron” collective bargaining penalties have done more damage to the Green franchise than anything since John Y. Brown. Now Marcus Smart is a Laker. Mercy!

The interesting-but-annoying Red Sox gave us a nice summer lift with a Tomato-Can-infused 10-game winning streak, but they started their post-All-Star break by losing 4 of 6 to real teams, and now face the trade deadline. The Sox have not played winning baseball after the deadline since 2018. What other team can lose in extra innings without letting the opponent put a ball in play?

Shank sure loved the Red Sox... for an entire week!

DHL Dan CCLX - The Trump Bump?

In this week's picked up Pieces column, Shank can't help but notice a possible cause and effect:

After a visit to the White House, the Red Sox have been in command, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while taking the temperature of your white-hot Boston Red Sox . . .

Is this it? Are the Red Sox finally ready to take flight? After winning six straight against tomato cans Washington and Colorado, the Sox just won three consecutive one-run games against the estimable Tampa Rays, winning Saturday in a 2-hour-8-minute, 100-pitch, 1-0 classic delivered by All-Star ace Garret Crochet.

I know this much. The Red Sox haven’t lost since a bunch of players visited with President Trump in the Oval Office a week ago Thursday. The Sox go into Sunday’s series finale with nine straight wins — their longest streak in four years — winners of 11 of 12 and are a season-high seven games over .500. They are 23-11 since June 3.

So. Much. Winning.

A Tale Of Two Columns

Shank on Tuesday, after the Boston Celtics lost Game 5 of their first round series against the Atlanta Hawks on an incredible shot by Trae Young:

The Celtics may still win it all, but this loss was about as bad as it gets

Perhaps as soon as Thursday, Boston fans will be able to look back and laugh. Maybe in six weeks we’ll remember this one as the night the immature, still-without-rings Celtics finally woke up and realized they’re not as good as they think they are. Maybe this will prove to be the epiphany — the moment in which the Celtics finally understood something so simple and so huge.

But this is not that moment. Right now, in real time, this can only be described as one of the greatest gag jobs in Boston sports history. Call it Atlanta’s revenge for 28-3. It was a collapse worthy of the pre-2004 Red Sox. At this moment, the 2023 Celtics are Parquet Posers.

Graced with the presence of the Tomato Can Hawks (41-41), the mighty Celtics — Vegas favorites to win the NBA championship — Tuesday coughed up a 13-point lead (at home!) in the final six minutes of a potential Game 5 clincher and lost to the undermanned Hawks, 119-117. Trae Young’s calm, 30-foot pull-up with 1.8 seconds left stunned the Celtics and NBA America. The unraveling Celtics never got another shot off.

Pretty strong words, eh?

Shank, last night when the Celtics finally buried the Hawks:

The Celtics finished the job and beat the Hawks, so now everybody can relax — until Monday

Everybody can calm down now. The Celtics have advanced to the second round of the NBA playoffs and will open the conference semifinals Monday on Causeway Street against their time-tested rivals, the Philadelphia 76ers.

This did not come easily. The widely-mocked Hawks beat the Celtics twice in the first round, including a dramatic Game 5 comeback at the Garden.

Celtic Nation was somewhat demoralized by that fourth-quarter fold, but the Green Team rallied Thursday in Atlanta, breaking open a tight game with a 11-0 run, clinching a 128-120 Game 6 victory. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the two Jays who folded late in Game 5, took control of a frenetic clincher — a game that featured 15 ties and 22 lead changes.

“I thought our guys did a great job at the end of just locking in,” said Boston’s rookie coach-under-seige (sic - Ed.), Joe Mazzulla. " . . . Definitely different from Game 5.”

Gotta love it - the Boston Globe's 'ace' sports columnist unironically calling the Atlanta Hawks 'widely mocked' while not telling you (or hoping you don't remember) he was one of the ones doing the mocking. This is one of the constant critiques of Shank here and elsewhere once blogging took off back in the early 2000's. And - he's completely shameless, like someone's not gonna figure this out.

Do you have any doubts as to which sports columnist just might be laying siege (correct spelling) to the current head coach of the Celtics? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

And Now For A Slight Change Of Tone

Since it's difficult to rag on a team when they win, Shank wraps up the last game of the New England Patriots' season, a 28 - 14 win over the New Your Jets, and uses a curious word to re-describe the season for the Patriots:

Remember when we thought watching a challenged Patriots team would be fun? Never mind

I really thought the Patriots season was going to be fun. Finally, we would have something different. At long last there was a challenge to win the division. Without Tom Brady, the Pats could not simply roll out the footballs and automatically win the AFC East. They would not be handed another first-round bye. There would be no Tomato Can Home Game in Round 1 of the playoffs. No more tedious palace intrigue involving Bill, Tom, and Bob. No more same-old, same-old.

It was going to be different. Interesting. The thrill of the unknown.

I was wrong. The 2020 Patriot football season was not fun. The Patriots were effectively out of the playoffs in early December and played out the string over the final four games of the season.

