Let me be upfront, I love Bill Simmons, I know it’s lame, but I love him. I love the Ringer, I loved Grantland. I love his editors. I love their podcasts. I love the Maester, I love Mallory Rubin. I love Tate. When my wife and I had our son, our brains were so stupid that we watched our first and last season of the Bachelor like a junkie needing a fix because of Juliet Litman’s hilarious Bachelor Party pod. The Ringer also has one of the best and most expansive rosters of writers on the Internet. It’s amazing!
So when Simmons announced on his podcast that they’d be running “Patriots week” on the gloriously insufferable “25 greatest Patriots wins” podcast, I was thrilled. Like an Indiana Jones fan going to a midnight screening of Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull, I was left sneaking out before the Q & A with a stoned Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg.
“Patriots Week” Sucked. For Patriots fans at least.
This response shouldn’t come as a surprise to the editors who put this sub-header on each and every article:
“We all — well, most of us — agree with you: The Patriots are an insufferable football machine that must be stopped.“
Haha. So immediately it’s clear that this is for a non-Patriots audience and even though the head of their company is a Patriots fan, they hate them too. Okay, cool.
Still I’m telling myself, you can’t do a deep dive without cataloging the team’s success and getting rare insight and anecdotes from the players, that should at least be fun. But there wasn’t much cataloguing of success, in fact, it was mostly just meta articles about what the Patriots mean to various writers who don’t expressly follow the team.
I guess, I’m just not sure why they did it. If you hate the Patriots, you probably aren’t interested in Patriots articles unless they’re about “cheating” and if you like the Patriots beyond the savagely homeristic podcast, there wasn’t much there for you.
[NOTE: Simmons said on his podcast that they’d posted 16 pieces, but I only found and read these 14]:
The New England Patriots Have Mastered the Art of the Steal
BY KEVIN CLARK
A good article for all football audiences that instructs how the Patriots approach talent on their roster. Good anecdotes from former players, this is a great start to the week…
Who Will Be the Next Patriots?
BY DANNY KELLY
Oi. An article positing a rather ridiculous question given the current state of NFL front offices and ownership: who in the future could sustain success in the NFL?
Five Ways the Patriots’ Dynasty Is Deeply Flawed
A silly article that’s mostly just a chance to say the Patriots can’t beat the Giants in a Super Bowl. We’re veering into Patriots hate week.
The New England Patriots’ Giant Achilles’ Helmet
BY KATIE BAKER
A Giants fan says that the Patriots can’t beat the Giants in a Super Bowl. And if you get past that part, which no non-Patriots fan would, she sort of praises the Patriots success.
A fine article about the placement of value on certain things by the former Patriots front office staffer.
Spygate: The Scandal That Meant Everyone Was Right
What Ms. McNear writes about is pretty interesting and actually what I want to discuss… more later, but really it’s an article that says Patriots fans are wrong and asks why won’t they just acknowledge it? Ugh.
BY ALAN SIEGEL
An interesting article about the ‘99 Patriots and how Belichick started his roster rebuild. This is good, the dawn of the age of BB.
Ranking the 16 Most Important People in the Patriots’ Dynasty
BY ROBERT MAYS
Mays takes his shots when he can, but it’s a solid piece.
Why the Patriots Really Could Go Undefeated
BY DANNY KELLY
JINX JINX JINX.
Belichick’s 25 Greatest Patriots Wins, From 25 to 1
BY BILL SIMMONS
Previously mentioned.
The Atlanta Falcons’ Super Bowl Hangover Cure
An article about the Atlanta Falcons. So not Patriots week.
How the 2007 New England Patriots Changed Football Forever
BY KEVIN CLARK
A deep dive into the biggest disappointment in Patriots history and how it changed the modern NFL offense. Why should I be surprised that the only season they did a deep dive on the Patriots did not win?
Bill Belichick Is the Best Jets Coach of the 21st Century
An article by an angry Jets fan. Hmmmm.
Bill Belichick Will Teach You His Secrets If You Know What to Ask
BY DANNY KELLY
The art of the Belichick sewing circle. The key take-away, Belichick doesn’t have time for dumb questions about non-football things. Which is fine, but pretty well worn territory at this point.
Some interesting stuff, to be sure, but not really ‘Patriots week’, and definitely not what I thought would be a deep dive into the most dominant team in professional sports history. And to be clear, every one of the articles stands on its own and would fit into a Patriots week, but as a collection, they left me pretty underwhelmed. I think only three give any real insight into New England Patriots (Art of the Steal, Last Bad Pats Team, Lombardi) and four are just about hating the Patriots (Spygate, Giants, Jets fan, Deeply flawed). An article by a Giants AND a Jets fan, but only the podcast Hench and Simmons did as the Patriots fan voice. To be fair, I presume they are protecting themselves from the baked-in Bill Simmons homerism and I completely understand it. But I was left with the same information I came in with, without the enjoyment of re-experiencing any of past 20 years.
So why do a “Patriots Week” in the first place?
1. An editor puts the word ‘Patriots’ in any headline and infinitesimally increases traffic, we know this at Pats Propaganda, I’m sure the Ringer does too.
2. Maybe their boss told them to and they said fine, but we’re not doing homer pieces anticipating a backlash, which I’m sure they got anyway.
3. I really don’t know.
So The Ringer split the baby. And I found myself hate-reading most of it.
They don’t need my help, but here are articles that I would have enjoyed during Patriots Week:
How the Team that divides us, once united us.
