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Some people are fans of the New England Patriots. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New England Patriots. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.



Your team: The Richard Spencer Blues Explosion.


Your 2016 record: 14-2. Super Bowl champions. MAGA.


Your coach: Football Steve Bannon.


“And there were no days off!” Indeed, with that one battle cry, the masses did cheer and then resume their jobs at the munitions factory, wherein they labored day and night all for the GLORIES OF THE STATE.

I’m gonna be perfectly honest: I’m still stunned by the Trump letter. It’s not simply that Belichick wrote it, but also the content of the letter itself:

Congratulations on a tremendous campaign. You have to help with an unbelievable slanted and negative media and have come out beautifully. You have proven to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you for the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable.


Come on man, he sounds EXACTLY like Trump. How is this the same guy? Bill Belichick should fucking HATE the President. The President is a fat, lazy, weak blowhard. How is the greatest football mind in history hoodwinked here? DID HE NOT STUDY THE TAPE? And what business does Bill Belichick, of all people, have complaining about the media? This guy treats the media like absolute shit and they still hang on his every word, praying they get lucky and that Daddy gifts them a 20-minute treatise on long snapping if they happen to ask just the right, football-only question. He’s tamed the media like a dog, and he’s still bitching just because people wanna ask him about the Buttfumble? Man, fuck him blind. The Red Sox learned spying from this man.

And for real, I bet he’s TOTALLY into racial scouting. Loogit all the undrafted white dudes he claimed off the scrap heap. “I need boys who’ll pick up my system FAST.”


Your quarterback: Chia seed android Tom Brady.


Here’s a fella who will face any NFL defense but not any question asking him about his friends. Take away Ballghazi and everything about Tom Brady is still shady as all fuck. He eats vegan dog food. He squirts salt packets into his water and claims it’s a miracle drug. He’s spent an inordinate amount of time trying to disguise his own history of concussions and claiming that he has miraculously avoided them thanks to stretching a lot and eschewing all seeded berries. He sticks a MAGA hat in his locker and then acts offended when anyone dares to ask if he supports Trump, then skips out on the White House visit. His personal training guru is a con man. He workshops TV shows with Jim Gray. He uses money from one charity to pay another charity. He defies the normal limits of aging for pro athletes and NO ONE in the media arches an eyebrow at it because they’re all DESPERATE to be the first reporter to get decent copy out of him.

He takes below-market value for a salary because he can (and because I already know damn well he’s gonna get gifted part ownership of the team when he retires), which seduces idiot GMs and fans of other teams into thinking their players ought to fuck themselves in the ass for the sake of THE TEAM. On the field, Brady is a god, and off of it he is a disingenuous cipher. I could argue that Tom Brady represents everything wrong with America. Here’s a man who’s too rich and comfortable with his life to risk a goddamn thing off the field. He exists only to further his own ends while pretending to just be a good guy. It’s like someone made Ivanka Trump into a football player. He’s a sniveling, snaky, empty-headed goon. When we finally go to Nuclear War and most of the planet is wiped out, Brady will still be here, living behind a wall, sitting by a pool with a stupid grin on his face, wondering what all the negativity is about.


What’s new that sucks: God, they’re fucking loaded everywhere. Brady could get decapitated and they’d still be favored to win the Super Bowl with Pizza Boy at QB. Name another team that would cut Kony Ealy just because they could. They traded for Brandin Cooks. They swiped Stephon Gilmore and David Harris from their hapless division rivals. They added backs Mike Gillislee and Rex Burkhead (WHITE PLAYER ALERT) in an effort to continue their tradition of giving no RB consistent touches. They lost Julian Edelman for the season but that’ll only give NEXT MAN UP chubbies to every supposed diehard fan now living in Santa Monica. Oh, and half their division is staging two of the most blatant tank jobs in league history.


Aaron Hernandez got his conviction voided by killing himself. That was like the Tuck Rule of murder.

What has always sucked: Congrats, Patriots fans! You are the official team of the alt-right! They’re all yours. More important, your team is now emblematic of an America that is distorted beyond recognition: a place where people are less revered than the bold and brave companies that maximize delivery and efficiency by phasing out every last trace of humanity and treating people like coal to be shoveled into a furnace. The Patriots can even get NFL players to buy into this shit. Players are like, “Wow, these guys really know how to get the most out of me right before paying me what I’m actually worth!” This team dangled Malcolm Butler all offseason and then decided to keep him in the fold, and of course he’ll still play brilliantly for them because NFL players know that you can either be treated like shit in New England and win, or be treated well elsewhere and lose.


