… except for the five Super Bowls where they didn’t play the Giants.
I read PFT pretty regularly (more regularly than my employer would probably like, but hey, they have free wifi and I’m on my lunch break), and when I saw this article talking about drones flying over the Falcons practice before the Super Bowl, I was pretty sure Bill Palpatine and the Evil Empire were going to pull out another one.
Is it a coincidence that the Patriots did nothing until the second half, after they could analyze their practice footage and compare it to the game footage? With all the spying this team does, is it any wonder why Billy is the considered the best second-half adjustments coach ever?
SpyGate, Deflategate, Tuck Rule, and now this stuff? Their titles are all tainted with nonsense of some kind or another – not including their most recent which featured one drive (one drive) with three third down conversions for defensive holding – only one of which looked even remotely flag-worthy – for Tommy Ice to get a critical score. Yet in almost 70 dropbacks, the Patriots never got called for offensive holding once!? Those are rare numbers to say the least. But I guess if they didn’t get called for the facemask tackle against Sanu, they weren’t really going to call any f#cking thing!
I’m not one of those Packer fans that has to win the Super Bowl every year to feel like the season was a success and anyone should get to keep their job. I realize winning a Super Bowl in the age of parity if difficult. I relish them when we win, in large part because no one is making a strong case that anything nefarious happened. No one ever says “ooh, the refs let Collins get away with PI when he had that pick six” or “come on, there was blatant holding on Desmond Howard’s return.” Heck, forget the calls, no one has caught the Packers recording opponents illegally and Aaron Rodgers never destroyed evidence and played dumb about it.
To me, it’s worth the tradeoff. I’m big on integrity and Patriots rampantly, blatantly, systematically cheat.
Sure, there’s other explanations (the Falcons thought they’d won when Arthur Blank came down to the sideline, the Patriots are good, football is hard), but this is the one that makes me feel better.
S#ck it, cheaters!