Let's just say that, on occasion, Shank likes to rewrite some things. Can you tell from this column or this column if you can detect any notion of Shank thinking the Patriots were going to be a 'fun' team? He describes the first season win (second link) as 'business as usual' for the team, about as far away from 'fun' as you can get. He did enjoy the Seahawks game but that's as close as he ever got on the 'fun' front. He's just full of shit on this point. This is what he's been writing since Week 4:

The local football season was neither interesting nor entertaining. By the time they faced the Dolphins, Bills, and Jets at the finish, the Patriots were just plain bad. They were 2020 Red Sox bad.

Any of you remember the Stupor Bowl at Memorial Stadium back in 1981? That’s when the 2-13 Patriots lost to the 1-14 Baltimore Colts, 23-21, in front of 17,073 fans. The game featured six turnovers, 12 penalties, and attempts by both teams to intentionally lose the game. The Pats finally succumbed when they ran out of timeouts after “driving” to the Colts’ 15-yard line.

Forget the fact that the current Patriots team won a game by two touchdowns; Shank tries to tie them to one of the worst losses in Patriots history and has to go back almost four decades to do it. Other than that, it's a valid comparison!

Kicking The Tomato Can Down The Road

Behold - the column Shank's been waiting to write for nearly twenty years:

Now it’s the Patriots who look like the Tomato Cans

First we get the 2020 Red Sox.

Now this.

Where is Trent Dilfer when you need him? It’s times like this we need a national pro football analyst to declare that the Patriots aren’t good anymore.

If football games were matched with calendar years, Sunday’s Patriot debacle vs. the San Francisco 49ers would be 2020.

Jimmy Garoppolo (Why Can’t We Get Players Like That?) and the Sons of Joe Montana demolished the once-proud Pats, 33-6, at Gillette. It was the most-lopsided home loss of the two-decade Bill Belichick era. This one was so bad that Patriot-loving CBS didn’t even give us the “let’s fawn all over Bob Kraft” shot from the owner’s box.

The glee in which he writes this column is obvious in each and every sentence, and I fully expect another column of the same ilk sometime this week.

Old Tyme Trolling

Shank's latest column has him going back to the well on a theme. See if you can pick up on it:

Worried about the Patriots’ standing in the AFC East? Don’t be

Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski are gone. Bill Belichick has quarterbacks named Jarrett Stidham and Brian Hoyer. The Hoodie used his first draft pick on a player from that well-known football factory Lenoir-Rhyne. Patriots players and staffers are fleeing Foxborough. Belichick has no cap space and the toughest schedule in the NFL this year. USA Today has New England 19th in its latest power rankings.
Clearly, the Patriots are a shell of their former selves.

It’s almost as if Belichick is intentionally handicapping himself — like when Larry Bird pledged to take only lefthanded shots in a road win at Portland back in 1986.

I mean, besides the gratuitous mention of Larry Legend!

How can Belichick be so Bird-like, cocky and calm, while the Patriot dynasty seems to be crumbling?

I give you three words: Bills, Dolphins, Jets.

Meet the New Tomato Cans. Same as the Old Tomato Cans. The Jets, Dolphins, and Bills are still Moe, Larry, and Curly. They are knuckleheads, porcupines, and lamebrains.

The reemergence of the Tomato Can meme aligns completely with the other part of this theme - The Patriots suck, but still no one else can beat them. He will not, of course, be bothered with this self-contradictory statement because he'll be singing a different tune in a few weeks or so.

Shank's Back On The Warpath - II

Today we have another column in a continuing series of Shank rewriting column themes in order to criticize the New England Patriots in every conceivable fashion possible.

All of it is very real.

And none of it means anything.

Things really are frosty at the top of the Patriot pyramid. We are not making this up. We have the sound bites from Tom vs. Time, and Tom with Oprah, and Tom with Jim Gray, and Tom abruptly ending interviews when he gets asked about Alex Guerrero.

Bill Belichick is still angry about having to trade Jimmy Garoppolo (he did not deny that he texted Jimmy G after every 49ers win last year). Bill isn’t happy that he is forced to tolerate Guerrero in the locker room and on the team plane. Bill is never going to tell us why he ordered the Code Red, and he will mock any reporter who pins their hopes to a phone bill or objections from disgruntled ex-Patriots.

But that's not my main point of contention with this column. Rather, it's the continued assertion of Shank's (and local radio people) that the AFC East is a horrible, terrible, awful division chock full of patsies and 'tomato cans':

In dramatic lore, they were known as Famine, Pestilence, and Destruction. These are only aliases. Their real names are the New York Jets, the Buffalo Bills, and the Miami Dolphins — New England’s ever-wretched competition in the AFC East.

What has been true in 15 of 17 seasons since 2001 (since Brady became Belichick’s starting quarterback) is true today. The New England Patriots, with all their flaws, simply cannot lose their loser division. For the millionth consecutive season, the Jets, Bills, and Dolphins are reinventing themselves with kid quarterbacks and doofus coaches.

