Bravo, Aaron. As a cowboys fan I really needed that. :)

Huzzah.

That was the best part of the '95 transcribing part--I'm typing it up, and I'm literally yelling at Elvis Grbac for a bad pass--it's text, it's more than a decade old, and I'm STILL in the game.

Football!

Your statement is valid except in the case of the patriots and cowboys, in which case the season is a failure no matter what because at the end of the season your team is still stupid... >.>

...<3

The most worrisome long-term consequence of the Giants' victory is that Unstoppable Eli Manning is going to turn into a commercial-making machine by next season, rivaling only his brother for airtime. I'm picturing commercial breaks that go something like this:

Commercial with Peyton
Beer Commercial
Commercial with Eli
Beer Commercial
Commercial with Peyton and Eli
Beer Commercial with Peyton and Eli
etc.
Seriously, though, I agree 100% with everything you said. Many losses didn't ruin it for me, at least we gave the Cowboys a game on MNF!

I think sadly most fanbases don't agree. Thus successful and never had a chance to be successful coaches and now assistants are getting run out of town. It's the within group hatred that bothers me the most. The most shocking thing of the Patriots loss was the voice it gave to anti-Patriot within group. Pats fans that hate on the current coaching staff. The hatred level of so many Dolfans towards the dolphins coaching staff after 1 season was a little disturbing, the fans against Ravens head coaching staff or the Patriots head coaching staff... beyond disturbing don't yah think.

Aaron, if Philadelphia wins 5 combined championship titles over the next decade I'll have a much easier time accepting a non-championship season as a success. Until that point I will continue to enjoy the hell outta every game I watch except my team's final loss (and every win by the Cowboys, Giants, and Pats).

My fellow Bills fan - where's Archie?

+1, Aaron. By the by, check your e-mail.

And re: 2, that happens to me as well.

if Brett Favre retires, then my life is over. Is this what you are trying to say? :).

re:6

What, no hate for the Redskins?

I kid, I kid...

at least we gave the Cowboys a game on MNF!

Dude, we had that game WON if we didn't play prevent and let them have free access to the sidelines on the play before the game-winning field goal.

ARGH!

I agree with everything said, and let me add that I consider this season a great success for Cleveland, despite them not even making the playoffs. Honestly, if before the season someone had told me they'd only miss the playoffs if they'd just been marginally better in just one of four games (Cincy, Oakland, Arizona, and 2nd half against Pittsburgh), I doubt I woulda believed it. So despite this season ending in 'failure', it was a really fun ride.

On another note, I was also seriously put off by the precipitous decline in the quality of discourse in the comments. One nice thing about the season ending is that hopefully the trolls will run back under their bridges for a few months. Now that the season's over, we may actually be able to talk about football! Hooray, offseason!

I am a Lions fan, what is this joy you get from watching football?

I was hoping for a signing day special from the college football side of the site, but I guess my 50,000 word essay on why Alabama's recruiting class is huge will go to waste.

#6 -- As a Seahawk fan overlooking what may be the closing of the window on a franchise's best era, which possibly will end up having peaked at 13-3 and a superbowl loss, I have a much easier time accepting it. Never been a champion, but that NFC Championship game was just special.

#4 - you forgot 'This Is Our Country'...

As a Cowboys fan, I would have been happy if we would have won one playoff game. Just one. At least that way they could have shown that they can step up. As it is...I have the same doubts.

Don't get me wrong, I love football, and I'll still enjoy watching it after my team gets knocked out. But I am a Cowboys fan as well as a football fan. Being a football fan allows me to be excited watching other teams make beautiful plays and shake my head in disgust as any team inexplicably leaves the opposing team's best reciever uncovered. Being a Cowboys fan means that I can be, probably that I should be, down when my team fails to execute in the playoffs again, and leaves me wanting more after an otherwise great season.

Essentially: One loss does ruin it (this year at least) for the Cowboys fan in me. But the football fan in me can watch and enjoy a Superbowl between teams that I usually want to lose every game and cheer when the lesser of two evils wins.

I agree wholeheartedly, Aaron. While my team, the Bears, were quite the disappointment this season, I can always find something to look forward to.
In this case, it's having such an exciting player like Devin Hester striking fear into punters everywhere for the near future.

7:
I just saw the DSRL spots on youtube, starring Peyton, Eli, Archie, and, presumably, Olivia. I'm speechless.
12:
I agree about Cleveland. They were only a few points from winning the division! I thought they would improve before last season started, but not *that* much. Still, they were good enough to win me my annual Browns vs. Cardinals bet.

I almost wish the Patriots had lost to Baltimore and beat the Giants, so we didn't have to deal with such a anti-pats backlash, while also keeping them from going 19-0 and dealing with a wave of obnoxious pro-Pats fans.

15:
What exactly did you have in mind? I'm thinking Archie, Peyton, and Eli singing "This is Our Country" in a Barbershop Quartet with Mellencamp.

I had the same experience as Aaron a few years back, turning on the Grambling-Northern football game, and watching a QB I;d never heard of (and who went undrafted in the NFL) have the most amazing game I'd ever seen a QB play at any level. All I could think was I love watching this game when its played well, and it REALLY doesn't matter who is playing.

But, oh yeah, it rocks when your team wins the superbowl in Rocky Balboa fashion too :-)

19: Did I miss a post? Or are you engaging in some bizarre kind of self-parody?

Oh, goodness, yes, if you can't just enjoy the game itself, regardless of outcome, well, that would really be dreary. I'll admit to enjoying seeing Jerry Jones have a bad day, but if the Cowboys win it all next year, there will be plenty to enjoy about that.

As for my favorite team, I start each year with the same hope; that when the Vikings kickoff or receive the kickoff at the start of their last game of the season, they will not have yet have completely eliminated from playoff contention. This year, due to Redskins/Cowboys being moved to the late slot, they made it! Pop the champagne! I saw the beginning of 16 Vikings games with them still in playoff contention!

