Update, Jan. 4: The football Gods read this article and decided to intervene! For once, the prophecy did not come true. Tom Brady and the Patriots were eliminated from the Wild Card Round of the playoffs by none other than Ryan Tannehill, Derrick Henry, and Mike Vrabel’s Titans. It was a thriller of a game that went down to the final seconds — so much so that many expected more Brady heroics. They didn’t happen. At least, until all of reality skips like a busted CD and we wake up tomorrow to the alternate reality where they did, in fact, win.

The only acceptable conclusion to a wild NFL season where nothing makes sense is for the Patriots to somehow prevail and win yet another Super Bowl. This might make you confused, or even angry (or thrilled if you’re a Pats fan) — but you’re just going to have to accept that fate has intervened and direct your ire at whatever deity you think controls such things.

The 21st century added two Great Old Ones to Lovecraft’s pantheon alongside Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. Each year the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Patriots feud for supremacy, sucking the will out of everyone but their most ardent cultists and filling the world with dread. Forces in college football managed to seal The Tide away, preventing it from ascending to the throne in 2019 — which now means Pats is free to take on the mantle.

The Tide, god of order and the process, rules over a land of heat and humidity and devours everything around it.

Pats, the god of organization and tricks, towers over a realm of ice and snow to claim victory by any means necessary.

There can only be one. There must be one.

Such has been the pattern for five years. When Alabama wins a title the Patriots don’t, and vice versa. Sealed away in a dark tome of misery, crudely bound with animal flesh and hewn out of obsidian, its pages spelled out the arrival of the gods and our collective sports destruction.

2014: Patriots win the Super Bowl, Alabama finishes fourth.

2015: Alabama wins National Championship, Patriots lose in AFC Championship.

2016: Patriots win the Super Bowl, Alabama loses in National Championship.

2017: Alabama wins National Championship, Patriots lose in Super Bowl.

2018: Patriots win the Super Bowl, Alabama loses in National Championship.

2019: Alabama finishes ninth.

This marks the sixth year of the cycle, and it cannot be broken. With the Tide failing to make the College Football Playoff, it opens the door for Pats to walk their way into Miami and leave with the Lombardi Trophy. Free to rub it in everyone else’s faces while Tom Brady starts putting rings on his toes as he quickly runs out of fingers.

It’s not fair, but prophecies aren’t supposed to be fair. They simply herald the future and tell us what will occur, not what we want to take place. Obviously nobody outside of New England wants the Patriots to win ANOTHER Super Bowl, but there’s a far greater concern here.

The five-year cycle created a delicate balance. Two gods battling for supremacy and keeping each other in check. The world might not be happy with either being in control, but at least the push and pull ensured that neither could consume the world. Now that is at risk. This should have been Bama’s year. Their turn in the cycle to win once again. There is now a vacuum — one which leaves the door open for Pats to go back-to-back and throw off the balance of our world.

We are facing a break in the order. A rejection of what is supposed to happen. Chaos is the absence of order, and in a battle of order and chaos it’s always the latter which tears down the former and makes it play at their level. We need to realize that this can only result in the ultimate lord of chaos to ascend and control everything.

Save our souls.