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In response to Bill Simmons’ column today, I wrote him this email…

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Hi Bill,

Big fan. Love your columns. But I think you’re missing the big point, and your column today exemplifies it: it’s not that we’re unable to recognize a great team anymore, it’s that we dislike the Patriots FANS. Here’s a synopsis of how most football fans think now:

• Average sports fan: Man, those Patriots are tough and gritty and great. They have a great team. I think they’re always on the short list of Super Bowl contenders
• Pats fan (before/during season): Our team’s so underappreciated. They’re such underdogs. If they win the Super Bowl it’ll be a miracle.
• Pats fan (during playoffs): See? We won another game. You guys are so stupid, we know best. It’s us against the world. We’re so untalented. We’re such overachievers. etc. etc. etc.

The big secret that you don’t know? Everyone knows and thinks the Patriots are great except for, apparently, Patriots fans (I picked you guys to beat SD, as did many people). Tom Brady is great. We all recognize that. We also all recognize that he isn’t too strong or fast, but that (if you watch) he has a cannon arm, amazing pocket presence, and incredible clutchtime characteristics. We all like him. Belichick is great. He’s a tough guy and he’s smart and he just LOOKS like a football coach. In fact, I think we like EVERY player on the Patriots individually and as a team. It’s a great group of overachievers who works its collective ass off, execute well in different facets of the game, and win games that a pure talent contest indicates that they’re not supposed to win. The thing is, we all GET it.

The problem is that Pats fans will NEVER let the underdog “overachiever” stuff die. We keep hearing it all of the damn time. You touched on it a little during your column, but we’re tired of Pats fans talking ALL the TIME about how they’re overcoming so much. They are not. They have the best QB, the best coach, the best front office, the best defensive lineman, and the best character players. They are better than all the teams in a holistic team-oriented way.

A message to you and all of your Pats fans: don’t downgrade your team anymore by needing to spout off about how underappreciated they are and maybe you’ll find people liking them. Every time a Patriots fan talks about how underappreciated his team is, everyone cringes because they’re not. And then we hate the Pats fans who are overzealous and haughty (i.e. Red Sox fans), which is an entirely separate issue.

The truth is that we all like the Pats. We think they’re very good, not in a 40-yard dash time way, but in a football way. We’re all smart enough to recognize that. It’s just that we think they’re great and deserve to be there, and you guys (Pats fans) think they’re good and that everyone else thinks they’re lucky. That’s why we don’t harp on them all the time. The moment you guys start acting like you have the best team in football, we’ll start liking them, because they are very likeable.

Thanks and keep up the good work, even though your wife’s mini-columns are even more entertaining than yours.

Cheers,

Jack