Patriot Mania on 12-20-2007 at 12:38 PM said:
NO MORE HUMBLE PIE! ALL OTHERS MUST BOW TO THE 2007 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS!
The Patriots can rest now that they know that a perfect season & Super Bowl victory are all sewn up at this point.
HUMBLE PIE? WHY?
Hey, Pats fans: The wins may not be forever
Andrea Adelson | From the Press Box
December 20, 2007
Hey, Patriots fans. Take a good look at these Miami Dolphins. Because one day, this will be you.
So savor each and every win on the road to joining the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only unbeaten teams in NFL history. But also learn from what happened after that record-breaking season.
Because as great as it was for the Dolphins to go undefeated, that season planted the seeds of disappointment to come. What else is left after winning all your games? Nothing. All you can do is crash back down -- while raising expectations that every year can be magical.
Granted, it took 25 years for the bottom to completely fall out for the Dolphins. It looks like there might be some hope on the horizon now, with Bill Parcells apparently coming to Miami for a front-office job. But it will take years to fix this mess. Now, it might take a generation before the Patriots are in the same bind. But the moment will come, and then you will realize you have taken winning for granted.
Dolphins fans certainly did. Winning became an afterthought, because these were the mighty Dolphins, one of the winningest franchises in all of sports. They had Don Shula pacing the sideline, and all those amazing greats, from Csonka to Mercury to Griese.
The teams of the '70s set the standard for consistent success. Losing was for teams like the Bucs.
But over time, those good feelings about winning seasons started turning into bitterness, then anger, then disillusionment. All of a sudden, going 10-6 was awful. Finishing 9-7 was the end of the world. Forget the joy of making the playoffs. The Dolphins could barely figure out a way to win one game in the postseason.
Miami might as well have been losing the way fans reacted. Nothing was good enough. Because they saw no hope for the future. No hope for Super Bowls.
"We took excellence as an entitlement," says Jim Mandich, who was on the 1972 undefeated team and now broadcasts Dolphins games on the radio. "The curse of being great is being just good enough. . . . 10-6 looks miles away right now. We reflect back on those years as the glory days now."
The Patriots will one day, too. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and Randy Moss will leave, and then what? Every franchise goes through cycles. Unfortunately for the Patriots, this is as good as it is going to get. The Dolphins learned that the hard way, looking back 25 years at consistency that will probably never be matched.
I know, the Patriots have been bottom dwellers in the past. But this group of Patriots has flipped the standard, making winning a given. Does it even look like the Patriots are savoring each victory? The players look like drones, just like Belichick. No joy in their eyes. No sense of what it means to really win a game.
It takes bottoming out for the once exalted to appreciate how great it feels to win. That is why grown men hugged and cried after the Dolphins beat Baltimore last Sunday. That is why Mandich and his radio partners Joe Rose and Jimmy Cefalo yelled at the top of their lungs in unison, screaming over each other until finally one voice rang out, "The Dolphins have won the football game!"
Their call was enough to make you giggle, find it on the Internet and replay it over and over. Who would have thought a proud franchise like the Dolphins would appreciate winning a football game this much?
This has been a miserable season for Miami -- but one that stays with you because of what you discover. Going 10-6 every year is not so bad.
So consider this a lesson, Patriots fans. When your team starts to struggle, try not to get too frustrated. Savor the victories a little more.
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