Although I’m a New England Patriots fan, I had mixed feelings while watching the Giants thwart our perfect season last night. Sure, this anguishing Super Bowl climax was extremely disappointing, and I suppose it makes it sting a bit more that we lost to a New York team. But this wasn’t like Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. This upset felt illogical, like losing to a newbie at your favorite video game. I’m not saying that Eli Manning and the Giants don’t know how to properly execute–they played awesome in the post season, and better than the Patriots this time around. But after you see any team win 18 straight games, it’s tempting to grant them a certain insurmountable level of street cred, which alone would make them seem unbeatable.
This is the sort of viewpoint that makes fans stop enjoying victory. The experience becomes less fun; instead we just start checking off wins, as we hold one single breath all the way to the Super Bowl. The process became so mechanical after awhile that it was hard to cheer for our team without sounding arrogant or even cruel at times. On the other hand, to a non-Patriots fan, any team with a chance of beating New England was seen as a protagonist this season.
For many of us, watching the Patriots live up to the hype of an undefeated season seemed to be the point of all this, so swallowing the loss really isn’t so bitter. It’s more of a bland realization that maybe our expectations of perfection were misplaced.
I won’t analyze the gory details of the game. I’ll leave that to my brother or other serious football aficionados. I’m trying not to dwell too much on the Patriots’ ineffective offensive line and my shock at the attempted 4th-and-13 conversion within field goal range. As an armchair quarterback, I’m only a benchwarmer. But I tip my remote to the Giants for a great underdog season, and to the Patriots for being a great team in spite of our soul-crushing expectations. Their talent and our devotion set them up to be the team to beat, their winning streak becoming a bullseye for everyone else in the league.
So does this mean the Patriots are the “Evil Empire” of the NFL? The good guys are supposed to win, right? There are many fan camps who would like to paint the Patriots as villains. Based on the way things turned out, I’m sure it will make for a more interesting story with the Giants playing David to our Goliath. The Spygate finger pointers will, of course, get their footnote in. And the Dolphins record thumpers can exhale now, too. I don’t even mind so much–we can be the “bad guys” if they need someone to be. After all, we do the same thing to the Yankees. Turnabout is fair play.
And besides, with redemption as our motivation, the story will be much more fun to tell when we come back and win it all next season.
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