Red pants: “If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?”

The beer: Foundation Burnside Brown Ale
The headline: “Well, a rose is a rose is a rose by any other name.” – Railroad Jerk, “One Step Forward”

The commentary: Relocate those Foxborough fuckers, shed the heavy-baggage mascot and call them the North Shore Regulars, complete with a return to the old “Redcoat” uniforms and Pat Patriot headgear—mixed messages galore in our age of dying republics! And how’s about a new contract for my first favorite non-Tony Dorsett player, Stanley Morgan? He’s better than anyone on the roster!

I’m writing this weeks after I intended so some of the steam has burned off. Drag. Marce Hall said it though: “One step forward and two back from where you came.” People—whiny bitches like Patriots Unfiltered’s Mike Dussault—are setting six or seven wins as the team’s floor next season as if they haven’t been in a freefall since, oh, March 2020. (Christ, what a month.) Four seasons of Brady-less Belichick followed by one of Jerod “Little Bill” Mayo, totaling thirty-three wins, fifty-one losses and one playoff blowout—this inspires confidence in another Belichick acolyte running the show? Mike Vrabel was fired! And we brought back fucking Josh McDaniels, perhaps the most hated man in the league, because he (ahem) contributed to Brady’s success? And Eliot Wolf still has a desk in the building—the very same personnel director behind this series of events:

On March 7, 2024, [Chukwuma] Okorafor signed a one-year contract with the New England Patriots. He was named the week one starting left tackle but was benched midgame due to poor play. He was placed on the exempt/left squad list before week two. He would not return to the team after the five-day exemption period expired, meaning that he would not be allowed to play for the rest of the season. On February 10, 2025, Okorafor was cut by the Patriots.

Okorafor was the solution at left tackle! The position-ignoring-draft solution! I don’t want to wish for a guy to lose his job—unless, you know, I create a custom tag in WordPress… or if the president is a monster—but I wouldn’t be upset if this is one of those situations where Vrabel fires him the Sunday after the draft.

Meanwhile, how many legacies go Ptooff! if UNC football sucks, starting right at the top with “Handy” Bob Kraft? Imagine the giant sucking sound an entire six-state region makes once it realizes this is how it would have gone for twenty-five years if it weren’t for a fluke sixth-round compensatory pick.

I hope the team is better next season. Drake Maye seems to be the real deal, or at least better already than Mac Jones’s best. Free agency on paper is a solid B or B+, rounding up to an A- if Stefon Diggs signs, had Grady “Trying to Get MVP” Jarrett done so (game was eight years ago, guy) or if Milton Williams turns out to have more featured-player success than did Adalius Thomas. Maybe better. Maybe decent. Maybe…

You talk pretty good but you say things like “awesome” or “fantastic.”

But man, I’ll be watching Ben Johnson in Chicago. Buh buh buh-duh, buh-duh buh buh-duh.

Up next: The three hundredth post? I smell a draft diary. Cheers!