FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Around noon on Sunday, Scott Zolak was sitting at home with his children and decided to make a sign to bring to the AFC championship game. Zolak spent seven seasons during the 1990s as a fan-favorite quarterback for the New England Patriots. He now works on the team’s radio broadcasts while co-hosting a highly rated talk show on 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston.

Trying to seize the moment, Zolak grabbed an old folder, laid it out flat, wrote three words on it and then had his 12- and 7-year-olds color it in with markers.

“Where is Roger,” the sign read.

As the Patriots’ 36-17 blowout of Pittsburgh wound down Sunday night, Zolak pulled the sign out of his bag and held it out the open window of a Gillette Stadium radio booth. The video scoreboard operator zoomed in on it. The place immediately went nuts.

“Rog-ah, Rog-ah” the fans began chanting, mocking NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who has failed to show up in Foxborough for two seasons now, or ever since he oversaw the controversial deflate-gate scandal.

View photos Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are headed to their seventh Super Bowl together. (AP) More

Goodell spent Sunday at the NFC championship game in Atlanta, his second consecutive week at a Falcons home game. This occurs much to the bemusement of New England fans who have taken his hideout act as proof of NFL weakness in deflate-gate and the commissioner’s personal distaste for the Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady. Despite a $44 million-per-year salary, Goodell can’t seem to show his face around here.

“For a number of reasons,” Patriots owner Bob Kraft would say later, his message anything but cryptic, “everyone in this stadium understands how big this win was.”

Big in that it sent New England to a record ninth Super Bowl, including seven under the direction of coach Bill Belichick and Brady. Big also, however, in that this is now a show of force from a franchise still bitter over how it was treated during the bizarre and shoddy investigation into the air pressure of footballs in the AFC title game two years ago.

Goodell can’t avoid the Patriots now. The commissioner will be in Houston for the Super Bowl against the Falcons, where a potential delicious/uncomfortable (depending on your perspective) trophy presentation awaits. Brady could even accept the Super Bowl MVP trophy to conclude a season that began with a four-game, Goodell-upheld suspension after an intense federal court battle between player and commissioner.

View photos This was the image the Patriots put on their scoreboard on Sunday. (via Twitter/@barstoolsports) More

The Falcons will provide a formidable opponent and be the Patriots’ primary focus. Goodell, however, will loom over everything, much of it his own self-doing.

Here in New England, Goodell and his office are blamed for a rush to judgment on deflate-gate, for conducting a lengthy investigation that was about proving a conclusion, not seeking the truth, for leaking prejudicial and inaccurate information to frame the Pats in the arena of public opinion and even completely misrepresenting Brady’s under oath testimony, essentially punishing him for saying the exact opposite of what he actually said.

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