BY CHRIS RYAN
A simple blow by blow of the ’01 Patriots season because it stands in such contrast to the current culture. Reeling from 9/11 the country rallied around many things, including the rag-tag team helmed by a gangly game-manager in his 2nd season. In ’01, the actual game was much more brutal. Defying the star-studded Rams, they were introduced in the Super Bowl as a team, no names, a collective whole, there was the “Tuck Rule” game, Bledsoe has a hero arc in the AFC Championship Game, there are just so many great moments from that season.
The 31 Flavors of Hate Article
BY RINGER STAFF
Put all the hate in one article. Fans of all 31 teams encapsulate their hate for the Patriots. Get your most vocal Patriots critics and give each a paragraph to vent their hatred. Or just have Shea Serrano write one for each team.
Why We Just Want to Be Loved, Unless You Hate Us, In Which Case, We Hate You Too.
BY BILL SIMMONS
A Patriots’ fan perspective in an information ecosystem where every non-Patriots fan wants to read the sentence: “We all — well, most of us — agree with you: The Patriots are an insufferable football machine that must be stopped“ at the top of every article. It’s a pretty unique experience to have rooted for a team that America LOVED in its earliest incarnation to the current villain role. A fans version of Breaking Bad and that show did okay.
The 25 Best Patriots Wins
BY BILL SIMMONS
Not being able to watch the highlights made the listening experience less enjoyable. I certainly miss Simmons’ writing and suggesting two articles is a bit much, but that type of list was MADE for a blog. And if he’d done it, I probably would never have written this piece.
Spygate: The Scandal That Meant Everyone Was Right
BY CLAIRE MCNEAL and SOMEONE OFFERING THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW
If you’re going to do the Spygate piece as a “both-sidesism”, actually present it from both sides. Go old school, like Simmons/Gladwell old email conversations. I read the Wells Report. I read every available piece of evidence in Deflategate and Spygate and I wanted more than anything to not believe them. But I was prepared to be disappointed both times. And both times the league left me unconvinced, never sufficiently proving their case. Patriots fans will not get over this for a long time and I think that’s really interesting and something worth probing. Why can’t we let it go?
The Game of Owns (A deep dive into the tribal political divisions and alliances of NFL Owners)
BY JASON CONCEPCION
A piece on how Deflategate exposed the entrenched political machinations that occur in the cloak rooms of the league office. And how Cersai Lannister lords over it.
What If The Helmet Catch Never Happened?
BY KATIE BAKER
An alternate history, Man In The High Castle-style. How does it affect Eli’s Career? How does it affect Brady and Belichick’s Career? Is Mercury Morris still interviewed ever? Does World War III break out?
Enemy No. 1: Goodell’s Attempt to Inflict Harm on The Coach Who Won’t Wear His Branded Logos
Another Deep Dive into the iconoclastic Belichick and how it relates to Roger Goodell’s obsession with trying to tie his hands behind his back. Whatever you think the Patriots did, no other sports commissioner would have done the same to its marquee franchise or coach (especially with so little evidence), see: Bonds/Sosa, Stern’s NBA, officiating, Lebron’s Miami trips, Jordan’s Gambling, etc… Other commissioners handle their nastiest warts away from the press, why does the NFL use PR as a weapon against its own? And how does it fall into the atmosphere where they treat domestic violence or other actually criminal acts.
Anyway, they’re all really good at their jobs, they don’t need my help, but if the goal was to get a Patriots fan to engage the site, I’m not sure it was a success. And as a fan of both Boston sports and The Ringer, I’m disappointed because I think it pushes our parochial fanbase further away from the mainstream.
I, like every human, enter the news environment with inherent bias. And I try to own that bias, I also really like to hear alternative viewpoints, but there is very little reciprocity for Patriots fans in any real way. We’re told we just have to settle for the wins and embrace the hate. And fine. But most NFL writers are writing about the greatest team in the history of the sport at the very least grudging suspicion and at the most with outward animosity towards the team. How can sportswriters celebrate a sport without celebrating the people who have done it best (probably ever)?
And it’s because even in the one of the most creative ecosystems like The Ringer, there wasn’t any will to write something that might appeal to Patriots fans. I don’t want to only hear flowery pieces about the Patriots, but if mainstream sites cannot cover the team without first saying, we hate them too. Then The Ringer loses a content-hungry audience and Boston fans lose The Ringer’s great insight and go back to listening to Felger and Mazz and the maniacal WEEI shows.
Boston fans have done what so many in our country have done, they’ve cocooned into information bubbles. And it’s only getting worse, we have four wonderful Boston based National-level writers: Greg Bedard, Christopher Price, Brian Robb and Sean McAdam who have started a subscription site just for Boston sports. The Boston audience doesn’t trust mainstream outlets and are making the choice that they don’t need them either. You can’t really blame them when the Ringer, Boston’s own – Bill Simmons’ website, is obligated to put “We all — well, most of us — agree with you: The Patriots are an insufferable football machine that must be stopped“.
I think information isolation is really, really toxic, but it’s become the easy reaction to something like “Patriots Week”.
A big fat story that continues to go untold is who is BB really? Since Belichick will never explain himself, why not a piece giving it shot regarding BBs most controversial decisions and moves from his perspective? Look at Spygate through BBs eyes. New commissioner sends out memo in lieu of a rule change, bypassing the rules committee dictating acceptable locations for filming ? The rule is clear that electronic communications cannot be used for in game advantage. This laziness in reporting is what aggravates me the most. It was simply Goodell and the front office did not like being challenged and then put the hammer down on the momentum of public outcry to hand down an outlandish punishment and start the narrative that has stuck ever since that BB is a cheater.