The winning coach yesterday was dour. After beating a divisional opponent on the road in a key game for the playoff picture, he half-heartedly trotted out to greet the opposing coach. The opposing coach offered his head and said “congratulations” and the winning coach briefly touched his hand and started to jog away, not even making eye contact.
The losing coach wasn’t happy, refusing to let go of the hand and pulling the winning coach back towards him. “Hey, hey, hey I said congratulations.“ The winning coach reluctantly came back, said “thank you, good job” and pulled away again, and trotted off. The losing coach took a few steps after him, as if to confront him, but thought better of it
That Bill Belichick, just once again showing what a poor sport, even in victory that he is.
Oh wait, that was Mike Tomlin of the Steelers who snubbed John Harbaugh yesterday? Oh. Well, it’s forgiven then, because that game was played in such a dark place.
The Patriots won their 10th AFC East Title in 12 years yesterday, beating the Miami Dolphins on the road 23-16 to move to 9-3 on the season. Remember when all four teams in the AFC East were 3-3?
The string of opponent miscues continued, especially in the first half, as Miami made several critical mistakes which New England took advantage of. Two of the most tiresome “storylines” of the moment tie into this. First is the “We can’t learn anything about the Patriots when the opponents hand them the game” storyline. The other is the “What’s going to happen when the Patriots face a team that won’t just hand them the ball????”
Whatever. Hopefully the next two games, which are not against Shaughnessy’s tomato cans, (hey, did you know he came up with a clever nickname for Robert Kraft…he called him “Amos Alonzo Kraft!” How witty is that Shaughnessy guy?) will actually show us something about this team. Except it won’t, unless they lose. If they win, it’s because they were at home, and people will be screaming about what will happening when they play these teams on the road or on a neutral field.
On CSNNE yesterday, Felger and the Lettermen had their targets lined up. Insisting that they weren’t taking anything away from Stevan Ridley for reaching 1000 yards, they then took everything away from him. ANY back can get a 1000 yards if you give him the ball enough, he plays with Tom Brady, he’s no Adrian Peterson. Ridley got his 1000 yards in 12 games, which is much different then getting in 16. Then Troy Brown went off on Brandon Lloyd (which he continued today on WEEI).
Before we jump to a few Patriots links, a couple links on the events in Kansas City over the weekend. Brady Quinn may never be a great (or even good) NFL quarterback. But he gets it. His Postgame Comments yesterday were about as empathetic, intelligent and introspective as you’ll ever hear from a professional athlete.
CBS drops the ball in coverage of the Chiefs’ murder-suicide tragedy – If you’re heading to SI.com to read MMQB be sure to stop by and read Richard Deitsch’s media column covering the approaches taken by the network pregame shows yesterday.
Get all the Patriots coverage at PatriotsLinks.com. A few highlights:
What we learned: For Patriots, Sunday wasn’t about hats or stats – Wait, we DID learn something from this game? Christopher Price tells us what those things were.
Patriots defense, not offense, gives rival the boot – Karen Guregian has the Patriots winning this one with their defense.
More power to them – Greg A Bedard says this one was won by running the ball when they had to run the ball.This is a good, technical look at how they did it.
Patriots not satisfied with AFC East – Mike Reiss has the Patriots with bigger goals.
The Red Sox are about to sign 1B/C Mike Napoli, according to Rob Bradford and others, including Jon Heyman, who says the deal is for 3-years, $39 million.
Josh Hamilton may be ripe for plucking – John Tomase hasn’t given up on the idea of the Rangers outfielder coming here.