I do think johonny is right, however. I think many, many, fans underestimate just how unbelievably difficult it is to win a game in the NFL, and as a result they have a hard time showing any patience or tolerance for not having success.I hesitate to label any honest effort made by someone, who made it through the tiny neck of the funnel into the NFL, a "failure". I've been guilty of it too, of course, especially with a Coordinator Who Shall Not Be Named, but we should all try to remember the amount of work, sacrifice, and too often heartache that these people have put in, and respect them for it.

I don't know, I think it's just a fact of life that only one team per year has ultimate success. I'm a GB fan, and I loved this year. They had a lot of success, and a lot of games I enjoyed watching. But they ended the season in failure. That doesn't bother me in the least, however, because I know that even in years they have really good teams, chances are they will still end the year in failure.

The pats, while winning 18 games, ultimately ended in failure, and there's just no way around that. It will forever be the greatest season that got away.

I don't feel it is either a taunt or a badge of honor. It just is (perhaps I'm being to philosophical).

I think NE's season is a bit like UNLVs great season when they lost to Duke in the final four. Running Rebel fans can look back and think about what a fantastic team they had, and how they made it to the final four, but they didn't achieve the ultimate goal. So, in that sense, they are a failure. Not an ultimate failure, mind you, just not the ultimate success.

I hope my incoherent rambling made some a small amount of sense.

Bravo.

I wonder at the folks screaming for the coach's head all the time. I keep waiting for Fox to get Schottenheimered.

For the past two years, the Panthers have been in the playoff hunt with 2 weeks left. There are a lot of teams that would love to say that.

But then again, I love watching Pop Warner too.

Oh, well only ten weeks til the draft and "This is our year!" from 32 teams.

Thanks, Aaron for a great post. I agree with everything you say, except with a caveat to the following:

Even when it is a meaningless game played two months ago by two of the worst teams in the NFL, football is a lot of fun.
If one of the teams is Hostler-era San Francisco, then no, it is not "fun," except in a masochistic "you want to carve your eyeballs out with a spoon, but you can't stop watching because it's Sunday and you're supposed to watch football, dammit" sense. I don't care what it takes, I'm getting Sunday Ticket next year.

And thanks again to the folks on the game discussion threads for making my season in football hell (otherwise known as the Bay Area) much more enjoyable. Any board that can enable Colts/Steelers/Pats/Giants/Eagles (etc.) fans to be civil to each other is a beautiful thing, and I learned a lot (not just about football, but the appropriate use of jam) from many of you.(I believe I still owe Bobman a drink, and cd6 owes me one.)

Also, I think the comments of "worrying about the long term effects" is really a bit hyperbolic. This is not the first time huge favorites have lost the superblowl, this decade even. There is always gloating in the wake of a big upset. I highly doubt the general public perception's of playoffs vs. regular season will change one bit.

As way of explanation, a good deal of my hostility towards the Coordinator Who Shall Not Be Named was reignited when Schottenheimer was Schottenheimered. Have to make a note to remember to not automatically let any anger I have as a result of a guy I respect being treated, in my view, poorly, become completely focused on somebody who came in afterwords, even if I already have a less than good opinion of his previous work.

I'm sure it was hard to have the entire nation rooting against your team. I think things will be far more civilized next year, because I don't expect the Pats to be quite the juggernaut they were this year. I also don't think they'll shoot for the record books and try to blow out every team they face. That should help somewhat, but I think there will definitely be some lingering resentment. People don't take it well when you go for it on 4th down in the fourth when you're already up by 30. I think a lot of organizations will harbor some serious ill will for the Pats for a long time. I don't get the hatred of Tom Brady, though. Sure, he lives a perfect life, but so what? He seems like a nice enough guy.

I think success depends a lot on expectations. If you root for Cleveland, then I think you'd have to consider this season an unbridled success. It's not just that you won more, but this year gave you hope for next year and beyond. If I were a Dallas fan, I'd be disappointed. The regular season was surely magical for them, and as it happens you enjoy the ride to the fullest. But seeing as how they were virtual locks to at least appear in the NFC title game, I think that- looking back- the season was a big disappointment.

Thanks, Aaron - that was great. I have never shared or really understood the attitude that every year, there is only one good team and 31 bad ones, one success and 31 failures, etc. I agree with you that sports are there to bring some fun and happiness into our lives, which might otherwise not have enough of these qualities, but sometimes I fear that for some fans, it's the other way around: They let their daily frustrations and miseries infect their feelings about sports, and end up ranting, raving, and ripping on websites and talk radio. How sad.

I have been a 49er fan for over 20 years, and have lived through the best of times and the worst of times, but I have not forgotten that the point of being a fan is to add another source of engagement and enjoyment to one's life.

I encourage all "haters," "trolls," and like-minded commenters to read and consider what Aaron writes here, to take a deep breath, and to try to remember why you fell in love with football in the first place.

Great post. I completely agree with it.

Hopefully, this'll help curtail some of the "you're team sux" rhetoric around here.

Maybe something like "Football Outsiders is a place where people come to share their love of the game of football" should become the new site motto.

Oh, regarding what I said about Dallas, I think it helps a bit that the team that knocked you out of the playoffs was the eventual Super Bowl champs. I certainly feel better about how bad Tampa's O-line looked in the wild card game after seeing the Pats far more vaulted unit get similarly abused.

Bravo, Aaron.

Nothing to add, you pretty much summed it up beautifully. I just wanted to say I appreciate you saying it.

Quentin, your post reminds me of watching perhaps the worst defeat in Vikings history, the forty-something to zero blowout in the 2000 NFC Championship Game to the Giants. I remember, watching that miserable affair, being able to see Strahan just dominate a damned good tackle, Korey Stringer, God rest his soul, and thinking it was kinda' cool seeing a future Hall of Famer having a big day on a pretty big stage. Yeah, it was painful to watch, but in a grudging respect sorta' way.

I think that the success of your season depends upon the final outcome compared to the expectation. If you are 18-0 and have been thumbing your nose at the rest of the NFL all year, you'd better win the big one or the season is a failure. If you're a Browns fan with no expectations, and your team shows life and promise, you can have a successful season without even making the playoffs.

I think Aaron peeked at Dr Z's column on CNN, he loved Boselli also.

I agree that hatred towards other teams is a bad thing. I wonder how much of it is because of the amount of communications available now. Before unless you lived in a hated teams home town you probably didn't interact with many opposing fans. Now thanks to websites like this you can interact with them on a daily basis.