Their fans love to call in to Dipshit and Chuckles in the AM so they can complain about how a first-round pick who happens to be black should get cut to “send a message,” since pretending to be the miserable man in charge of this team is the only way these people can find any joy. There’s nothing laudable about Brady, or Belichick, or horny-ass Robert Kraft. And there’s DEFINITELY nothing admirable about their loser fans (Marky Mark left early!), who still yank out their drunk fathers’ old Hugh Millen trading cards any time someone calls them a bandwagoner and who STILL feel victimized even after winning sports fan Powerball:







God, what a bunch of sour pricks. The fucking FBI helped your idiot quarterback find his jersey. You people are spoiled worse than a chihuahua on an airplane. I wish Mauricio Ortega had gotten away with it, dammit. I wish Edelman’s old teacher had told him to get fucked. I wanna show you something. Here’s a photo of the dude who got busted yanking the fire alarm in the Steelers’ hotel:


Tell me EVERY Pats fan doesn’t look exactly like that guy. He’s got it all: the Casey Affleck stubble, the dead eyes. These are the sullen drones who have the perfect temperament to cheer on a humorless monolith of an organization that smothers everything and everyone in cold gray fog. The machine wins. The many suffer for the enrichment of the few. Goody fucking two shoes. I’m gonna get even DRUNKER for this next Super Bowl win of theirs. It’s my only diversion.

And SUPER TRIPLE DURA-FUCK Mike Lombardi. This isn’t a rule, you big stupid fuck. And fuck Patriot Week.


Did you know? The Patriots have been outscored in Super Bowls by 38 points. By all metrics, they should only have THREE rings at most, and not five. And that’s before we deduct for all the cheating, which would bring their Pythagorean Super Bowl win total to -2.7.

Also, Gronk is getting traded at midseason. It’s a mortal lock. Belichick will stun the world by shipping him to L.A. and then his arm will fall off and he’ll triple puncture each lung.


What might not suck: Boston proper leads the league in thwarting Nazi rallies. NO ONE DENIES THIS. Maybe you should protest the football team next.

HEAR IT FROM PATS FANS!

[Ed. note: See if you can tell where these take a turn]

Brandon:

Because fuck us.

Andy:

Kill me. I’m surrounded by assholes.

Casey:

We might as well change our team helmet to MAGA hats.

Alistair:

Every time I see a Rex Burkhead jersey this season I’m going to feel bad for the single mother in Southie who didn’t get her child support payment instead.


Michael:

For me, being a Patriots fan sometimes feels like being a nice German person post WW2. Like, I get why everyone automatically assumes I’m a piece of shit. But I’m not, I swear!


Steve:

Two days after winning the Super Bowl, they filed to trademark the phrase “Blitz for Six.”


Rusty:

After Tom Brady’s suspension was confirmed last year, my Dad, a levelheaded white collar businessman, took to his brand new professional Twitter account to tweet “Patriots Lives Matter.” I convinced him over the phone to delete his account.


Shane:

The WEEI studio can burn.

Justin:

Fuck Curt Schilling.

Matt:

I can’t believe Wes Welker died for these people.

JR:

Rex Burkhead sounds like a dining hall at Choate.

Jared:

I couldn’t help but feel like I was rooting against Martin Luther King during the run-up to last year’s Super Bowl.


Michael:

The QB has turned himself into a QVC class action lawsuit waiting to happen, and when it does, he’ll be replaced with a life-sized Mediterranean Ken doll. Everyone associated with the team won’t stop saying “We’re on to next season”. I can’t handle the smugness of it.


Patrick:

With every victory and Super Bowl, there is always that lingering thought in the back of my mind that I am openly supporting everything I hate.


Hey:

Robert Kraft has morphed from folksy long time season-ticket holder into a Trump-loving douchebag who’ll check your checkbook balance and society status before he allows you the privilege of his company in the stadium.


Sean:

Like any good cult member I suppressed my conscience and actually bought a “Do Your Job” T-shirt. Never mind the nihilistic essence of a mantra which boils down every player’s humanity to that of a widget.


Brad:

The team brought in goats to training camp for fans to celebrate Brady’s 40th birthday. The organization whose coach sniffles, grunts, and honks about no player being above the team literally brought in a fucking petting zoo for their Bruschi jersey, jort-wearing fans. The fuck.


