Post Game: Atlanta vs New England Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Patriots defeated the Falcons today, 26-10. For the first time this year, I think Brady was off. He overthrew a ton of passes. I guess he also exploded on the sidelines and started screaming at everyone, all the receivers and Belichick. As it was Tom Brady who did it, I like it. It shows he cares and wants to execute every play, and won't settle for less than his best. If Peyton Manning ever did it, of course I'd be ripping him. That's just how I role. And let me point out, I'd be right to rip Manning if he exploded like Brady did today, just like I'm right to like Brady for doing it.

The defense continues to play well in my opinion, and continues to get ripped. Everyone was complaining about them in the stands and on the call in shows on the ride home. They've only allowed and average of 14 points a game! What does this region expect?

I never save ticket stubs to anything, except Patriots games. My uncle is a season ticket holder and he takes me to a game a year. The seasons tickets look like football card, so ever since I was little, I've kept each game. I have Bruce Armstrong (flipping through, I have a LOT of Bruce Armstrong...like 4 games). A Dolphin game I went to once has Willie McGinnest hitting Dan Marino. Drew Bledsoe and Steve Grogan share the photo of the game Bledsoe got hurt at and Brady came in relief. There's all sorts of Patriots greats, current and former. As the seasons tickets are printed before the year starts, sometimes the person on them is comical. I have Matt Bahr for an exhibition game ticket, and he was cut the day before the game for Adam Vinatieri. I also have Lawyer Milloy and Bill Belichick talking together on the sidelines for a game against the Giants in which Milloy was in Buffalo.

My favorite ticket stub is from October 10, 2004 against the Miami Dolphins. It has Eugine Wilson and Tyrone Poole breaking up a pass against some Brown whose number I can't make out. Gillette Stadium's red wall is in the background, and in real life it has nothing on it. On the ticket, cleverly spaced, they put the following in small letters:
SEC 19 (then a ref's head) IN A (then the Brown's player defended by Wilson and Poole) ROW

The significance of course is this is the ticket stub for their 19th win in a row, breaking the Dolphins record. I tried scanning it to put it up on the blog, but the format wasn't right. This was week 5, and the tickets are printed out and sent before the exhibition season starts. I like how they called their shot before the season. They predicted they'd win 19 in a row.

There is a reason I'm going off in a tangent about my ticket stubs. Because I have them all, I know the all time record the Patriots have in games I've been to. They beat the original Browns in the home opener in 1995 in my first game, then the Eagles in preseason of 1996, then the Cardinals in the home opener of 1996 and then the Chargers in the home opener in 1997. I was sitting pretty at 4-0. 3-0 if you don't count preseason.

That brings us to 1998. I had my pick of which game I wanted to go to that year. I could go to the Cheifs or the Falcons. I picked the Falcons cause I thought the Cheifs would be good and I had fun rubbing it in everyone's face that the Patriots were undefeated in games I went to. Not only that, I think I was the only one with a winning record. At the time, I was the youngest going to games. As a result, everyone else had seen some terrible Patriots teams play.

My cousin Danny, who never saw the Patriots win before, went to the Cheifs game that year. New England killed them, 40-10. The Falcons game was almost the exact opposite. Atlanta won on a freezing cold day in November, 41-10. It was so bad, the person sitting next to my uncle told me I must be bad luck and I wasn't allowed to come back.

11 years later, that loss is avenged. Take that Atlanta!

Overall, I've been pretty lucky. The Patriots are 10-6 in the regular season, 1-0 in the post season and 4-1 in preseason games I've been too.