I think the column was well written by Aaron, but I have some lingering doubts. When the Colts started out winning 13 games and then losing in the play-offs I don't recall hearing other fans say, good year. I recall hearing, your QB sucks, he's just a pretty little stat boy.

Now that could just be my cherry picking of memories, but I hope that everyone can remember that only 1 team can win the SB, and it takes a team to win it, no 1 player is the reason for that win.

Good job Aaron on trying to help keep up the level of discourse and reducing the trolling here at FO.

I whole-heartedly agree with the basic premise of this article. In fact, I've said for years that it's far less fair to judge a team based on a 3 or 4 game playoff than on a 16 game season. But I would also say that certain playoff losses can overshadow a successful regular season. To my mind, the Colts loss to the Chargers this season was a dissapointment in a way that the '03, '04, and '05 losses to the Pats and Steelers were not, simply because I felt like this team didn't play to its potential. Winning at Foxborough in January is a Herculean task for any team, and in retrospect, the two teams that played in that Colts-Steelers game weren't the same ones we had seen during the regular season. But I still feel that at home, given the Chargers injuries, the Colts should have won that game. I felt like the team had their minds somewhere else. How Pats fans feel about the Super Bowl loss is for them to decide.

But it's only fair to note that one of major proponents of the "It's all about the ring" line of thinking has been that particularly vocal segment of Pats fans we've all come to know and love, call 'em the Tommies from Quinzee. Having heard my team's accomplishments demeaned so many times (and Colts fans have gotten this worse than anyone), I only think it's fair to partake in a bit of long-awaited fun at the expense of this not-so-silent minority (and, just so I'm not misinterpreted, it is definitely a minority; most Pats fans are typically completely reasonable and decent folks, as Mr. Schatz usually is.) And I'll also say that much of the anger directed at the Pats is a result of extenuating circumstances that I won't go into here, as this is, quite literally, not the place.

This seems an appropriate thread to say this:

For the first time, I got to see a Superbowl Championship team play in the regular season when the Giants came over to London. . . and they were rubbish and so were the Dolphins. . . .but it was great and now I've seen a piece of NFL history.

That is all.

I think this is a fantastic post. Aaron: I have to admit to you that I hate the Patriots, and that I know that this Superbowl will be the single best sporting event of my life.

However, I hate the Patriots, *not* their fans. I feel bad for their fans. And you, who have to deal with more crap than most, have my utmost respect. This is a fantastic post at a difficult time.

As a die-hard fan of another NY-NJ team that hasn't sniffed the Super Bowl for the last 39 seasons, I wholeheartedly agree - NFL football really boils down to just a great entertainment medium; I have enjoyed a lot of great moments for my team, most recently in 2006 when most "experts' (including FO staff) expected them to be patsies. That said, there's nothing wrong with rooting against certain teams, even if it has no impact on your favorite team.

I'm also irritated by the endless praise the Giants have received for playing to win in week 17 when the game didn't "mean anything" in the standings or playoff seedings. For teams like the Jets and many others, all of the late-season games didn't matter, yet the players always gave it their all.

(Can anyone prove that had the Giants rested their starters in week 17, they wouldn't have achieved the same result in the playoffs?)

I agree with the premise of this post as it is normally my way of thinking as well since the regular season should mean a lot more than a fluky playoff run.

However, I think the main problem is that it is the Pats fans themselves that have made the super bowl so important. Because they won their super bowls they use that as a reason that Brady is the greatest QB ever and that their dynasty is the best. It wasn't because of their regular season records like when they backed into the super bowl in 2002, etc. Pats fans have gone over the ledge to point it out to Colts fans that if you didn't win the super bowl you choked and your regular season stats and winning % didn't mean anything. Especially ask Bill Simmons. That is why Brady is better than Manning and the Colts accomplishments record wise mean nothing. Even though over the last 5 years the colts were the first team EVER to win at least 12 games in each of those seasons. Would seem like that is pretty close to a dynasty to me but that has all been forgotten by Pats fans and they say, but you only won one title so you didn't accomplish much. Because of this I think it only makes sense that the fans of other teams react the same way to the Pats fans when they don't come through in their last game.

I still enjoyed the season quite a bit and will miss it during the offseason.

counting backwards from 10...
OK I'm better.

We'll all love football a lot more over the next 4 weeks when the only sports on TV that have any meaning are...ummm...none.
When's the draft?

The key is that we should remember why we love football. Another article in Extra Points reminded me of that when we talked about the death of Inside the NFL. I remember back as a kid what I would do to be around football. I remember in Buffalo in 1981 or so, the Bills-Pats game was blocked out so on one of "cable" channels, they had a blank screen with the radio broadcast and a score panel and that's it. And I stared at that pink screen with the blue lettering listening to Van Miller for 3.5 hours waiting to see who would win.

Football is the greatest sport in the world and although a team with a self-imporance about them like the Patriots should expect some taunting, I agree that teams should consider their teams a success when you are winning more than losing. I am a Dallas Cowboys fan since I was 8 (even though I was watching the Bills pink screen, my dad and therefore I was a Cowboys fan from a young age) and considering the last 10 years have been very bad, I was disappointed by the playoff loss but I am heartened to think that the Cowboys might be back for a while now and that gets me excited.

Thanks Aaron for this note - it's right on. I'm already in full withdrawal over football and we're 4 days past the Super Bowl. Man, I can't wait for the combine!!!

36: I kind of have to agree Let me preface by saying that I'm not about to throw an "I hate FO" hissyfit, like many other people have childishly done recently. I love FO, and I love what we're doing here. And I'm wholeheartedly in support of what Aaron said in this column. The guy knows his football, and I think we're the exact same type of fan. However, I'm going to offer some criticism, and I hope sincerely that it won't set off a bunch of troll responses. With that in mind, I'm going to refrain from mentioning my favorite player. This post will not discuss #18. On the other hand, I'd be insulting everyone's intelligence if I pretended that this post wasn't at least a little bit about him.