Dan:

The Patriots commissioned 283 diamonds in their Super Bowl ring, which somehow manages to combine the unsportsmanlike conduct of the Cobra Kai with the dickish gloating of somebody you blocked on Twitter sharing a screenshot of your block screen.


Pat:

I consider myself a reasonable, fun-loving Patriots fan, but I’m just Bruce Banner, and somewhere inside me there’s a Hulk wearing a COUNT THE RINGS shirt just waiting to burst out. It will happen. It happens every time I watch a game. My dog was more scared by my reaction to the Super Bowl than he was by the fireworks on the 4th of July. I’m buying him a thundershirt for the preseason.


Josh:

The Massachusetts state police released a list of the top 10 establishments where drunk drivers were getting shitfaced before putting their fat asses behind a wheel and getting pulled over for a DUI. Did Gillette Stadium make the top 10? You bet! And what was #1? Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar at Patriot Place.


Pete:

People didn’t throw up where they stood when Belichick tried to start a NO DAYS OFF chant. 1000% of the people at the parade just chanted and hooted despite literally having taken a day off to be there.


Jess:

Not too long ago I was going through airport security, and the TSA goon going through my bag noticed my son’s Patriot’s t-shirt and started giving me grief about it. The Patriots put me at a moral disadvantage to a TSA goon. That’s how bad the Patriots suck.


Taylor:

An incredible Super Bowl comeback was immediately co-opted by fucking Nazis. I fucking hate this team.


Joseph:

Patriots fans are the only ones in the league who STILL won’t shut the fuck up about Ballghazi.


Trever:

I am almost looking forward to the Patriots coming back to Earth so that I don’t need to see another Bro Dude in his 40's with a sleeveless jersey of Hernandez again.


Gene:

The fans are the fucking worst of any in the history of sports and if there’s one game this season where some MBA Bain consultant, no-student-loan fuck in a Hogan jersey doesn’t come with a 28-3 sign, I’ll be more shocked than the owner of that bookstore was when a woman showed up by herself to your reading of The Hike.


Jay:

Our celebrity fans (Affleck, Simmons, etc etc) are even more completely insufferable than the racist trolls hosting WEEI. I wish Eli Manning would die from a safe being dropped on him out of a skyscraper.


Jeremy:

The easiest way to RIP your inbox is to go on Patriots reddit and make a positive comment about Aaron Rodgers.


Meg:

I also wanted to include a link to Robert Kraft’s White House speech in which he compares Trump and the Patriots to the establishment of our country and gives the team credit for helping America after 9/11. I almost drove my car off a cliff when I originally heard it on the radio. Serves me right for listening to Boston sports talk.


Emily:

If you ever want to experience hell, check out Professor Thom’s during a playoff game. It’s a whole room of Sullys and their girlfriends in pink jerseys jeering in New England regional accents.


Jeremy:


Andrew:

Did you know that Edelman has a personal logo? Gross. If a Silicon Valley bro douche and a Crossfitter made a baby it would be Julian Edelman.


Rob:

This was as bullshit as the excuse. He represents every “die-hard fan” of this team.


Noah:

Fuck Goodell, that goddamn piece of shit should go eat a tire iron.

Tony:

When I was a teenager, I was watching the game in which Mo Lewis nearly manslaughtered Drew Bledsoe, bringing in Brady. I was watching with a relative’s husband and his father. As an idealistic high schooler, I said something along the lines of “Who knows? Maybe Brady will be all right.” The husband and his father got loud and angry about how that was the stupidest thing they have ever heard. That experience sums up why I hate being a Boston sports fan. Where I usually try to inject some hope and reason into my fandom, everyone else is reactionary, loud, and annoying. Having Mike Felger around hasn’t helped.


James:


David:

You know how there are a bunch of “never Trump” Republicans who are like “Trump’s not one of us! I didn’t vote for him!” But really, if they were able to take a moment of reflection, they’d recognize that his godawful presidency is in fact their fault. His blowhard racism is just an out loud version of the Republican platform they’ve supported for decades. The same general process is replicated with us.


Jack:

I have a yearly tradition of ordering a Super Bowl cake from Ralph’s with a picture of Tom Brady’s most embarrassing moment from the past season printed on it. This past season, the supermarket told me that, due to complaints from the NFL, they were no longer allowed to print copyrighted pictures. I had to settle for this instead. Thanks a lot, fucksticks.


