The Most Miserable 18-1 Season in History
From patriotsdaily.com: Let me first start by saying that this column was going to be written even if the Patriots had won on Sunday night. The only difference is that the column would’ve been entitled “The Most Miserable Perfect Season in History.”
On the field, this Patriots team was a fan’s dream. They were talented, charismatic and had an obvious flair for the dramatic. They had the highest scoring offense of all time, with the superstar quarterback and ridiculously gifted wide receiver each breaking high-profile NFL records in the process. They had a resourceful defense, which while aging, still had experience and guile unmatched by most units across the league.
Yet, in talking to a number of people, this was the least fun that they’ve had following football that they can ever remember.
What made it that way? Certainly not the games. The games - even the blowouts, were all marvelously entertaining.
It was the coverage of this team. Right from training camp, there was always something to pick at and criticize. Randy Moss didn’t play a single down in the preseason - there was talk that he just didn’t want to work. Some speculated that he wouldn’t even make the team out of training camp. How silly does that notion look now? Others stated that Tom Brady was going to be distracted because of his personal life, having just become a new father, and trying to keep up with his supermodel girlfriend who wasn’t the mother of the child would somehow effect his performance on the field. With all that has happened since that time, these issues might seem like ancient history, but during training camp, we got almost daily reminders of these stories.
It turned out that that was just the beginning. There was Spygate. Then the Patriots were winning by too much and the media complained endlessly that they were running up the scores, humiliating their opponents and that they had no class. Meanwhile, the wins were piling up, one after the other. Teams around the league suddenly figured out that by being the team that handed the Patriots their first loss, they would reap untold reams of media adulation. So they started making games against the Patriots their personal Super Bowl. Teams like the Eagles, Ravens and Jets put everything they could into their games against the Patriots, only to come up short. But since they made the games close, all of a sudden the media was knocking the Patriots because they weren’t winning by enough. Then they might not be able to play in the cold. Then they didn’t have a running game. Then Randy Moss ended up having a restraining order issued against him in Florida. The Patriots were a dirty team that took cheap shots at helpless opponents.
It seemed that almost every day this season there was some drama going on that took away from the football. From the first day of training camp to the last second of the Super Bowl, there the naysayers and finger-waggers were lined up, doing their best to be “objective” in their coverage.
The worst part was that you couldn’t get away from it if you tried.
I think if one word sums up the coverage of the Patriots this season, it is embarrassing.
This season marked a change in a number of ways in which the Patriots have been covered. For one, the Boston Herald went to much more of a tabloid/gossip style of reporting. Fitting because they are a tabloid. It wasn’t always this way. In the early years of the Tom Brady era, the Herald had the best coverage of the team, hands down, while the Globe assigned bitter old men like Nick Cafardo and Ron Borges to the Patriots beat. (To be fair, the Herald did saddle us with Kevin Mannix for many years.)
Even at the start of this season, things were as good as they’ve ever been in terms of beat reporter coverage. Albert Breer was contributing to the Herald through the MetroWest Daily News, and formed a solid 1-2 punch on the Herald’s The Point After blog. When the business relationship between the papers ended, and Breer headed to Dallas, the Herald started sending Karen Guregian to work with Tomase on the beat. While Guregian is a competent reporter, the coverage immediately suffered with the loss of Breer. The Herald started featuring the Patriots in the Inside Track as much as they did in the sports pages, and sensationalistic headlines atop meaningless and pointless articles started to become the norm. The Herald appears to be a New York Post wannabe these days, and that’s not a favorable comparison. For The Rest Click Here
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