Aaron correctly identified a problem in the way a lot of people look at football. They're dismissive of teams or players that don't have playoff success, and they try to overemphasize Superbowl rings in totally unrelated aspects of football. I am very glad that Aaron has challenged these people head on.

However, I somewhat dislike that Aaron never really did this until the Patriots lost the Superbowl. Not so long ago, I felt like this site constantly made concessions to that irrational segment of the fanbase. For example, only a little bit over a year ago, it was the site's policy to pretend that a quarterback who had ranked 10th, 4th, 3rd, and 6th in QB DPAR the past four years was clearly among the top two quarterbacks in the game, even though his production to date didn't remotely support that conclusion. Donovan McNabb, Trent Green, and other quarterbacks with fairly mediocre WR corps were producing similarly. But the Outsiders were willing to pretend that McNabb and Green and Hasselbeck were inferior, despite the lack of any evidence, because they weren't winning lots of playoff games - not because the Outsiders actually thought that McNabb and the like were chokers - but because they didn't want to deal with the flamewars from people who did.

It hurts me a little bit that it took a Patriots Superbowl loss for Aaron to finally take these people on.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I agree with everything in this post, Aaron, or some of your assumptions.

Yeah football is great, we should all remember that. I certainly have a different understanding of the game after reading here regularly for a couple years.

But as a big fan of the Packers, with very little understanding of football, football is ever greater when your team wins. And its even greater when a big bad dynasty like the Patriots lose, and the underdog gets to shine.

I think its absolutely wrong to be "worried" about the long term effects of the Giants win. This SuperBowl was incredible, if not the best story in NFL history, its one of them, and everyone will talk about it for a long time. As a football fan (and site) you should be celebrating this Superbowl.

I can't tell if you are upset that the Patriots legacy won't be respected, or if you are over reacting to trolls in your comment sections. Either way - relax. Neither is really all that important.

As a Pats-disliker (not a hardcore hater), I realized as they lost the superbowl that this team really made the NFL season interesting for me. I had fun in the offseason using stats predicting Moss and A. Thomas wouldn't be that productive, and I had fun thinking about "blueprints" on how the Pats could be beat after it was clear they had a great offense.

In the end, they turned into the Yankees for me: I knew they were good, and the possibility of them losing in the playoffs was something to look forward to. And they made the season more fun since my teams (Ravens and O's) both stink. But I try to keep my rooting interests going from "it would be nice if they lose" to "Belichick and Brady are the devil incarnate" and getting overly emotional about, which I noticed happened to some posters at this site.

I love football too, but its only natural to acquire rooting interests along the way (whether they be due to fantasy sports, gambling, or just a general pro-underdog stance).

44: I agree with that, too. I think this Superbowl could end up being positive for everybody, even Pats fans, in some ways. (I know it's probably little consolation to them, but I think something positive comes out of this even for them.)

I think we got a great Superbowl out of this year, and with the Patriots human once again, I think people will start talking about other things, and the ridiculous anti-Pats venom (of which I might be somewhat guilty) will subside a little bit. On the other side, the worst of the Boston fans have been silenced for at least a little while. I think the "every single quarterback in the league except for Tom Brady is a choker" mentality has taken a huge hit, which is a welcome thing.

What I think makes this so good for Patriots fans, is that they finally realize how hard winning the Superbowl actually is. Maybe they'll appreciate for the first time that the three Superbowls weren't granted by God to Tom Brady, but rather, the Patriots had to fight tooth and nail for every last one of them, and in any one of them they easily could have lost. By losing a Superbowl for the first time in a long while, I think they get to understand just how awesome winning it actually is, and that maybe you're sometimes just good but unlucky, and that's OK.

Some things I want to add to the thoughts from my first post: To be fair, I do realize that the Outsiders have sometimes challenged the evil "if you don't win the Superbowl you are worthless" contingent before now. I do vividly remember the Peyton Manning comment in PFP from this year, which excoriated all those vile people who label players or teams as "chokers," and I really appreciated it. I also remember some impassioned defenses by Mike Tanier of Donovan McNabb.

I'm sure there are going to be jackasses who troll about how the Patriots choked. But I think that most of us can come away from this realizing that winning the Superbowl is really hard, and maybe we shouldn't be ragging on the guys who don't win it all the time.

counting...backwards...from 10…OK I’m better again.

Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't the point supposed to be that we enjoy the games, even those that don't involve our teams, whether it's the Super Bowl or Miami's first win of the season, or if for only a couple of individual plays, like an amazing reception or interception, or a big hit or some other momentum changing event?

Spoken like the fan of a team that lost the Super Bowl! (Kidding)

I actually think the long-term positive effect on the football field - that teams will start playing to win late in the regular season even when their playoff seeds are set - is way better from a fan's perspective than any theoretical psycholigical effect.

50: FWIW, I think the Giants biggest advantage of going all out wk 17 was to realize that they couldn't play their regular defense against the pats. A very unusual situation, since I suspect if the pats had been 14-1 coming in the G's 2nd string would have put up a good fight against the pats 2nd string. Oh and it would have been fun to watch since we love football...

Well thought out, but I think Pats fans need to take some of the blame for this. The arrogance of Pats fans and certain media members who lap up everything they do really puts off fans. Even in non-Super Bowl years like 2005 and 2006 the arrogance kept up. Now, I'm not saying all Pats fans are like this, but too many of them were like this. Then the addition of Spygate and Goodell's slap on the wrist penalty didn't help matters.

Hopefully the arrogance of many Pats fans and lapdog-esque ways of the media will cease and we can get back to fans being reasonable

Great Post. As long as there is a post-season tournament to select the champion, I think that playoff accomplishments will mean more than regular season. I don't think we have to fear that the regular season will become irrelevant due to sandbagging teams winning titles . It's still difficult to make the playoffs and even the wild-card teams are very good.

I think part of the hate that's arisen lately has to do with The World vs The Legion Of Manning. Most of the flame-posts generally got stoked up whenever someone said "Gee, I thought +insert Manning name+ didn't play well." Maybe the site should start referring to them as "The QB Who Shall Not Be Named" and "The QB Who Shall Not Be Named The Younger". :)

Anyways, I thought this was a fabulous season, better than most. From Favre having his best season in years to Kurt Warner playing well to Adrian Peterson to the excellence of Peyton and Brady and Romo and the Giants and the Pats and the Browns and the Jaguars..what a ride it was. My favorite moment was watching the Texans dismantle the Panthers in week 2 while looking like an actual competent NFL team on both sides of the ball for the first time in their history.

