“The odds were stacked against us. It hasn’t been that way for us in a while, and it certainly was this year.” — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, after yet another Patriots win in the AFC Championship Game.
To the surprise of absolutely no one — except maybe the team itself — the New England Patriots are once again heading to the Super Bowl.
Before the game, Patriots players seem to have been convinced of their underdog status after the Kansas City Chiefs opened as AFC Championship favorites. Despite the fact that the last time the Patriots weren’t favored to win a playoff game was in January 2014, and that the team had appeared in seven consecutive AFC Championships prior to their matchup with the Chiefs, wide receiver Julian Edelman felt emboldened to sell T-shirts emblazoned with “Bet Against Us.”
The Patriots’ delusional underdog narrative had been building for awhile prior to the matchup with the Chiefs, however. After his team throttled the Los Angeles Chargers last week, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady told Around the NFL that “everyone thinks we suck.”
Except you’d be hard-pressed to find a single person who thinks so. Not even the irrelevant ex-Ravens quarterback and commentator Trent Dilfer does anymore.
Everyone may want the Patriots to suck, but to our collective chagrin, they do not. The team coached by Sith Lord Bill Belichick has clearly made some kind of devil’s bargain that will inevitably result in their own undoing at some point, but that day is not today. Whatever karmic forces tasked with restoring order to the universe must be biding their time so that, when these forces do act, the world will not be subject to the plight of annoying Patriots fans for at least a generation.
On the topic of annoying Patriots fans, let’s talk about the most annoying one: President Donald Trump. Immediately after the game, our insecure fanboy-in-chief congratulated the team on their victory, targeting his praise at his friends Brady, Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft. King Donald of Orange apparently sees no problem with enjoying American football in the midst of a government shutdown that’s keeping hundreds of thousands of hardworking federal employees from receiving paychecks.
So as Atlanta’s date with the Super Bowl approaches, you can take comfort in the fact that at least people will finally stop talking about football — and the Patriots — once it’s over.
But if you’re Tom Brady, that silence probably just means everyone thinks you suck.
