2017 NFL Season Thread

[The Buscher]

If given the choice of the Eagles winning the Super Bowl or the Pats winning five more Super Bowls in a row, I'm taking the latter.

[Meacon Keaton]

I'm ready for baseball. 

[jrhodes]

I think this is the worst Super Bowl match-up in my ten-plus years as an NFL fan.

[Your Mom]

We're all cheering for the Patriots now? 

[Meacon Keaton]

Sure. Which means this will be the one where they lose. 

[Mick]

[The Buscher]

This is definitely by least anticipated Super Bowl.  I didn't even mind the first Pats/Eagles one as much because the Pats were nowhere near as dislikable as they are now, I didn't think they'd still be practically unstoppable 13 years later.

[Mick]

3 minutes ago, Buschoru Suzuki said:

This is definitely by least anticipated Super Bowl.  I didn't even mind the first Pats/Eagles one as much because the Pats were nowhere near as dislikable as they are now, I didn't think they'd still be practically unstoppable 13 years later.

 

 I was thinking about this on the way home, about all the hatred the Patriots receive for being such a successful franchise. I mean, I just don't get all the hate for that reason. Bills fan? Ok. Steelers, Colts, etc? You know, playoff rivals? Fine. But FFS, you don't hear anybody bitching about Michael Jordan and the six NBA titles he won with the Bulls . 

[gunnar hendershow]

Personally I'd take a thousand Philly phans over 1 Masshole.

[Meacon Keaton]

Michael Jordan didn't get caught cheating multiple times, did he? I mean I hate the Patriots probably less than most, but let's not act like their hands have always been clean in their dominance. 

[Schlitzbrille]

24 minutes ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

We're all cheering for the Patriots now? 

Did they take Jimmy G back and/or Brady retire?

[The Buscher]

3 minutes ago, Mick said:

I was thinking about this on the way home, about all the hatred the Patriots receive for being such a successful franchise. I mean, I just don't get all the hate for that reason. Bills fan? Ok. Steelers, Colts, etc? You know, playoff rivals? Fine. But FFS, you don't hear anybody bitching about Michael Jordan and the six NBA titles he won with the Bulls . 

I did, I haaaaaated the Bulls as a kid and would get mad that they won every single year.  Despite living in Connecticut so many friends I knew became Bulls and Cowboys fans and it was just so obvious they were front-running.

I mean I knew a ton of Yankee "fans" that couldn't name anyone besides Jeter, but at least being the local team I could still accept it.  But even from a young age this mindset of "need to pick a team, I'll just pick the out of town team because they're good" mindset always pissed me off.

And yes I realize it's dumb to hate a team just for being successful constantly.  But I've never come close to getting to see my own teams have a dynasty, so fuck 'em.

[Taxation is Theft]

The Patriots are Duke basketball or Schumacher at Ferrari. What they have managed over the past fifteen or so years will one day be appreciated. For now though, its like 'Fuck dude. Knock it off.'

[gunnar hendershow]

2 minutes ago, Buschoru Suzuki said:

I did, I haaaaaated the Bulls as a kid and would get mad that they won every single year.  Despite living in Connecticut so many friends I knew became Bulls and Cowboys fans and it was just so obvious they were front-running.

I mean I knew a ton of Yankee "fans" that couldn't name anyone besides Jeter, but at least being the local team I could still accept it.  But even from a young age this mindset of "need to pick a team, I'll just pick the out of town team because they're good" mindset always pissed me off.

And yes I realize it's dumb to hate a team just for being successful constantly.  But I've never come close to getting to see my own teams have a dynasty, so fuck 'em.

One thing with dynasties is they get boring. A lot of feelings towards the Patriots are much less "wow this is incredible" and more "ugh, them again?" because of how bored everyone is with the whole thing. All the questions that persisted about the Brady/Belichick dynasty ended with Malcolm Butler's interception in Super Bowl XLIX. It's been 15 years now, with 1 down year, a torn ACL year, and only 2 other years when they didn't really have a shot despite making the playoffs. All the other great dynasties didn't even do this. Montana's 49ers came the closest but they had some very fierce competition, and a handful of down years.

What's made the Pats dynasty (and the NFL as a whole) even more boring lately is the lack of peers. For awhile he had Manning and they met at least once almost every year. But even that's gone. It's just boring, and it doesn't show any signs of stopping. It's like if when Jordan came out of his 2nd retirement he signed on with the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. It would have been boring, all of Jordan's rivals were retired (or should have been) by then and the team he was on would have been so far ahead of any competition. At least during the dynasty in the 90s he vanquished each major challenger, first Isaiah to get there, then Magic, then Barkley, then the Sonics, then Malone & Stockton. He also beat Ewing, Reggie, and Shaq in multiple years to get out of the East. Basically these were legitimate rivalries, but he got over each of them. It kept it interesting.

The Bulls themselves benefitted from not going past their expiration date. They had the 1st threepeat, Jordan's initial retirement, the 2nd threepeat, and that was it. Gretzky's Oilers could have won well into the early 90s but money forced that team to get broken up, so again they didn't get overly stale. The Yankees with Jeter managed to win a ton early in his career and then perpetually lose later on except for 2009. It was still boring to many fans to always see them in the playoffs, but they're also a special case where they are the most popular baseball team in the country by a longshot.

But meanwhile we're on year 15 of the Patriots dynasty, and we could very well have 4 or 5 still to go. There's no intrigue left. No rivals for Brady. No humps to get over. All that's left is really for a torch to get passed and nobody really cares too much about that until well after the fact.

[GhostMachine]

College has the Gator Bowl, but I'm dubbing this year's NFL Championship game...

The Hater Bowl.

Because this has to be the two most hated franchises in the NFL right now. 

I'm going to be for the Patriots (whilst holding my nose), and I hope the halftime score has the Patriots up 30+. Hell, I hope for the biggest asskicking in Super Bowl history. (Only since hoping for the 73-0 beating the Bears gave Washington in 1940, the worst loss in NFL history, would be unrealistic.)

 

[Your Mom]

So you guys who hate the Eagles it's because you like a rival of theirs right?

[Lint]

Ya'll are hating, meanwhile I'm sitting here watching Zach Ertz's wife Julie find out they won

[Mick]

40 minutes ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

So you guys who hate the Eagles it's because you like a rival of theirs right?

No, it's because they beat the Bucs two years in a row in the playoffs, and in the NFC Championship Game, nobody gave us a chance. It was all "lol bucs". 

And we silenced the crowd that booed Santa. The grand finale for the Vet was Tampa Bay denying the title they, in their arrogance, presumed was theirs.

That is why I hate the Eagles and that is why I hope New England breaks the Playoff scoring record. 

[GhostMachine]

42 minutes ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

So you guys who hate the Eagles it's because you like a rival of theirs right?

Oh, I'd hate the Eagles even if I wasn't a Cowboys fan. I generally hate all Philadelphia sports teams due to their home fans' well deserved reputation as the worst fans (ie, biggest assholes, sore winners AND sore losers). The ONLY scenario in which I'd pull for a Philadelphia team? A Phillies vs. Yankees World Series. Because besides the Alabama Crimson Tide in college football, there's no team I hate as much as the Yankees. 

But I do have to admit that the fans continuing to cheer even after it was clear that Michael Irvin was hurt (with what turned out to be a career ending injury) also stuck in my craw. 

[The Buscher]

It's easy to see why people are getting burned out on the Pats and overall lack of parity in the AFC.  I mean, just look at the breakdown of the AFC QBs over the last 17 Super Bowls:

Tom Brady:  8
Peyton Manning:  4
Ben Roethlisberger:  3
Joe Flacco:  1
Rich Gannon:  1

Numerous times the AFC Title game was some combination of those first three QBs, guaranteeing the dominance would continue no matter what.  Flacco also needed to beat the Pats in the AFC Title game to get to his Super Bowl.  So the Gannon year was the only one where one of the top three QBs wasn't an AFC finalist, and Roethlisberger wasn't even in the league yet.

Studies have suggested that when a child reaches roughly seven years of age, they forget their earliest childhood memories but can retain memories from beyond that date.  The Pats won their first SB in 2002.  So you can make a reasonable argument that virtually nobody born in 1995 or later has any memory of an AFC that wasn't dominated by the same QBs year in, year out.