Excellent point, Yakuza Rich!
Derek Anderson did have a surprisingly successful year! You know, I'm not a Cleveland fan, but that sure is one of the reasons I enjoyed football this season!

Well thought out, but I think Pats fans need to take some of the blame for this. The arrogance of Pats fans and certain media members who lap up everything they do really puts off fans. Even in non-Super Bowl years like 2005 and 2006 the arrogance kept up. Now, I’m not saying all Pats fans are like this, but too many of them were like this. Then the addition of Spygate and Goodell’s slap on the wrist penalty didn’t help matters.

Hopefully the arrogance of many Pats fans and lapdog-esque ways of the media will cease and we can get back to fans being reasonable

Yakuza,

I think you could go through that post and change the phrase "Pat's Fans" to "Bandwagon Fans" and it would be more accurate. I would wager money that if it was the Steelers, or Packers, or the Eagles, or the expansion Albuquerque Isotopes that put together a winning team, won three superbowls in four years, and went to the playoffs six out of seven years, and doubled (or more likely quintupled) it's fanbase practically overnight, that a lot of those new fans, and the media, would be just as irritating as a lot of Pats fans are.

Longtime fans of a team, that have suffered through its lows as well as enjoyed its highs, have far less of an obnoxious god-complex about the team for which they root, because they have rooted for it when it was bad.

There's nothing special about the Patriots other than they happen to be the team that's really, really good this year. I'm sure if a couple balls had bounced differently the last couple of years and Indy, or Pittsburg, had won several consecutive SB's instead of New England, we'd all be discussing how obnoxious Colts or Steelers fans are...

As a Packers fan, I must say I don't consider this year a failure for my team at all. I saw my franchise's icon revive himself from being more or less "washed up" and have one of the best seasons of his long and distinguished career. I saw my team go 14-2 against teams not named the Chicago Bears. This, from a team that was rightly expected by most to be mediocre-to-bad. To be honest, I'm actually more disappointed that we could not beat the rather lowly Bears team of this year than I am in our playoff loss to the eventual Super Bowl champs. On top of that, the team is young and improving (except at cornerback, a spot that was glaringly exposed on national TV by the Giants and that I hope will be addressed by Thompson and McCarthy this offseason), and if Favre can suit it up and put up numbers like he did this year for one more season I'll gladly welcome him back to work in September.

Unlike most of the country outside the Boston area, I was disappointed that the Patriots were unable to take home the hardware last Sunday. I wasn't alive to watch the 1972 Dolphins go undefeated. After my Packers were slain, I was actually looking forward to perhaps seeing a perfect 19-0 season achieved by a group of individuals who play to win a full sixty minutes of every game, put relentless focus on execution, and value the team's success over their own.

In the end, is that not the behavior of a championship team? Not to take anything away from the Giants, as they obviously showed these traits a lot more than New England did during the playoffs and Super Bowl.

53, 54: On the topic of "games that meant nothing but were enjoyable," I really, really enjoyed attending the Raiders-Colts game in December. It was neat not only to watch Manning the Neither Eldest nor Youngest play in person, but to see the Oakland defense (and even its offense, somewhat) elevate its game to the Colts' level. The atmosphere was electric, the fans were screaming, the defense was playing well - and yet the Colts came back, and sustained a game-winning drive under tough conditions (with a crazy catch by Reggie Wayne playing a key role).

And then, on the same day, Brian Westbrook did that awesome "slide down at the 1" thing to cement an upset win over the Cowboys. Great stuff.

I realize that (other than Raiderjoe) not many folks care about the Raiders, but reminiscing about season highlights that didn't make ESPN's Top Whatever seems like more fun than talking about whether the Pats and their fans did or didn't deserve a smackdown.

I think you could go through that post and change the phrase “Pat’s Fans” to “Bandwagon Fans” and it would be more accurate.

I think that's an incredibly good point. Going to college in New England the "I'm from Minnesota but now I live in Maine so I'll be a Sox/Pats fan" type were roughly 30 million times worse than the home grown fans.

bravo, aaron. it's funny, i had a similar moment this year when i was watching the second game between the cardinals and the niners (which i had no rooting interest in) and was thinking, "god this is really a meaningless game, but i'm loving watching it." i enjoyed seeing the cards passing attack, and watching karlos dansby and adrian wilson on defense, and patrick willis being everywhere for the niners on D. there's also some satisfaction in knowing that many of these excellent players from lesser publicized teams are relatively unknown and uncelebrated by the boisterous talking heads that dominate much of football discourse on the airwaves.

one other thing- i think much of the appeal of this site is a shared love of the game -and not just of one team. i hear plenty about elite QBs everywhere else, but FO is, and should be, a place where we can talk about rod hood and karlos dansby without getting blank stares in return... and having mouth-foamers chomping at the bit waiting for an opportunity to unleash their fury.

as a frequent reader and rare contributor to comment threads, I have to say that you all have dramatically increased my love for football, along with my understanding. trolls happen, but I've enjoyed this year in comments...

Dallas fans shouldn’t feel like their season was a failure. Neither should Green Bay fans, or Indianapolis fans, or Pittsburgh fans.

Dolphins fans, though, go right ahead. We'll commiserate with you.

44/47: "However, I somewhat dislike that Aaron never really did this until the Patriots lost the Superbowl."

I don't think that's quite fair. By my reckoning this site has spent a lot of time over the last few years buttressing this very point. (Particularly with regard to the player whom you do not mention.)

The difference this year has been the uptick in personal attacks, allegations of bias, and ultimately arguments against the applicability of statistics to football, whether by Pats fans or anyone else. It's not at the "Baseball's New Religious War" level yet, but that may just be because Sean Salisbury hasn't had the site brought to his attention yet. (If this ever does happen, by the way, "fireseansalisbury" is still available at Blogspot.)

