How I started cheering for the New England Patriots:
Super Bowl XLIX is upon us, and the New England Patriots are in it once again. I like the New England Patriots, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, the Patriots have been in the news A LOT recently. So I decided to dedicate a series of posts to them leading up to what might be the Franchise’s defining game. Let me start from the beginning…
In case you’ve never met me before, I’m a New England Patriots fan.
I say this because if you have ever had the pleasure of meeting me or follow me on social media, you would almost instantly discover that I love the Pats.
When I tell people this, about 98% of them cringe and give me a look of disgust. The other 2% are also New England Patriots fans.
I get criticized for being a Pats fan all the time, and I totally understand why; because the entire Patriots fan base is absolutely spoiled rotten. In the history of the NFL, New England has had arguably the greatest stretch of success of any franchise, spanning from 2001 to the present day. Since 2001, the Patriots have won the AFC East 12 times in 14 seasons, they’ve made it to AFC Championship game nine times, winning it for the 6th time this past sunday. New England also won 3 Super Bowls in 4 years, 2001, 2003 and 2004, about the closest thing the NFL has seen to a dynasty since the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s (If you say the 90’s Cowboys are a dynasty, then the Patriots most certainly are as well). Nobody has won more games in the 21st century than the New England Patriots
Now when your team wins that frequently, not many people are going to like you. The most often expression I hear from people is “Oh, you bandwagon piece of s***!”. OK, I’m not going to lie, I technically did hop on the New England Patriots bandwagon, I remember the date I did as well. February 3rd, 2002. Super Bowl XXXVI, the first full football game I ever watched. I was 5 years old.
In case you don’t remember, since that was, amazingly, 13 years ago; the upstart New England Patriots were taking on the “Greatest Show on Turf”; the St. Louis Rams. St. Louis, who had won the Super Bowl just two years earlier, were led by Quarterback and League MVP Kurt Warner, as well as Offensive Player of the Year, HB Marshall Faulk, who could pretty much do it all out of the backfield. Going into that season, the Rams were one of the favourites to win the Super Bowl and they surprised no one by dominating the NFL with the highest scoring offence in the league and finished with the NFL’s best record, at 14-2, including a win over the same Patriots in Foxborough.
Before Super Bowl XXXVI, the Rams were listed as 14 point favourites, making the Patriots one of the biggest Super Bowl underdogs in history, a title that they very well deserved. Nobody expected New England to be in the big game at the start of the year. They had gone 5-11 the previous year. In the second game of the season, Drew Bledsoe, the Star Quarterback they were paying $100 million to lead the franchise, got absolutely annihilated by Mo Lewis and almost died from internal bleeding, forcing some schmo named Tom Brady into the spotlight. A guy who had struggled to hold the starter’s job at Michigan, a guy who was taken 199th Overall in the 2000 Draft, a guy who, let’s be honest, didn’t really look like an NFL Quarterback. After starting 0-2, the Patriots season looked over.
But out of nowhere, New England started reeling off wins behind a top-tier Defense and, surprisingly, won the AFC East. New England then beat the Oakland Raiders in a blizzard, in one of the greatest playoff games in recent memory because of Adam Vinatieri’s game-tying 45-yard FG through the snow with seconds left, not because of some controversial play which occurred several moments earlier that was correctly interpreted by the officiating crew. They followed this up with an upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship and headed on their way to New Orleans.
Now I didn’t know any bit of what I just explained to you at the time of that game, because again, I was 5 years old and was not seriously following football at that time, but everybody watches the Super Bowl. So my family and I gathered around to watch the big game and since the Patriots were the huge underdogs and the Rams had won 2 years earlier (things which I did know), most of us decided to cheer for New England. A couple other things helped me decide who I was cheering for.
First of all, there was the sentimental reason, 9/11. I remember that it was a Tuesday morning and it started off like any other day. My Mom dropped me off at school and almost as soon as I got settled in, she came right back and picked me up. I had no idea what was going on, but was thrilled to be going home and didn’t even notice how shook up my Mother was. Then I got home and saw what was on the TV, and I vividly remember watching one of the hi-jacked aircrafts fly directly into the second tower and engulf it in flames. I couldn’t fully grasp the magnitude of the event at that time, I also couldn’t understand why anyone would do something like that, But I knew that what was happening was horrific. So I figured, I should probably cheer for the team wearing the colours of the American flag, Red, White and Blue.
