Editor’s word: Within the spirit of Tremendous Bowl competitors and a few frivolously lingering resentment, Seattle Instances columnist Alex Fryer and editorial cartoonist David Horsey take intention at New England. And from the opposite coast, Boston Globe contributor Jesse Singal and cartoonist Christopher Weyant do the identical. Learn Fryer’s here.
I’ve by no means had extra males on high of me than I did on the night of Feb. 1, 2015.
That, in fact, was the night of Tremendous Bowl XLIX, the final time the New England Patriots met the Seattle Seahawks on the largest stage in American sports activities.
I used to be watching in Brooklyn with some Pats-fan mates I’d met in school, in addition to the same old assortment of non-football-watching weirdos who’re unavoidable options of most Tremendous Bowl events, doing obnoxious issues like “socializing” and “discussing the commercials.” Nevertheless it was simple to disregard them, as a result of we had been in for an additional traditional Tom Brady comeback: We had been down 10 within the fourth, after which, seemingly a second later, we had been up 4 with 2:02 left.
However then all of it appeared to swing again once more. The Seahawks’ Russell Wilson lofted a ball down the fitting sideline to Jermaine Kearse. The cornerback guarding him, an undrafted overachieving rookie named Malcolm Butler, performed the ball completely, batting it away. Besides … Kearse caught it anyway! He received up and was pushed out on the Pats’ 5. No manner that occurred. NBC flashed to a replay of the Tremendous Bowl XLII Helmet Catch that spoiled our undefeated yr, a replay that, in context, seemingly generated the only most intense 30 seconds of New Englanders cursing at TVs in our storied historical past of such.
Everyone knows what occurred subsequent, and I’m not attempting to rub it in, so I’ll phrase this as diplomatically as potential. Pete Carroll — a tremendous good coach, an actual participant’s coach — made a sure determination on second and purpose from the Patriots’ 1 (as in a single yard away from successful the Tremendous Bowl) that will have been incorrect. A call that concerned human wrecking ball Marshawn Lynch not getting the ball. Carroll as an alternative opted to cross. The ball ended up not within the fingers of its supposed recipient, Ricardo Lockette, however in Butler’s. It is without doubt one of the most outstanding performs within the historical past of American sports activities. I simply watched it once more six instances whereas blasting “I’m Transport As much as Boston” and shotgunning cans of Sam Adams. It’s 11:45 a.m. as I kind this.
Again in 2015 in that Brooklyn house, that’s when all the lads had been instantly on high of me. We had been in our early 30s, no mere babes, and but a sure primal response overrode no matter scraps of respectability we’d acquired through the years. All we knew to do was soar on high of each other and soften right into a screaming, crying — sure, there was crying — manpile. The normie celebration attendees didn’t know what to do. Name the cops? Report it and put up it to an unsavory nook of the web? All I keep in mind, apart from the manpile, is waves of aid and disbelief and jubilation.
It was the kind of factor that simply doesn’t occur.
And now we’re again the place we began: Pats-Seahawks, Tremendous Bowl.
I don’t need this to be a column filled with low-cost slams and parochial New England boosterism. As a substitute, I need to lengthen some sort phrases to our rivals this Tremendous Bowl Sunday. As a result of on the subject of Seattle, one merely can’t deny that it’s, the truth is, an American metropolis. A crueler, much less open-minded Pats fan would try and deny this, however I typed “Seattle” into Google Maps and certain sufficient, it popped up, a unusually femur-shaped strip of land plopped ill-advisedly in the midst of a bunch of what I assume to be unnamed straits, brackish ponds and uninhabitable, seemingly vampire-infested evergreen forests. To study extra, I additionally seemed up the dictionary definition of the phrase Seattle, and whereas I don’t fairly perceive the outcome I received — a “padded and leather-covered seat for the rider of an animal (corresponding to a horse)” — it solely bolstered my perception that, all eyes-and-ears proof on the contrary, Seattle actually does exist.
OK, that’s sufficient of my bottomless kindness.
I perceive there are some damage emotions over the truth that the Patriots’ rebuild was so brief. It doesn’t really feel honest that we needs to be again within the Tremendous Bowl so shortly. However this mentality ignores a number of essential info. First, Boston is an important metropolis in the US and arguably the world. It makes sense that we must always win quite a lot of sports activities titles. Seattle’s a unique story. A historic zig right here or zag there and it’s a small fishing village, or maybe a backwater fort that exists solely to regulate the Canadians.
And I don’t know concerning the “unfairness” of the Pats being again within the Tremendous Bowl when the Seahawks are themselves one of the vital profitable groups, record-wise, of the final 12 years. They gained a Tremendous Bowl! They need to have gained two! Then they lucked right into a terrifying protection and — the ultimate piece — a just-above-average-enough quarterback in Sam Darnold. And Darnold is a Seahawk principally due to a grand whole of two dangerous video games on the finish of a 14-3 marketing campaign for the Vikings final yr. Issues go a bit otherwise and Seahawks followers are watching another NFC staff within the Tremendous Bowl, livid that a fantastic protection is being squandered on Geno Smith.
So who ought to get to win the Tremendous Bowl: the area that began all of it, the place the primary shot at Harmony was fired, the place you may get an honest slice of pizza? Or a metropolis nonetheless babbling about how they began grunge, as a result of the story since then has consisted virtually solely of out-of-control housing costs, civil discord and startups with names like Sniffr: The Canine Social Community? You need unfair? Unfair could be a metropolis that has executed so little to drag its weight, that hardly even pretends to be an actual place — and solely engages in such pretending whereas draped sullenly in uninteresting flannel — successful the Tremendous Bowl.
Is Boston a glamorous place? No. Will we at all times acquit ourselves with dignity and style? No. Am I scripting this from California, attempting to have it each methods by enjoying the function of the partisan Bostonian whereas fleeing like hell from the horrors of a Northeast winter? Sure. Did I neglect the place I used to be going with this? Additionally sure!
My level is: Pats 55, Seahawks 0. And also you guys might be fortunate if it’s even that shut.