So the same group that goes on and on about how much the Giants suck and how they're the worst team ever to play in a Super Bowl, now they want to talk about how "winning isn't everything" and "hey, football is fun!" Ri-i-i-i-ight.

I'll try to remember that when the same cast is running the Giants down again next year. Cheers!

The moral of the story: Even when it is a meaningless game played two months ago by two of the worst teams in the NFL, football is a lot of fun. No matter what team you cheer for, never let one loss ruin it for you.

It depends on the team and the season. When you go 16-0, not winning the super bowl is a disappointment no matter how you look at it. On the other side, when you go from 4-12 to 10-6 and lose in the first round of the playoffs, it's usually a good season.

The bottom line is when your team is favored to win and it loses, it's disappointing.

So, what did you think of Redman? That was the game where he sent Harrington to the bench for good.

What about likely draft bust Jamaal Anderson, who had one tackle in the game?

I'm going to try a bit and put my finger on what happened with the Patriots here without doing the whole hating thing.

Patriots have always been my 2nd or 3rd favorite team behind the Broncos. I was just thrilled to watch the scrappy Patriots stumble through the playoffs with weirdly good special teams play back in 1986.

I still remember John Madden talking about Brady giving him goosebumps in that first super bowl.

I associated the Patriots with underdogs, scrappiness, and basically, the good parts of America - yankee ingenuity, using grit and whatever to rise above whatever your destiny really should have been.

But somewhere this season I started associating the Patriots with Bill Beli-whatever, RICHARD SEYMOUR (ugh), and Tom Brady's tabloid pages.

It almost got as bad as my feelings about the Giants last year. Giants were also always my second or third-favorite team behind the Broncos. But last year, we had Tiki, Shockey, and Coughlin basically in this competition to out-whine each other the entire season. I can't tell you how much I hated that team last year. I was glad they fell from grace.

And then this year, Tiki left, Shockey wasn't around, and Coughlin had an attitude readjustment. The Giants became about Eli's journey to rise above the narrative that Tiki (and the press) were trying to shackle him with. And they rallied around Eli. And it became the good part of America.

And the Patriots were about the bad part of America. Machine like secretive dominance.

And then we had to deal with people that were either defending that (ew?), or trying to claim it wasn't there or shouldn't matter.

I remember hoping in the first half of the season that the Patriot would win every game and then lose the Super Bowl, just because it would be so fitting. And this is a team that I've loved in other seasons.

The Patriots are going through an American journey here. They got too big and became the bad part of America. Part of me even hopes people keep piling on them, honestly. Because then they can finally be the underdog again. And can rediscover their scrappiness. In a sense I don't think it's that the people were hating the Patriots. It's more they were hating the Americanization of it. The bad side of America as opposed to the good side. It's like, they weren't the Patriots anymore, and had become the Nationalists. That's something that deserves to be torn down.

I know it's just a game but these things get built up so much that they become societal narratives that start symbolizing all sorts of other deep things. And I think that's what was going on here.

48 - glad you brought up Miami. Other than the Giants, my favorite moment this year was watching the end of that game, and watching everyone go crazy. I hope I never see anyone go 0-16.

I like FO and the perspective they bring on Football. I enjoy reading PFP books and will probably buy them until whenever they stop making them. I enjoy this site and the comments.

I'd just like to say that I like football, but I love the Redskins more. If I had to choose between watching a meaningless game from the 2007 season or watching for the 9th time the Redskins break the heart of the Cowboys in the 2005 MNF game , than I'll choose the Redskins game every time (although I'll fast forward through the first 56 minutes).

Don't get me wrong, I won't turn off a football game if the Redskins aren't involved, but I most likely won't go out of my way to re-watch it unless there is some compelling reason (like it was just a flat out awesome game).

In this respect, I'd probably choose to watch any of the playoff games from the past than meaningless regular season games. Playoffs are more important, and I always believed that every coach, player and waterboy is involved in the sport to win a Super Bowl ring.

Yes, I must agree that this relatively recent "a season is completely worthless unless you win the championship" viewpoint is rather annoying. It's even worse in the NBA, where despite winning at least 50 games for the last 7 years (soon to be 8), people still say "what have the Dallas Mavericks ever won"? Um, more games than just about any other team over that time (maybe San Antonio, but I'm too busy to look that up right now). Likewise, the Phoenix Suns usher in a new era of great offense, faster paced small lineups of versatile players and yet people insist on denigrating them because "they've never won anything". Yeah, except about 75% of their games in the last 3 and a half years. Retards, the lot of them.

#62. Esactly. FO, especially Aaron was writing for years about how great Manning was and how ridiculous all the "choke" stuff was and how he didn't have anything to prove years before the Colts won a Superbowl.

Oh, yeah - there's been a lot of dislike for the Patriots boiling over recently, and it hasn't always been edifying. But I don't know that you can really jump from such a team- and circumstance-specific surge of distaste to a generalised "rise in hatred."

The dark truth that many people do not want to acknowledge is that in College and Pro Sports the playoffs are the only thing that matters and the regular season is only to determine post season seeding.

In College basketball if Duke, Kansas, Memphis, or Nortch Carolina lose in the Sweet 16 nobody will be saying they still had a successful year. In the NBA the Spurs could careless whether they win 45, 55, or 65 wins as long as they qualify and are healthy, etc.

For mediocre teams that do not have realistic title aspirations the regular season matters, but for those with a legitimate chance to win it all the regular season is meaningless

Yay! Everyone's a winner!

71:
I'm sorry you couldn't be bothered to watch the week seventeen game between the (what was it? I forget. Oh, yes) the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. No problem. It was only a regular season game with no playoff implications.

It was really boring, no one tried very hard, and the stands were empty by midway through the third quarter. All the real football fans (like you!) either didn't show up for the game or left early.

Because, you know, the only real football games happen in the playoffs.

Now run along to watch basketball.

"71:
I’m sorry you couldn’t be bothered to watch the week seventeen game"

Just because a game is less important doesn't mean one doesn't watch it. It's silly to pretend though that all games are created equal.