Funny you mention doofuses, Shank! This column theme is used every single year and, like this column, Shank does not offer up any statistics to back up this assertion. This 'tomato can' division theme of his is completely unsupported by any meaningful examination of team and division records over any peroid of time, and Shank (to the best of my recollection) has never done this in the past ten years. This blog keeps pointing out the outright lie this is each and every single fucking time this lazy son of a bitch brings it up, yet it never stops. Nor will our rebuttals.

March Of The Summer Tomato Cans

The Toronto Blue Jays snapped the Red Sox's 10 game winning streak last night, 13 - 7. Shank is there to rain on their parade:

Sorry Sox fans. Still impossible to tell how good Sox are. Jays, like Angels, Nats, Royals and Rangers just begging to be beaten. #marchoftomatocans

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) July 13, 2018

Readers are there to remind Shank of a few things:

Right exactly. As if it's the Red Sox fault that everybody else is terrible. They all get their fair share of terrible teams to play and the Red Sox have pulverized everybody else the hardest.

— David Nielson (@DaveNielsonKW) July 14, 2018

You've been doing the same act with @Patriots for 17 years...its all about bad competition and never about the thehome team just being good. What's truly impossible, is to figure out how you get continuously paid for writing the same ole shit every day.

— Brian Sullivan (@bsbigtime) July 14, 2018

Remember that time you said shit about the Eagles for two weeks and changed your profile picture to a tomato can... thank god the players and coaching staffs take their opponents more seriously than you

— Trevor Barnette(@trevor_barnette) July 14, 2018

And the winner:

For the love of God.....c'mon Dan.....you're the guy that would complain about too much teeth in a BJ

— JD64 (@JMDon64) July 14, 2018

Blistering Hot Take

It looks like Shank's recovered from his Belichick hissy fit earlier this week.

There was a run on these at Shaw’s this morning. Folks getting ready for another AFC East game. pic.twitter.com/ZtflNWfO1G

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) December 3, 2017

Reader reaction was less than constructive:

You desperately need some new material

— Jon Alexander (@JAlexander80) December 3, 2017

I don’t remember this rant when Bird, Parrish and McHale were plowing through the NBA most nights. Happy to be old enough to enjoy both.

— Mark (@me4bostonsports) December 3, 2017

That was slightly funny the first couple hundred times you used it. Enough. #wornout

— Stephen Marsella⚾ (@SPM316) December 3, 2017

Dan is working on a kids book. “Little Tom and the March of The Tomato Cans” .

— BizzaroFelger(@Sports_Schlub) December 3, 2017

We should be so lucky!

More Tomato Can Misinformation

Here's Shank yesterday morning:

On today with Zo and Beetle @ZoandBertrand from 11-1. Plenty of Sox in first hour. Plenty of Tomato Can talk, too.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 14, 2017

One commenter blew that one right out of the water:

Too bad AFC East is tied for 2nd in wins per division and is the only division w/ all teams winning at least 4 games and is playing NFC South who is 1st in wins

— Dudley DooRagz (@DudleyDooRagz) November 14, 2017

I'm willing to bet that if you look here from this point forward, to the end of the regular season, this point will be borne out. Remember that Shank first started using the 'tomato can' insult against the other three teams in the AFC East division (Buffalo, Miami and the New York Jets). He's since expanded it to include all NFL teams not named the New England Patriots. I'm not sure if Shank would continue to use the phrase even if you hit him over the head with these numbers (because he hates numbers), but I wouldn't put it past him.

There's also a commenter here that pointed this out - this fact (AFC East win totals being greater than all others) has held for the past ten years (the end year being 2015 or 2016) even if you adjust for removing the Patriots / other top division winner from this total. Unfortunately I can't find that post right now. To some extent, Shank is oblivious to certain facts, especially the numeric ones.

How Soon...

... is now?

But seriously, folks - about nineteen hours from now, the New England Patriots will play their first preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Foxborough. A few of the top starters will not be playing, among them Tom Brady, Julian Edelman and Gronk.

Here's what I want to know - how soon does Shank first deploy that vastly overused phrase 'tomato can(s)' to describe any and all Patriots opponents?

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.

Running The Numbers

Longtime readers (or even relative newcomers) of Dan Shaughnessy Watch are well aware of Shank's affinity for insulting 31 of 32 NFL teams and organizations by constantly referring to any opponents of the New England Patriots as 'tomato cans'. Journalism school supposedly teaches young journalists not to be repetitive, but this lesson has been lost on the Boston Globe's sole sports columnist. How bad is it? Universal Hub's Adam Gaffin actually ran the numbers:

It's even worse than that if you include the many, many tweets where 'tomato can' was used; you'd have to recalibrate the y-axis to go to 50 or more to capture that.

I don't know how often Adam reads Shank, but it's safe to say if he devotes a post to it and punishes himself by dredging through the Globe archives and adding it up, the 'tomato can' shtick is worn out now. Which means we can expect it for many more columns.

Doubling Down

Get used to it, folks; when Shank latches onto something, he is relentless:

On @ZoandBertrand today from 11-1. They agree with me that whole AFC is shelf of tomato cans.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 15, 2015