The Patriot Threat

As the world starts to slowly awaken to what we in the blogosphere have been saying for weeks, if not months -- namely, that the Patriots have been running up the score, and that someone, you would think, will eventually take physical umbrage at it...

Well, a nasty thought came to me. Namely, that the other teams in the NFL don't really care if they are on the other end of a Patriot de-pantsing.

It is, of course, a truism that fans hate other teams much more than the actual players do. Even in the NFL, where contracts are not guaranteed and violence is part of the job description, the players have the same agents, pray together after the game, mix freely at All Star Games and offseason events, and know that it's a business. If you lose by 35 or you lose by 21, it's the same thing; no reason to risk injury in garbage time.

So while the fans of the teams that the Patriots throw confetti on get incensed, and wonder why someone doesn't just put three people on Moss at the line and jam him into next week, then follow up with the straight up safety blitz with a disposable special teamer with the soul mission of hitting high, hitting late and seeing how Matt Cassel looks in extended duty...

Well, it's not something you could tell a player to do, realistically, as a coach. And it may not be something that a player will do, or even think about doing, because they are all thinking more about the long term and staying in business. Even though it gives you your best (only?) chance to win, and early in the game, not late.

This is, of course, has more than a little of the crazy talk to it. If everyone played football like this, teams would go through a half dozen quarterbacks a year and the games would be more or less unwatchable. One of the reasons why the XFL failed (along with, well, that it was the XFL) is that they didn't protect the QB, and when you don't do that, you get a pretty unwatchable game, pretty fast.

But here's the rub: true, dominating greatness is *not* good for ratings, or the health of the league. The NFL has a unique benefit that other leagues do not have, in that most people truly believe that every game is important and that the players and teams deliver maximum effort to win every game. When you watch playoff baseball, you know that the closer will come in for the 8th inning and the ace starting pitcher may go on short rest, because the games are managed differently. In the NBA, you know that benches will tighten up and defensive intensity will pick up, because the game is different. With the exception of the level of hype and the weather, there really isn't that much difference between it, and a meaningful regular season game.

There is also, well, this... an NFL game that does *not* have that level of meaning isn't terribly entertaining. Consider Week 17 games between teams that are out of it; if you are a diehard fan of that team, you watch it like a pre-season game, or with an eye on something else while you are doing it. A few weeks ago, a bad MNF match-up (Falcons-Giants) got a third of the ratings of the marquee game (Patriots-Cowboys).

Now, what happens to our collective story of the NFL: that it is the most hotly contested league, that anything can happen, that teams really do care about winning and losing, even beyond their own physical safety. If the Patriots continue to blow out teams without even the hint of doubt or retribution, can anyone really think this anymore?

What you would have is the same thing that would happen if the world had paid more attention to CheaterGate: one team that creates a threat to the viability of the entire league. Maybe not right away, and realistically, no team in the NFL is likely to stay this dominant (and, frankly, this dickish) for a very long time.

But I do know this: if you believe in referees getting the occasional nudge from their league, you will expect the Colts getting the benefit of more than a few calls this week. Because even if the Colts win decisively, they won't appear to be so dominant as to make the games not worth watching. After all, you can run on them, and Peyton Manning does not have (or at least, not yet) the aura of invincibility in a playoff that Brady and the Patriots have had.

And if the Patriots win in a blowout? Not so much. And with each succeeding week that the blowout happens and no one does anything about it, the erosion of what we believed the NFL to be will continue.