Ryan:

The Patriots, and Boston as a whole, possess the most sensitive group of fans in all of sports, and they lap the competition. Our top rated morning show made it their mission to call a black man a liar after he hard a racial slur at Fenway Park, and many people on Twitter shared their view of the situation, including Nazi-fetishist Curt Schilling. Speaking of Twitter, Patriots Twitter is a cesspool. Don’t think for a second people enjoy these games unless the Patriots are up 520-0. Apo-fucking-plectic. We celebrate the racist Irish townies, romanticizing them as true “Bostonians.” We have some pretty good schools and hospitals here you know, but we’d rather be represented by Fitzy McScallyCap, who was thrown out of the Dropkick Murphy’s St. Patrick’s Day concert for the fourth year in a row, and is still pissed they let gay people march in the parade. Sorry this doesn’t have much to do with the team. I just can’t stand a large portion of this fanbase. The Patriots have done some shady shit in the past, and associate with a walking colostomy bag. Yet I feel like 50-60% of the vitriol directed toward the team has to do with our fans.


Jeremy:

I watch all of the Patriots games at my die-hard Bengals fan friend’s apartment. Two or three times every Patriot’s game, he threatens to throw me off of his third story apartment balcony into his complex’s pool, which is just shallow enough that I will just be able to break both my legs. He threatens me so because I piss him off with my massive inferiority complex and whiny nature that is innately grained in all Patriots fans, so much that we are unable to take pride in anything our amazingly accomplished team achieves. Sentences I have actually uttered in my friend’s presence that have resulted in a balcony threat: “We’re only up by four touchdowns with five minutes left. We can still lose.” “I wanted the shutout, I can’t believe we gave up a field goal in garbage time, what a terrible game.” “We didn’t get the #1 seed in the playoffs? What the fuck is the point in anything, the whole season was a waste.” I have zero conception of what it is like to be a fan of a team with REAL quarterback problems, REAL coaching problems, or REAL ownership problems so I just make up some bullshit to feel cool and wallow in self-pity. One day my friend really is going to throw me off that balcony and I am not going to blame him.


Jay:

I know submissions are closed but god fucking dammit.


Brian:

The fans are braying fatass shitheels who fancy themselves BLUE COLLAR EVERYMEN and hang on to an insurmountable inferiority complex despite witnessing one of the greatest sports dynasties that will ever exist, and the defining scandal that this team will be remembered for isn’t something kinda badass like Bountygate, but a years-long legal battle over whether or not Brady knew that Bawbee from Quinzee and Jawnee from Reveeah let some air out of some goddamn footballs. I personally know people who STILL think we should trade Brady while we can because he’s washed up and Janeane Garofalo will be a better QB in the long run. Fuck New Hampshire, fuck Vermont, fuck Massachusetts, extra fuck Maine, SUPERFUCK Connecticut, and I couldn’t give less of a shit about Rhode Island if you paid me. Fuck me, too. Oh, and fuck the Jets.

Jake:

When the Pats won, I logged onto Twitter. I’d been avoiding that site since I had gotten dumped recently and didn’t want to pollute the timeline with depressed bullshit. The first thing I saw was everyone retweeting those goddammed Richard Spencer tweets about him loving the Pats, and that’s why rooting for the Pats sucks, even when they make you happier than you’ve been in weeks, someone’s still just gonna call you a Nazi for rooting for them.


Julia:

I live in CA and I nervously look over my shoulder like I’m fleeing the mafia every time I leave the house with my Gronk jersey on. I pretend that I’m above other fans and their antics, when really I turn into a feral animal anytime Toooom Braydee completes a pass. Legit feral — this guttural growl and white frat boy fist pump exits my body and it’s like I’m watching myself be a douchebag but I can’t stop it. This is why this year while watching the Super Bowl everyone in the room thought I was a piece of shit...and they were right. My partner is a Steelers fan, and still everyone I know who isn’t from NE takes his side when it comes down to it. Need I say more?


Dave:

You can still troll any Patriots fan (including me) and get a great defensive overreaction by telling them that Aaron Rodgers is a better QB than Tom Brady and would have multiple championships if the Packers’ defense was ever as good as any Patriots D during a Super Bowl year.


Steve:

I actually had someone get in my face and try to start a fight at the bar the other night because I said I thought we would “only” go 13-3 and didn’t take it as a complete given that we would win the Super Bowl.


