Guest Post: The Heartbreak of a through and through Patriots fan

My brother Jamey is positively sick over the Patriots' pathetic loss to the Jets on Sunday. Me, too.

He wrote this (at 5 AM, no doubt) in an email to me.

I couldn't resist posting it. Let me know what you think...maybe he should start his own blog. Hailing from the hometown of the Patriots, here is Jamey's take on the hubris of the Boston fanbase.

As I lie in bed at 4:47 am, all I can hear in my head is the theme music to the NFL on CBS.…….ok I’m back I just had to throw up again. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. The way I feel, its as if there was a death in my immediate family. I am in a deep, cavernous state of depression. Depression and pure fucking disbelief. How could this possibly have happened? How were we duped into thinking this team could compete for a super bowl? Was it all the talk about having the greatest, most unwavering, untouchable league MVP quarterback? Or was it possibly the sports analyst pundits crowning Bill Belichick as the all time greatest coach in the history of the NFL? If I were Belichick, after tonight I’d get that in writing. What a stinker they put out tonight. Just an absolute dud. To come out as flat and wide eyed as they did is unforgivable. ...What about all the inexperience on defense? Didn’t seem to be a problem 5 weeks ago. Why on earth should anything have changed between Dec. 6th and Jan. 16? How could the Jets possibly formulate a gameplan to beat this team? They lost 45-3! Sanchez doesn't belong on the same planet as the almighty Brady! Theres nothing they can possibly do!...This is the shit that hasn’t necessarily been said, but has been implied, all week long. At least by our side. There wasn’t an analyst in this city worth his weight in shit that thought the Patriots would actually lose this game. Maybe Felger, but hes a Green Bay guy anyways so fuck him. We all knew it could happen, just never thought it would. I mean shit, were 14-2! We've got Brady and Belichick! Caught up in the nostalgia of 2003-2004, we were blinded. Typical Patriots fan fashion, of which I am also guilty. And it makes me sick.

In the world of competitive fan-dom, there is nothing, NOTHING, worse than being overrated. It makes you look absolutely, unforgivably ridiculous. Think about it. Had the Patriots lost the now meaningless December 6 matchup with the Jets and finished 11-5 only to lose to those same Jets in the divisional round, there really wouldn’t be anything to say except that the Jets were by far the better team. They swept the Patriots 3-0 this season and won the division, how could any other result have occurred? Had the Patriots not been favored, had the Jets not talked shit enough to fill a river this past week, had the entire media not dubbed Belichick-Brady the greatest tandem in the history of sports, this loss would be just another playoff loss. Sure it would hurt, but I wouldn’t have my face in the toilet over it. Fact is, in our minds at least, the Patriots were never supposed to lose this game. Not in a billion billion years. Not with that quarterback and that head coach, and that’s why it feels so shitty. Its not that we lost, it’s that we now realize how stupid we are. We tricked ourselves into believing that this team was super bowl material when it was all just the ghosts-of-SuperBowls-past fucking with our heads. The Jets, the fucking JETS, in all their shit-talking, foot licking glory, came into Foxboro and straight beat the Patriots. No it wasn’t 45-3 in reverse, but I have never seen a defense confuse Tom Brady like that in his entire career. Apart from the first two drives which, by the way, only netted 3 points, the #1 ranked offense in the NFL looked more like the second string JV squad I used to lead for Foxboro High. In other words, miserable. Unable to sustain any kind of drive until the 4th quarter when, down by 10, they were able to sustain a 7:45 drive only to come up with nothing on the other end. Miserable. It is as if it were written that way.

After watching the Patriots win 3 super bowls in 4 seasons (which right now might as well have been 300 years ago), there was Champ Bailey in '05, Peyton Manning in '06, David Tyree in '07, the TFB ACL in '08 and the Baltimore butt whipping in '09. But that wasn’t enough. The football gods found yet another way to stick a needle in the eye of New England fans: A playoff loss at home to foot-lickin' Rex Ryan the loudmouth Jets. Is there anything worse than losing to a loudmouth? Seeing the Sanchize and company running around the field at Gillette at the end of the game with their arms out pretending to be “Jets” like a bunch of retarded 6 year olds literally made me throw up on my coffee table. I puked again when I saw Braylon Edwards’ back handspring as the clock expired. And again when I saw Bart Scott almost shit himself screaming into the microphone held by Armen Keteyan about how anyone can be beat. Are you fucking kidding me? After 14-2? Maybe after 11-5, but 14-2? After waiting the longest 2 weeks of my life for this game to finally arrive this is how I have to remember my beloved Patriots for the next 7 months? Hell, I might just move to Darfur. This makes their lives look all too easy.