Category: New England Patriots

It all seemed to be going so well for them.  First it was New Orleans, then Houston, and then on to Jacksonville.  Then all of a sudden it was as though the bottom had fallen out on the defending Super Bowl champions.  Everyone knows that the New England Patriots are all about playing as a team, something so many teams seem to fail at doing in the world of sports.  But now some of the key ingredients that helped New England be adorned by so many are now gone to pursue other avenues.  Those gone are mainly the geniuses behind the schemes the Patriots put together to win three Super Bowls in four years.  However, there is an upside to all of this recent chaos.  The genius himself is still ahead of the organization, that being Bill Belichick.  To add to the drastic coaching changes, there have also been key players lost to free agency that helped keep the, “Team First” persona about the team.  With the all of a sudden new-look Patriots in tact, could the honeymoon be officially over in New England, or is it still the Patriots of old so many have waited to see go?

Tedy Bruschi is a true football player. A player that you could easily see in a leather helmet on a cold fall day, playing his guts out. We’re not talking about Randy Moss or Deion Sanders here. Tedy Bruschi is a guy who will get it done every game, no matter what the circumstances. However, we learned that this warrior isn’t superman after all. When he was hospitalized two weeks ago for a mild stroke, everything changed. Can this man make it back to the NFL?

Lately people have been talking about the departures of Offensive Coordinator, Charlie Weis and Defensive Coordinator, Romeo Crennel as the end of the New England Patriots’ dynasty. This claim brings with it many assumptions, assumptions that devalue Bill Belichick and the players of the back-to-back World Champions.

If there was any doubt that the New England Patriots are the best team in football, last Sundays domination of the Steelers erased any of it.

By Ryan McGowan

Recently I was driving with my parents up to Waterville, Maine, to watch my brother play basketball for Colby College.  I have never been a huge fan of the Pine Tree State.  Even with my father’s affection for the state he went to college in, the love for Maine is by no means genetic.  I don’t mind a nice Saturday afternoon drive past moose crossings and through toll booths manned by 80-year-old guys who look like they just crawled out of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, ending up in some old factory city which the factory abandoned decades ago.  It’s kind of relaxing.  I just don’t know how anyone could ever live there voluntarily.  In fact, if not for Maine’s network of small but highly reputable colleges, I don’t know why anyone from the Lower 47 states would ever venture there between the months of September and June.

As the time ticked down in the AFC Championship, one theory that has been making the rounds in the sports world over the past two years was proved:  

The New England Patriots are better than everyone else.

by Ryan McGowan

After watching yesterday’s NFL divisional playoff games, I feel like a jaded father whose son has just gotten suspended from school for the third time for misbehavior: When are you going to learn?

Specifically, when is Sports Nation going to learn that when it comes to the NFL, this is Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s world, and everyone else is just paying rent?

By Ryan McGowan

God bless Notre Dame.  

You’d think with my last name that I’d be a bigger Fighting Irish fan, but I’m not.  I’m not a Notre Dame hater, just more of a Notre Dame agnostic; I am basically indifferent to the institution.  (As opposed to a Notre Dame atheist, who believes that Notre Dame doesn’t exist.)  But God bless them today.  I love Notre Dame.

By Ryan McGowan

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2004, 8:04 PM: We’re live from Gillette Stadium in scenic Foxboro, Massachusetts.  Well, we’re not actually live from there, we’re live from my living room in the just-as-scenic Oak Square neighborhood in Boston.  But we can pretend we’re in the Big Razor tonight for opening night of the 2004 NFL season between the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and last year’s AFC Championship finalists, the Indianapolis Colts.

By Ryan McGowan

In part one of this two-part series, I examined the question as to which team is tops in Boston, the Red Sox or the Patriots, and explored the issue from the point of view of the Sox.  Today, the Patriots have their turn in the sun for rebuttal.