*As a Test ask 50 fans whether they would rather their team have a season identical to NE or a sesaon identical to NYG. I feel quite confident saying almost all would choose for their team to be NYG. Whether you like it or not the post season is vastly more important than the regular season

74. But that's not the question, is it? It's not "would you rather win a ton of games or win the championship"... everyone knows that answer (and as a Braves fan, I wager I know more than most). The original arguement is that a season without a championship is NOT a wasted season; if you're going to be bitter and angry about any season that doesn't end in absolute success, then you're going to spend a lot of time bitter and angry in general, because only one team out of 32 will take home the trophy.

So yea, I would rather have the championship... but hell, 18-1 is a hell of a season, and nothing to sneeze at (and no, I am not a patriots fan, so this isn't the rationalization of a heartbroken fan).

#75 is on the right track, except the question is, would you rather watch the NFL and bitch about it, or watch it and enjoy it?

I would rather just good football. If every game had 5-8 total sacks, ended 20-17, a few key interceptions or fumbles, a questionable call or two to grouse about, that would be perfection.

Of course, true perfection is the raiders going 0-16 for me, but thats just a Broncos fan, and even then I would rather it be losing 20-17 each game.

Now comes the pain from missing football so severe that other sports become "interesting".

Aaron, while the talking heads in sports may serve up that BS the fans will never truly believe it. There are still Lions fans, there are still Cardinals fans, and Texans fans. Plenty of fans still watch these teams play every week, well after it's a sure thing they won't make the playoffs.

This is a good year to be a Giants fan, but there have been plenty of bad years (mid-late 90's and most of the 2000's as well. When my teams is doing bad I can still find enjoyment in watching the development of the younger players. I can find enjoyment in watching Michael Strahan play, even during bad years (though seeing him get a long overdue ring is nice too).

Football is an exciting sport, it will be just as exciting next year. 18 wins brought a lot of enjoyment to Pats fans, but that one loss is going to sting for a long time. This is actually the strength of football. People get so emotionally involved with their team that they get physically ill when they lose that last game. Disappointment is a terrible feeling, but it turns into anticipating next year quickly enough.

What a load of horse shiat. We all know the football season comes down to one game with two teams. One winner, one loser. If your a fan of the loser, you don't get to declare yourself a winner. This isn't tee-ball, where they don't keep score.

Take the loss, and the humiliation that accompanies it, like a man. I'm a Cowboy fan and have taken it since the late 90's.

18-1 is an epic failure. Being the highest scoring offense of all time and tossing up 14 in the Super Bowl is a fail.

I'm also a Laker fan, so when they lost to the Pistons in 04, it was an epic failure. But one thing helped, the Pistons continued to kick ass. Made the sting of losing to an underdog a little less potent. Maybe the Giants will be great, and the Pats dont have to be SO humiliated. But until that happens...

/insert Nelson "HA-HA!"

tunesmith,

So, what you're saying, is that the Patriots are essentially...Google?

:-)

I root for a team that has never won a championship. At a deep level, I believe seeing that team win a championship would bring transcendent redemption to that franchise's history and my life as a sports fan. And I'm willing to spend each season in masochistic agony when my favorite team doesn't win a championship.

Because it is masochism. At the end of "Death of a Salesman," deluded Happy Loman says he's going to fight it out, he's going to come out #1 man. But we can't all come out #1 man. Teaching the play this week, I told my students it's like being a fan of a sports team. Each season, one team wins a championship, and about 96% of fans end the year disappointed. You have to be a masochist to come back every year facing those odds.

But that's what I'll do. And if my favorite team does win a championship (just one), THEN I'll try to put perspective on regular season success and whether or not any particular season is a "failure." Then. But not a moment earlier. I don't think back on the '98 Vikings without sadness. I don't think about the Vikings' four Super Bowl appearances (before I was even born) without a feeling of emptiness. Is it a good way to live? Is it a good form of fandom? Probably not. But I don't, unfortunately, see a choice for myself short of abandoning sports altogether.

As an addendum. People hate teams because of the strong emotions the NFL inspires. The NFL would have a lot more problems if people weren't as passionate as they are about the game. I hate the Cowboys because I'm a Giants fan and I started watching football in the 90's (Giants superbowl win == my first game). I was (and still am) so involved in the game that I couldn't help but hate the dominant division rival.

As for this particular season. It's the best thing to ever happen to the NFL. An 18-0 juggernaut loses to a 13-6 underdog that no one gave a legitimate chance. You can't invent a better headline. America loves an underdog victory, and it highlight how competitive the NFL actually is. I mean the Ravens lost to the Dolphins after almost beating the Patriots, that is parity.

Finally, Pats fans have been cruising for a bruising for a while. A vocal subsection of the fans and Boston media have consistently informed us that the only thing that matters is the ring. Brady is the best Quarterback in the league because he wins rings, right? Statistics and wins don't mean anything if you choke in the big game, right? Trademarking 19-0? Having a book available on preorder entitled 19-0: the history of New Englands unbeatable Patriots before the Superbowl? Richard Seymour telling the Giants players they should "just go home" after the final Brady score? Inviting them to their victory party? Running up the score on Joe Gibbs? I had Pats fans telling me my Giants were going to lose by 40 leading up to the Superbowl. We didn't have a chance, Brady was too good and Eli would never win a championship.

The Patriots fans (not all of them), organization, players, and the Boston media earned the sneers and jeers they'll be receiving. I don't hate the Patriots because of their success. I actually admired the program for several years after the 2001 SB. They're still a good team but they've lost some of the admiration due to recent events.

As a Giants fan I would love a rematch next year.

We're dealing with 2 separate sets of issues in Aaron's column. First, is the championship question. There's a difference between the players, media, and the fans. It's best to understand these differences to understand your obligation. Second is our emotional nature and the lack of respect present but not prevalent on these boards and the stress we cause each other.

For players, football is their job. Their goal is to play to the best of their ability and win as many games as possible with their ultimate goal being a championship.
The notion that you have to win a championship to be relevant also has origins in sportswriters trying to simplify whatever they vote for but are too lazy to objectively think about on a national level.

My only obligation is to enjoy these games. A loss or end of season is disappointing, but ending a season without a SB does not render the entire season pointless. We all have our motives for watching these games, I may question how "purely" we are fulfilling our obligation.
I myself don't watch games from 8 weeks ago, but when I am watching, I have the Tivo handy and rewind to figure out the cause and effect of a play's success or failure.

