The Benefits of Being a Misfit Team

A Misfit Team is a team that has one or fewer superstars on their roster, and the rest of the squad is undervalued and written-off by everyone and their mothers. Misfit Teams do not incite fear in their opponents (at least, not initially). The ability of a Misfit Team to intimidate a foe is a slow-drip effect; it’s a feeling that emerges within an opponent’s psyche when their best player starts asking themselves: “How is this team beating us?” A Misfit Team is never favored in a big game. They are under constant scrutiny. They are the topic of everyone with questions and no one with answers. A Misfit Team is a team that generally responds to reporters by saying: “We’re not listening to what people are saying about us.” A Misfit Team is a team that proves that professional sports analysts are entirely unqualified to do their jobs. A Misfit Team unsettles people because of their ability to scramble out of the labels people put on them. Misfit Teams are underdogs. For the longest time, The New England Patriots were a team of championship pedigree. Now, like it or not, they’re a Misfit Team.

The good news is that the St. Louis Cardinals are also a Misfit Team. And the San Francisco Giants before them. And the Boston Bruins last season. Take the Dallas Mavericks: no one thought they had a shot against the Miami Heat. What did the Mavs have? One superstar player surrounded by a washed-up Jason Kidd, the unbelievably irritating DeShawn Stevenson who celebrates after every three by waving his hand in front of his eyes as if to say “I’m so hot I can’t even feel my face,” a quickly aging Shawn Marion who’s less Matrix these days and more Fried Green Tomatoes, an injury-prone Tyson Chandler, a second-string point guard named Jose Barea that almost no one outside of Dallas knows about, and on top of that, their second best player (Jason Terry) isn’t even a starter. That team playing against LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh? That’s a clear-cut Vegas spread waiting to happen.
And then, Chris Bosh needed to be held up by teammates because he was crying as he walked off the floor in defeat.

Misfit Teams will break your heart. I’m the perfect person to know this. Every New England fan was celebrating a fourth Lombardi trophy before Super Bowl 42 even happened -- every New England fan except me. I knew the dangers of a Misfit Team. I saw the Giants team before the game, dressed in all black, telling reporters that they were going to a funeral. I knew what that meant, even though no one else did. I knew that every single man on that Giants squad had been placed on earth not to get married or have kids or build a hospital or a learning annex for troubled children or cure some disease or create a working green economy. No no. I knew that they were put here, on this world, for the sole purpose of destroying New England’s historic season. That’s what a Misfit Team does. They destroy hearts and minds.

The New England Patriots need to stop relying on their reputation to win football games. Those days are over. We just don’t have the players to wear that championship armor. We haven’t won a playoff game in three years. Teams respect Tom Brady, but they also know they can knock Brady down. And if they can’t sack him, they can certainly rush him. That was evident last season in the second round against Jets when Tom Brady ducked, despite the fact that there wasn’t a Jet player around him. They were in his head. Teams know they can’t stop Brady from having a good game, but they can stop him from having a great game. They’re a group of guys that nobody really believes in. I believe the Patriots can win it all this season, but I know they can’t win if they keep playing the way they’re playing. Something needs to change. It’s time the Patriots accept their Misfit persona.

Misfit personas don’t need to last forever. If the Patriots can win a fourth ring this season and then assemble a phenomenal star team next year, they’ll be right back where they were prior to Super Bowl 42; they’ll be the kings of the league, respected and feared by all. But for now, we have to stop kidding ourselves. We’re the last ranked defense in the NFL. Our last two losses in the post-season were to adequate teams without elite QB’s. We don’t have anyone like Tedy Bruschi who can incite fear in other players anymore. There’s no Vrabel or Harrison out there. There’s no Banta-Cain, no Asante, no Vinatieri. There’s no Richard Seymour, no Ty Law, no Troy Brown.

