It took me over a week to get around to summing up the Patriots’ 2006 season, and how it ended. It’s not that I was surprised to see Manning and the Colts finally be handed … er … win agains the Patriots. It’s just that they were so close – 1:10 – to another Superbowl appearance when a few months ago people wondered if they’d even win the division.
It was a season which started bad (1st play had Brady strip-sacked for a Buffalo TD) and had people coming and going right through to December. In November the team had a bad case of Fumblitis and then, like a veteran team will do, they just decided to buckle down. The turn-overs stopped, the offense got on track, and within a few weeks a scatter-shot looking team suddenly looked like a contender.
So let’s get to it, here’s the highlights and lowlights of the season.
Coach Belichick – Few NFL…
Paul “Fitzy” Fitzgerald is the Chief-Resident Movie Critic of The Townie News, a small but highly ineffective newspaper out of Billerica, MA. Which is one town over from where I grew up, and where my accountant still lives.
Anyway, these are freakin’ hilarious (and very R-Rated) and pretty well sum up how a lot of us Patriots fans feel after the Colts game. If you aren’t from the region, a lot of this will seem crash and, dare I say, “classless.”
Part … er … Paht 1:
Paht 2:
Fresh on the heels of comparing the New England Patriots to the Nazi army a couple of weeks ago, blow-hard Ditka decided to jump at the chance to trash the Patriots some more and said on his ESPN Radio show that he agreed with Ladainian Tomlinson that the Patriots behaved disrespectfully at the end of this weekends playoff game.
“That’s the Patriots,” Ditka said. “They get away with it.”
Now, lets have a little history lesson. Ditka is the Bears coach who let his players do the “Superbowl Shuffle” video. The poster-child for studio-produced smack-talk. As insulting and self-indulgent an exercise as the NFL ever saw.
He is also the same coach who, when safely ahead in the Superbowl against the Patriots, still decided to have William “The Refrigerator” Perry barrel in for a touch down to rub it in.
And this cretin has the nerve to lecture anyone on “class”?
ESPN is supposed to be a sports network,…
Courtesy of WAAF in Worcester, MA. An homage to Ladainian Tomlinson’s theatrics after the Patriots beat the Chargers.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Patriots 24 – Chargers 21
All week long we heard it. The Patriots defense was too old and too slow. No one could stop Tomlinson. Rivers is a Pro Bowl QB and Brady is having an off year. Merriman would destroy our offense.
But when the dust settled, it was the Patriots who showed poise and resolve down the stretch and the Chargers who were committing personal fouls as things started to work against them. The Patriots showed, once again, that they were the best clutch football team this year, and possibly of all time.
The win came from the usual cast of characters. Brady making clutch throws. Troy Brown stripping a San Diego defender of the ball after an interception. Rosevelt Colvin leaping to make an interception. And the defense holding the high-powered Charger offense outside of field goal range on drive after drive.
And the new faces contributed. Rookie kicker Stephen Gostkowski hit a 50-yard kick to start…
