We all we got. We all we need.

The Patriots of my youth give me every reason to snub bougie grunge losers

I grew up north of Boston where you had to be a Boston fan in all sports. Once you get south of Pawtucket, it’s dicey because there’s hints of Yankees or Giants fandom. But I was born in Lynn, and grew up in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and Boston teams leave a mahhk on you that never comes off, like a tattoo. I can’t speak to Maine, at least north of Portland, because things get weird up there; they shouldn’t because Maine was, for a long time, part of Massachusetts, but the Granite State has always been bird free and ruggedly independent. Except for sports: we are proud to wear the name “Masshole,” especially when the other team gets home field advantage from the rest of the country. Hate us. We eat your hate.

Pat Patriot don’t need your love.

Living in Georgia for 34 years, you’d think this psychosis would have faded, that I’d find a way to like the Atlanta Hawks or the Falcons. No, sorry. Those teams suck, even when they win, I can’t bring myself to root for them. The exception is the Braves, who I liked even when I lived up north. Anytime I go to the AL-NL Braves-Red Sox game, I root for both teams, and I’m not the only one singing “Sweet Caroline!” and shouting “Go Red Sox!” when they come out swinging. Seems like a lot of us northerners found themselves down here.

Now we got the Patriots back in the Super Bowl, and it’s a different team. The Pats I grew up with, and love to this day, were not the team that played in all those 2000s Super Bowls. The Pats I grew up got no love, because they were mostly terrible, even when they won.

Jim Plunkett. His record with the Pats over 4 seasons was 21-35. He got above 50% on pass completion for one season, in 1973. In 1974, he was intercepted a league-leading 22 times. In 1975, we dumped him after he separated his shoulder five games in. It was a blessing for both him and the Pats. Traded to San Francisco, for one season, Plunkett went on to win two Super Bowls playing for the Raiders (once in Oakland, once in L.A., a feat never repeated by any QB so far). Good for Jim—he’s 78 and still on the right side of the dirt, as my dad used to say, so things are pretty good for him.

Who did we get in New England? Steve Grogan. Grogan never won a Super Bowl, mostly because he played his entire career in Foxboro. That’s 16 years—a dog’s life, having a baby and the boy is a high school sophomore—playing for the most sad sack team, that even when they won, they were “losers.” I remember the year 1985 when Grogan took over for Tony Eason, his replacement, and led the Pats on a six game winning streak that got them into the Big Game, calling his own plays from scrimmage. I watched the Eason beat the Jets from some random restaurant in Myrtle Beach, when my brother, my friend Dennis and I flew down from Beverly (Mass) airport to Florida in a Cessna 172.

I was back north by the time they played in Super Bowl XX against the Bears, who were also making their first Super Bowl trip (they had won the NFL championship prior to the invention of the Big Game). That game left a mental pit of despair in my head so deep that I can still mentally stand at the edge of it and look into the abyss. The only thing that compares is the Red Sox losing to the Mets in game six of the World Series, later the same year.

Friggin’ Tony Eason¹. He got replaced in the second quarter of the Super Bowl, having completed no passes—that’s zero completions—with the team putting three points on the scoreboard only because of a Walter Payton fumble on his own 19 yard line in the Bears’ first possession. The Pats would only see the end zone once in the game, and that was a pass by Grogan to Irving Fryar in the 4th quarter. Actually, make that twice, since Grogan got tackled in his own end zone for a safety late in the game, capping the lopsided 46-10 loss and searing it into every Patriots fan’s soul.

My stepdad had it right, cruel as it is. His nickname for Grogan was “the loser.” I mean, personally, I have nothing against the guy. He was just dealt a bad hand, but then again, an NFL career isn’t such a bad life. Now at 72, he owns a sporting goods store in Mansfield, just a few minutes drive from the Patriots current home at Gillette Stadium. Bless him, Lord, because he has lived to see the deliverance of his team.

Listen, bud: the Patriots I grew up with sucked. The first coach I remember was Chuck Fairbanks. His record was 46-39. Most of that .541 record came from one good year, 1976, when the Pats went 11-3 on the strength of their offensive line. Sam Adams, Pete Brock, John Hannah, Bill Lenkaitis; and the running backs, Sam “The Bam” Cunningham, Don Calhoun; and wide receiver Darryl Stingley. Darryl Stingley. He got clobbered by a blood-freezing helmet hit into Raiders Jack Tatum’s shoulder pad, breaking his neck, in a 1978 preseason game. He never walked again, and his injury plagued coach John Madden’s conscience for the rest of his life—Madden never left Stingley’s side, emotionally speaking, and as a friend. Derek Stingley, Jr. is Darryl’s grandson, who now plays for the Houston Texans. Darryl died in 2007, but he was surely looking down from heaven as his old team beat the Texans this year.

I don’t remember much about the 1979-1981 Ron Erhardt coaching era, or the Ron Meyer days. In 1987, coach Raymond Berry sidelined Eason after a groin injury, and then there was the NFL strike. What a mess: the Pats fielded Grogan for six games, Tom Ramsey for three games, Eason started three, Bob Bleier (who’s that?) started twice, and Doug Flutie, yes the one and only, started wearing a Pats uniform. You know, in 12 years in the NFL, Flutie deserves more respect, with a 38-28 record and 54.7% completion rate. He went 6-3, 1150 yards in 1988 starting for the Pats, splitting the duty with Eason, Grogan, and Ramsey. The Grogan/Eason/Flutie/Ramsey era mercifully ended in 1991. Let’s just say the 80s were not good to Pats fans. The 80s was the decade I did most of my growing up.

