A Brief And Obvious Note To Patriots Fan Who Is (Still) Celebrating Tom Brady's Legal Win

The Goodell Father

Oh, you sweet and unsullied children. I love your world view, really. Your ecstasy, your elation, your absolute joie de vie from your man getting one over on the big bad Goodell. (By the way, Roger? Don't resign. Instead, have some honor for once in your life, and grab a big samurai sword. Deflate yourself, and end Twitter as we know it. BE THE MOST FAMOUS COMMISSIONER EVER. DO IT.)

So, you can go on with hanging up the banner. Opening Night against Pittsburgh is going to be the all night media hand job of your dreams. The game will start, and the Steelers look like children on defense right now, so Brady's likely to put up pinball numbers. Your defense isn't that solid, but the Steelers will be missing Le'Veon Bell, so that's not going to be too big of an issue, either. You'll win handily. It's all going to seem like you've gotten away clean. The world will watch games, and find something new to talk about. Brady will talk about how we've all lost, like he, um, lost. Instead of getting away with acting like a terrible sport, which is to say, acting like a Patriot.

The revenge dish will be served cold.

Remember the playoffs last year, when Dallas seemed to get preferential treatment on Detroit in one week, only to get well and truly reamed in the Packer game? That was just for a *week* of daring to demean The Shield. What do you think you are going to get for six to eight months of this? (And more importantly, how on alert will your fans be for this? I'm thinking DefcCon 1.)

Baltimore will have *nothing* on your fan's chants of bull spit (note: not spit). If I were scouting against the Pats, I'd tell my special teams gunners to acid test at the start of every game, and just do something strongly beyond the ordinary rulebook, just to test the water.

It's not as if Goodell is too smart for this. The man just spent six months delaying and defraying around an over-the-top penalty, then refused to settle and got his ass served up by the federales. He's got as much good sense as, well, the Colts management that constructs pretender teams to lose to the Pats every year, and has done for well over a decade.

Oh, and one last thing... even if the conspiracy isn't around, and the Pats don't get any different level of officiating than in the past?

You don't think that the NFL will just pull the switch when it *really* hurts?

Or that your perpetually aggrieved fan base isn't going to spend the next season as if there were a live grenade in the room, just waiting to pull the chute?