The other reason is something you’d expect from a 5-year-old kid. When I was young, I would walk in and watch bits and parts of football games and I really enjoyed it. My parents noticed this and got me “Backyard Football” when I was 4 and a year later, “Backyard Football 2002” (which technically came out in 2001). I pretty much lived on the Backyard Sports games as a kid, yes the ones with Pablo Sanchez, the “secret weapon” that’s good at seemingly every sport and is everyone’s favourite 2 ft tall Mexican. Anyway, the cover athlete for Backyard Football 2002? Who also happened to be in the first Backyard Football? New England Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe. I thought Bledsoe was the man! I always played with either him or John Elway since they could always throw the deep bomb. So Bledsoe was one of my favourite players, and since he played for New England, I liked New England!
On another note, it’s kind of haunting what happened to the players from Backyard Football 2002. Other than QBs Brett Favre, Rich Gannon and Donovan McNabb, things ended quite tragically for most of these players. 2 players died, Steve McNair and Junior Seau. Terrell Davis would retire 2 years later after a slew of injuries. Ricky Williams would turn to drugs and lose his love for the game. Jevon Kearse broke his foot in 2002 and was never really the same player and Cade McNown, (don’t ask how he got in this game, I don’t know either) didn’t play another game in the NFL. And of course, Bledsoe, who couldn’t regain his starting job from Tom Brady and bounced around the NFL for a few years before retiring.
I thought Bledsoe was starting in Super Bowl XXXVI. Boy was I wrong! I was definitely disappointed to see Tom Brady in the game, but I still had a firm belief that Bledsoe would come in and win it. Things didn’t exactly go down that way and the Patriots definitely ended up making the right decision.
For me, Super Bowl XXXVI certainly lived up to the hype. The Rams were clicking to start the game, they took a 3-0 lead and in my household we were starting to get the sense that St. Louis might blow out the Patriots like everyone said. And then Ty Law picked off Kurt Warner and went streaking down the sideline for the opening touchdown of the game. I was in awe! I had seen an interception before, but I had never seen one returned for a touchdown! Then just before half-time, New England scored again! A remarkable catch from David Patten, spinning through the air, to give the Patriots a 14-3 lead! At half-time, I was looking around asking, “Wait, weren’t the Patriots the underdogs?”
But the Rams weren’t going to go silently into the night, and they certainly didn’t. I thought New England had sealed the deal when Warner fumbled on the 1 and Tebucky Jones returned it all the way, only to see the TD come back because of a flag. Warner ran it in the next play and a sinking feeling came over me. I wasn’t even a super fan of the Pats at this point but I wanted them to win so badly despite the fact I’d really only watched them for 3 quarters of football. Then the Rams tied the game at 17 with 1:30 left on a Ricky Proehl Touchdown. My ecstasy from the first half had completely disappeared and it looked like the game was going to go overtime. When I say that, I mean that pretty much everyone believed that New England should play for overtime. My parents. My grandparents. John Madden.
It’s hard to pick the defining moment I became a Patriots fan, but if I could pick one, it would be this. Starting from their own 17 yard line, with no timeouts, and 1:21 on the clock, with everyone and their mother screaming for the Patriots to take a knee, they went for it. Because the New England Patriots don’t play not to lose; they play to win.
As the game wore on, I started to forget about Drew Bledsoe, and began to get behind Tom Brady, just like the Patriots had over the span of the 2001 season. Overall, Brady’s performance in Super Bowl XXXVI wasn’t that spectacular, he threw for 145 yards and a touchdown, but he earned his MVP honours on his game-winning drive alone.
Brady almost got strip-sacked on the first play of the drive by Leonard Little, and he could’ve gone down and taken it to overtime just like everyone wanted him to do; But Tom stuck in the pocket and threw it to J.R. Redmond. Then another one to Redmond for a first down. 41 seconds on the clock. Brady threw it to Redmond for a third time on a screen and picked up another first down with just over 30 seconds left, and the Pats were still at their own 41. No one in my family seemed to really notice the Patriots driving, they firmly believed the commentators statements, and that nothing would come from this final drive.
And then Troy Brown caught a strike over the middle from Brady to put New England at the Rams 36, and in that moment, everyone sort of had this epiphany “Holy crap, New England can still win this thing”. After another short completion which put the Patriots on the 30-yard line, Brady spiked the ball with 7 seconds left. He had done what no one thought he could do, put his team in a position to win. Tom Brady was the hero, the Super Bowl MVP.
When Adam Vinatieri came onto the field, I was on the edge of my seat, eyes glued to the TV. The game was playing out like a movie, scripted almost, to have Vinatieri win it on a 47 yard field goal. When he kicked it, I knew right away, it was golden. I didn’t go crazy like I would nowadays, or got as excited as I did two years later when Vinatieri pulled out the same heroics against the Carolina Panthers, but I got up and cheered.
Seeing the players storm the field, mobbing Vinatieri, Confetti flying everywhere, I sat there thinking to myself “THAT WAS AWESOME”. And from that point, I became a huge fan of football, and the New England Patriots, for life.
nolancattell 