Kevin:

When the Pats were down 28-3 in the third quarter, I texted my father and brother and said “I’m fine with this.” Look, I get that to Brady, Belichick and Kraft, Trump is “just a friend”, but if I found out that my friend had a dozen sexual misconduct accusers or had run a fraud college or did 1/40th of the predatory shit Trump has done over 30 years, they wouldn’t be my fucking friend anymore.


Patrick:

Fuck Robert Kraft, Jonathan Kraft, Bill Belichick, and Donald Trump with a splintered, wooden dildo so big it can only be seen from space. Full disclaimer: I drunkenly fought a Broncos fan after the 2015 AFC championship, which was entirely unprovoked and wholly my fault. I will continue to defend Tom Brady and the entire Patriots coaching staff/system as the greatest the game has ever seen.


Jon:

This is how privileged I am as a Pats fan: I hate my team for sucking during the first half of the Super Bowl because I got blackout drunk drowning my sorrows and don’t remember the second half.


Thomas:

When I mention to my friends that Patriots games are too boring, I get ridiculed, complete and utter shame. This is not fair. Is it too much to ask for a 9-7 season that grows a little hair on my chest every Sunday? I don’t think it is. ... Being a Patriots fan really does suck and no one out there feels my pain.


SWS:

My wife and I drove 14 hours to see the Patriots vs. Browns game, week 5 of the 2016 season. Decked out in our Pats gear, we attained ESPN field passes and made our way to section 3 near the visitor’s tunnel. It was supposed to be awesome. To our utter dismay, no amount of calling, waving, or signaling, could get the attention of any player, coach, or Mr. Kraft (I played CB at his “Kraft Stadium” in Jerusalem). Even as they stood and slowly walked within arms-length from my wife and I, not a single player would turn their head or even glance in our direction. We sat there and wished just one player would spare a smile or nod to a couple of fans in a sea of brown. As we sat at the tunnel, numerous browns players came over to the fans standing beside us, hugging them, giving some their gloves or gear, and taking pictures. Edelman stood 3 feet away from us and refused to acknowledge the two fans wearing his jersey, just trying to get his attention for a split second... Danny Amendola, who was understandably preoccupied with the seriousness of the impending kickoff was the only player with enough class to make eye-contact with me as the pats players slowly walked back to the tunnel. I was too surprised that someone actually looked over to say anything and he quickly turned away awkwardly. After spending 14 of 24 hours driving to the 33-13 blowout, I just hope I can exchange my Edelman jersey for a #80. Not going to bother field passes again...

Nick:

While the Pats were down 28-3, I told my buddy at a bar that I simply hoped they could reduce the lead so it was not a blow out. As the Pats edged their way back, I continued to drink heavily (beer and Jager). Suddenly they tied it and shit was on. I proceeded to get back to shit talking and ramp it up 10x (I probably said some racist shit, I am not even sure) to the point where my friends were visibly uncomfortable (as my gf told me the following day). When they scored the TD, I stood up on the table and gave two middle fingers to the three different tables (possibly 12 people in total, women included) I had been squawking at all game. It honestly looked like Conor McGregor and the bullshit he pulls in press conferences, except for the fact that I am slightly overweight and nobody finds me intimidating. Suddenly one of the guys I had flipped off grabbed my legs and pulled me down to the table. Punches were thrown. Four other gentlemen joined in the beat down. It was a flurry of blood and beer. I got royally fucked up. Of the five friends I came with, only two jumped in to help me. The other three were likely embarrassed of me and thought I deserved it, or they are just pussies. I can’t decide. I am pretty sure my girlfriend thinks less of me to this day. Anyways, Pats won. Life is good. My face eventually healed. My friends are assholes, but I cannot do any better, so fuck it.


Dave:

I love the Patriots, but at this point I see no reason to watch any of their games until at least the AFC Championship Game. What’s the point when you know the team is going to go 13-3? At minimum. Every year. Instead, I spend the entire season bragging about how good they are, about how they’re going to win the Super Bowl and defending the unholy Belichick/Kraft/Brady cabal to my friends and co-workers, despite not watching a single snap until the playoffs. They’ve literally made winning boring. I am everything you hate about New England & Boston sports fans in general.

Marcus:

I’m a Patriots fan. I don’t know what misery feels like anymore. I can’t get it up to hate other teams like I used to. The hopes and dreams of lesser teams mean nothing to me. I don’t even feel like I need to watch football until the AFC championship game. When Ndamukong Suh ends Brady’s career by stomping on his nuts, I won’t be mad. Best of luck to the rest of you.


Special thanks to all the readers and GMG staffers who helped contribute to this year’s series.