It wasn’t pretty and the 2009 Patriots clearly have a lot of work left to do, but it was a win in classic Patriots fashion none the less.

For the better part of three quarters they played as if half-asleep. The Bills offense was able to push down the field, the Patriots offensive line had trouble giving Brady time to throw and even when they brought in an extra lineman, the Bills were still blowing up run plays. Brady looked uncomfortable, Welker was dropping passes – things looked bad.

Until the fourth quarter. All of a sudden Brady, Moss, Welker, and Faulk are connecting and driving down the field as expected. The defense started to play with some intensity. And then there was: The Fumble. The Bills kick returner brought the ball out of the end zone and Merriweather and Woods stripped the ball, allowing the kicker, Gostkowski, to pounce on it. Brady connected to Watson twice in the span of a few minutes to give the Pats a 1-point win.

It was kind of like the way they used to win games before they were a “dynasty.” They’ll need more of these as this game showed a lot of…

Someone posted a link to this video on Twitter recently. I saw it when it first came out back in the ’70′s. Powerful stuff.

The movie “The Wave” is based on a novel by Morton Rhue and is based on a true story that happend in 1967 at Gordon High School in Palo Alto. The teacher starts an experiment with his students trying to show them how the Nazi regime was able to invluence so many people and why no one stopped them.

He created his own symbol (the wave), a dressing code, behaviour rules and a motto:

“Strength through discipline, Strength through community, Strength through action.”

The message is simple – what happened back in the 1930′s and 1940′s wasn’t so “unique” to Germany or to that era. It’s part of the human condition.

Watch it here.

Or here: