The Further You’re Away From the Patriots, the Better They Look
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — To best appreciate what the New England Patriots are and what they’ve been for this century, the thing to do is go someplace far from Foxborough, some place on the wrong side of the NFL tracks.
This city’s the perfect location to view the Pats from afar. It’s under the NFL tracks.
Over a decade of consistent victory has a down side. It tends to spoil fans and media, who, being mostly normal, lack the obsessive dedication to winning that allows the denizens of Camp Belichick to keep rolling on through the seasons. Even the most devout fan can be jaded by success. Oddly enough, it makes for more stress. Close wins feel like losses somehow. Actual losses seem like catastrophes. On the whole, Boston took the Brink’s job more calmly than the rout the Pats suffered in Kansas City in September.
At some point in almost all of the last 14 seasons, New Englanders have spent time fretting that the Patriots might not get a first round bye for the playoffs. But I wouldn’t advise anyone back home to admit such a thing down here. Those Jaguars fans hardy enough to support the team in public would resent it. They regard Patriots fans the way fans in almost every other NFL town does — as lucky stiffs.
The Jaguars were 3-13 this year. They were 4-12 the year before. They have been betting favorites in exactly two games in the last three seasons. Head coach Gus Bradley fired offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch earlier in the week. That’s a move a coach makes when he knows he has only one season left to turn it around or he’ll be gone by next New Year’s Eve. Don’t think of Fisch as a scapegoat, though. The Jaguars have ranked 32nd and last in the league in offense in both 2013 and 2014.
One of the “looking ahead’’ stories recapping the Jaguars’ lost season in the local newspaper “The Florida Times-Union’’ summarized the positions the team needed to address in the draft and free agency as “right tackle, free safety, defensive end, running back, linebacker and tight end.’’ In other words, the Jags don’t have even competent NFL starters at almost half the positions on their team.
Other cities may be arguing about playoff lineups. The question here is “use the third pick in the draft or trade down?’’ That’s pretty much been Jacksonville’s offseason issue every year the Pats have been at the top of the pro football food chain. Worst of all, it’s only the question debated by the hardest core of Jaguar fans. More of them are wondering “should I renew my season tickets?’’
The Jags are supported more out of civic boosterism than true love. That’s reserved for Florida and Florida State football. So when the Jags don’t win, there’s more apathy than outrage. The team is so downtrodden, it doesn’t really feel as if the Jaguars are an actual NFL franchise. That in turn leads to the obvious suspicion that the Jags will eventually move to LA or London and end everyone’s suffering.
Your team might move away. It’s the ultimate fan fear. This may be hard to grasp for younger readers, but for any Patriots fan 40 or over, that fear should be a nasty memory. They at least should have empathy with the Jaguars fans of today.
The Jaguars remind me nothing so much as the Patriots of 1987-1991 I covered as a beat reporter for the Herald. From the financial crisis afflicting the Sullivan family to the low comedy of the Victor Kiam era, its business office chaos was much more gripping entertainment than any of the games the team played. The Patriots didn’t have a practice field. It was difficult to watch players working out on the grounds of the former Wrentham State Hospital without thinking that the New England franchise wasn’t a real pro football team. It was some kind of twisted internship program for the other clubs.
And every offseason, the most vital part of my duties as a beat guy were tracking down the rumors spread by hopeful pols and business leaders in places like Sacramento, Birmingham and, yes, Jacksonville that the Patriots would pull up stakes and move to their burgs. If it had happened, I couldn’t have blamed whoever bought the team and relocated. The Pats sure seemed at a dead end where they were.
In chronological order, James Orthwein, Bill Parcells, Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady stabilized the New England franchise, got it off the mat as a football team, gave it a long range future and made it a champion. I tell that to my Jacksonville friends and acquaintances because really, the only decent way to treat a Jaguars fan is to try to cheer one up. Failure is not a given.
Patriots followers should spend some time this bye week thinking about the Jaguars and the franchises all too like them. Success is not a given, either. That was you once. Don’t get smug about what you have today. A continual sense of wonder and gratitude is the only proper attitude.
Any day we take the Patriots for granted is a day we’ve cheated ourselves.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com