We all have our own motive to be fans and contribute here, but we're not always in control of them.
We shouldn't be wasting time or emotion, clenching our fist and grinding our teeth hoping for a team to lose because of some delusion that we understand a coach, player, or fan's personal life, or judge all 3 collectively because a portion of them somehow upset us. Frankly, it's a waste. I find my life is better served with more positive tones.

Here, we expose ourselves to stress, particularly in a setting when we are expanding our football experience beyond Sunday and unable to amicably disagree. Yes, we are emotional about our teams and their rivals. But we unnecessarily expose ourselves further when this emotion distorts our overall perspective. Combine that with our ability to commonly use words like "idiot" or "moron" or worse while hiding behind a keyboard without understanding that there is actually another person on the other end of our posts and the only consequence is a text retaliation. The result has been less than desirable.

There may not be any other solution other than to try and ignore the fly-by trolls. Are we not smart enough here to ignore people who call a great player overrated or make a baseless unqualified generalization. Or can we at least not retaliate with anger? This had been difficult for me personally, but I get better at ignoring them every day.

As for the regulars, there is little or no point in taking a disagreement to levels of insult with each other. WE are the users of this site, and it is up to US to determine what level of community, intelligence, and enjoyment we achieve here.

Finally, I want to point out that the frustration here is present but not prevalent. Among tens of thousands of posts, from hundreds of posters, we take exception to a small percentage of posts, and we're able to count the quantity of problem people on a couple of sets of fingers and toes. We shouldn't get too discouraged by such a limited amount of limited people.

I also love football, and Football Outsiders is an excellent complement to my overall football experience.

i agree totally. as a volunteer game charter this year in the bay area, i had to go through a season of recording raiders and niners games and re-watching them multiple times. i've enjoyed edvery moment. footballoutsiders is my favorite website because it brings a mindset that is rare, respect and love for the game while being objective and with a fine eye for detail. few sportswriters have such a mindset, dr. z and that brooks guy at si.com being 2 of the few.

enjoy this era while you can folks. in 4-5 years, everyone we root for will be retired. get obsessed, become experts! this game deserves our undivided attention and the use of our brains. lets say 'screw off' to tony kornheiser and the idiot fan who can only name the stars on the team.

While I agree that not all non-Super Bowl winning seasons are failures, plenty of good regular seasons can be.

Last year's 14-3 Chargers, for instance, were a colossal failure. However, this season's 13-6 Chargers were a pretty big success.

Here is a Jags fan happy whatever happens and aware of his luck to be able to enjoy a site with such great analysis about the sport he loves.

#38

Play the NFL in London, you will either win the Super Bowl or get the No.1 pick!

I also love football, even more now that I live in Brazil.

Maybe we could get someone to start an XP about games that should be rewatched.

I would recommend the first Bears-Viking game to people who want to see A. Peterson at his finest.

What other games would you recommend?

One of the actually astute things Gregg Easterbrook points out a few times a year--and he points this out by way of defending there being no playoffs in college football--is that one of the biggest differences between college football and the NFL is that, in the NFL, the employees and fans of 31 out of the 32 teams, in the end, regard their season as a failure. Not so in college, where four of the top eight teams end the year with a big win on national TV.

Re 55 MJK

Is Bill Simmons the exception that proves the rule about bandwagon fans being worse than life time fans?

When the Colts lost to the Chargers this year, I wasn't happy, but I also wasn't crushed, the main part of that was that the Colts had won the SB last year. If they hadn't won the SB that loss would have been absolutely crushing.

88 wins the thread as far as I'm concerned.

Good post, Aaron, about loving the game. I enjoyed the Bucs' season this year. Gruden saved his job and the defense got back into form...a must for the true Tampa fan.

I do think the "worried about the consequences" stuff was a bit much, though. The Patriots set themselves up for everyone hating them. Running the score up, cheating, and all the broken records combined with the obsessive media coverage (that "Pursuit of Perfection" crap pretty much drove me away from ESPN for the entire season) turned a lot of people south on the Pats.

how about peyton and eli singing "this is your country"? i'm a lifelong cubs fan, and i watch baseball because it's exciting. in fact, i'd rather watch the cubs struggle than the red sox dominate. i'd rather watch an underdog try to win, even if they fail. i have the same approach to football, though i'll admit i concentrate on the colts and don't generally watch other games. this site has enhanced my football enjoyment enormously, so that i find more joy in the game than ever before. the next few months are rough, though, because basketball is boring.

#88/92

Norv must be nervous then.

Count me as another in Agreement with Aaron. Being in the UK, while we get a choice of 2 early and 2 late games on Sunday (+ SNF & MNF), to a large degree I'm limited as to the games I can see. While 'd like to see Miami every week, It's not possible, and you quickly learn to enjoy whatever is being shown. I hope this post & thread is the harbinger of sanity returning to these boards. (Raiderjoe and Preserve-related posts from Harris excepted).

I consider the Patriots season a failure, but a spectacular one, and there is something special about it. Any team can lose in the playoffs, but it's been 60 years since a team took an undefeated season into the championship game and lost.
As Bender would say, if you're going to not catch a fish, might as well not catch a big fish.

As a life-long Cinci fan, I take heart in the occasional win. Never quite understood the toxic discussions about Brady/Manning (seriously - can't both of them be good?).

And you're right. I just love to watch football, as evidenced by my addiction to ESPN Classic and the strange late night Saturday games on cable's sports tier.

Our regional Fox Sports channel is showing 'classic' baseball. Don't know if you can call mid-eighties Brewers games 'classic', but the grass is green and the sound of the ball and bat give me a mental break from the two feet of snow outside my window...

Re: 89
I'll try to answer in a good order with the best games closer to the top.

Bears-Broncos from late in the season, just off the top of my head. Week 2 Cincinatti-Cleveland. Vikings-Chargers for more Adrian Petersen. Week 3 Cleveland-Oakland. Patriots-Ravens and Giants-Patriots as part of the regular season for the 2 closest games the Patriots had. Week 3 Giants-Redskins, the game everyone tal