The 90s was the decade of Bledsoe. Drew Bledsoe, who in 9 years with the Pats was three games over .500, with 166 touchdowns, and 239 yards per game. And those were his salad years in the NFL. I don’t blame Bledsoe for the lost season of 1990, where the Pats won only a single game, and that one was on the road against the Colts. I don’t blame him for the 6-10 in 1991 or 2-14 in 1992, because he wasn’t playing then. In 1993, the Pats said goodbye to Pat Patriot and adopted their new logo design. The new logo has grown on me, to be honest. From 1993 to 2000, it was all Drew, and none of it was particularly great, except for 1996. That year, the Pats, under head coach Bill Parcells and assistant head coach Bill Belichick, made it to the Super Bowl again after beating the Steelers and the Jaguars at home in the playoffs. Of course, they lost to the Packers 35-21 at the Superdome—at least they were ahead at the end of the first quarter, so it wasn’t a total blowout. One thing I remember from that game is then-rookie Adam Vinatieri’s kickoff getting returned 99 yards by Desmond Howard for a Green Bay touchdown.

In 1997, Parcells turned coaching duties over to Pete Carroll, after being catfished by the Jets, who also hired Belichick in a legal charade. Funny, Parcells did wonders with the Jets, who still haven’t won a Super Bowl since before men walked on the moon. Seems all the Parcells magic faded after he left the Giants. Carroll, as everyone knows, went on to coach the Seattle Seahawks. He led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl victory, squashing the Broncos 43-8 in 2014, then doubled up in 2015 for the Seahawks in a second consecutive Super Bowl, against the Pats. It was under Pete Carroll’s lead that offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell made the fateful call to keep the ball out of Marshawn Lynch’s hands on the Patriots 1-yard line with 26 seconds to play. A touchdown would have won the game, but Malcolm Butler’s pass was intercepted. So sad, too bad. Pete Carroll won his only Super Bowl for the Patriots, while coaching for Seattle.

Then the football gods aligned the stars for the Patriots to have the greatest winning streak in the history of the NFL: Belichick plus Tom Brady equals trophies. MVP trophies, Vince Lombardi trophies, coach of the year trophies, and trophy wives. These were the years of retributive victory. It was the trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath had been stored for decades. It was the loosing of the fateful lightning of Brady’s right arm, the terrible swift sword of nine AFC championships, and six Super Bowl wins (including the one Pete Carroll won). Glory, glory, frickin’ hallelujah. But for me, those were not the Patriots I grew up with. I was like a young Viking walking in the halls of Valhalla, or a hobbit visiting with the Valar. I felt I didn’t belong there.

The Patriots were so good in those years that the rest of the world had to resort to accusing them of cheating pretty regularly. Deflate-gate. Belichick’s play-stealing video scandal. All I got to say is that other teams do the same stuff, but since they weren’t winning, who cared?

The only trophies which have eluded Belichick and Pats owner Robert Kraft are places in the Football Hall of Fame, which cannot be won, but must be granted. Granted, not by the football gods, but by people. People, who after nearly two decades of lording over by Tom Brady and his crew, are happy to stick them with any kind of indignity wherever it fits.

So now, there’s a new Patriots team, led by a former linebacker, a defensive player, a real guy, Mike Vrabel. There’s a new quarterback, not a replacement for Drew Bledsoe, but a fresh-faced do-everything young Superman, Drake Maye, whose nickname is Drake Maye. I feel like I belong again. Vrabel is the connection back to the Belichick-Brady years—he even caught a touchdown as an eligible receiver in Super Bowl XXXVIII, vengeance for the one Refrigerator Perry caught in 1986 (deep in the abyss of my mind).

And this new Patriots team, having vanquished the Chargers, Texans, and Broncos, gets to face the Seahawks once again. The haters say that the Rams-Seahawks game was the “real” Super Bowl, and this one is the runner-up game. The haters say that Bo Nix would have beat the Pats (maybe?). But we play with the reality we get, not the one we want. The haters say that the Seahawks are going to trash the Pats.

You know, Boston was under siege for like a year by the British. The redcoats had the place sealed off, until Henry Knox showed up dragging 60 tons of British cannon 300 miles from Ticonderoga. He set those guns up on the heights of Dorchestah, and boom! The British packed their camp and departed. I don’t think anyone would lay siege to Seattle. I’m going with Jesse Singal on this one: Seattle does exist!

You want unfair? Unfair would be a city that has done so little to pull its weight, that barely even pretends to be a real place — and only engages in such pretending while draped sullenly in dull flannel — winning the Super Bowl.

Huzzah! Jesse says the game will be 55-0, Pats, and Seahawks fans would be lucky if it’s that close. I might be a bit more generous: 55-7. They hate us ‘cause they ain’t us, baby. Hate away, you of the tribe who didn’t live through the suck years. We all we got. We all we need.

1. When last seen, about 24 years ago, Tony Eason was coaching basketball near Sacramento, California. He’s now 66 years old, and I hope he’s enjoying life.