There is no rhyme or reason why the Jets should look forward to playing the Patriots. No reason at all. The Jets should look at their schedule, see that they’re playing New England twice, and they should groan. They should bow their heads and say “Oh, man, that’s gonna suck.” But they don’t. Rex Ryan circles those games on his calender, and he looks forward to those days. He foams from the mouth before playing the Patriots. He wishes they could play the Patriots 16 games a season. The Jets bring their ‘A’ Game every time. Even last year, after we blew them out by 50, they came back and beat us in the playoffs. There’s a lack of fear there, which the Patriots now have to use to their advantage.

The biggest problem is in our last two playoff games is the pass protection for Brady. The Ravens knocked him down, and the Jets flustered him all day long. Patriots fans are all ranting about the defense right now, but the real cause for concern is the protection. Not only is that why we lost to Baltimore and the Jets, it’s also why we lost Super Bowl 42. Brady was simply not able to find a rhythm because he had a massive target on his back, and those three teams felt like they could really bang him up and get in his head. And they did. Defenders on the Patriots really need to enter a ruthless frame of my mind. They need to know that anyone who comes after Tom Brady is going home in a bodybag. They need to make teams fearful of laying a finger on #12. And Wilfork’s squad needs to take the insults personally. There has to be a “you can’t score on us” mentality. But more than that, there needs to be a psychotic streak developed in this Patriots team. They have to take it personally that the opposing team even showed up. They have to take it personally when a team even thinks they can drive it down the field. They have to be willing to dismantle players from the neck up and the neck down. They have to leave a welt -- roughly in the shape of a Super Bowl ring -- in the skin of every team in the NFL.

Anger In Foxborough

New England fans have been lashing out all week following a pitiful Pittsburgh performance that saw Big Ben slice up the Patriots’ defense with relative ease. It appears that 3rd & long against this New England secondary is no cause for alarm for anyone except Patriots Nation, who are left with the uneasy feeling that this team isn’t getting better. Weeks 9 through 12 were destined to be gritty grind-’em-out victories or heartbreaking losses for the Patriots, but that was back when New England fans thought they had a shot of being 7-0 or 6-1 in a semi-contentious AFC East and THEN having to face the Giants, Jets, Chiefs and Eagles. But now the Patriots find themselves in a bitterly-tough conference, one loss away from being knocked out of the top position.

Primary concerns with the Patriots have to do with the fact that they don’t have a single player capable going for the big play. Because of this, opposing teams can smother them with man-defense and ruin Brady’s day. Perceived solution: Ochocinco. History says he’s a long-ball threat, not quite in the stature of Randy Moss, but close enough to spread the field. New England fans have mostly called for Ocho’s head at this point, due to his non-existent presence on the field. But more astute analysts are wondering if his poor performance is more a question of his inability to fit into the scheme that Bill Belichick and Ernie Adams have built this team around. This would explain why so many solid players have been cut, waived, sold and traded out of New England. Patriots fans are prone to overreacting after any rare loss, and those calling for Belichick’s job will undoubtedly forgive Bill with a victory over the Giants. But their fiery emotions are symptomatic of a larger point, which is that this Patriots team is not capable of playing the intellectual football game that Ernie Adams constructed to win three Super Bowls in New England. No Patriots fan really wants Belichick to leave, but many are wondering if the scheme and philosophy of this team is keeping good players from blossoming into great ones.

Also of concern is their defense -- the worst-rated in the league. Big Ben held the ball for 40 minutes last week, doubling the amount of time Brady had to make something of his offense. Vince Wilfork is confident that his defensive squad can be one of the best in the league. But if you turn on Patriots Radio at any part of the day, you’ll hear New England fans rabidly attacking this sense of self-flattery. Again, Patriots fans are distraught right now, and they’re speaking from an overly-emotional place. But the emotional concerns of Patriots Nation is part of a larger picture; New England can’t win games on reputation any longer. Their defense is being trash-talked all over the league, most notably by Hines Ward, who publicly stated that he didn’t have to play last week for his team to beat the Patriots. Both Brady’s offensive unit and Wilfork’s defensive unit need to reestablish a new identity that’s built less on finesse and more on physical domination. It’s a question of how many pints of blood the defense is willing to donate to give Brady more possessions, and to what degree they’re willing to play as a misfit team instead of a cerebral one.