If you are sick of the Patriots, you might be getting better.
Besides those rabid fans from New England or others who have some perverse love affair with its pro football team, almost everyone else across the country – and maybe the globe – is rooting for the Jacksonville Jaguars to pull another stunning upset Sunday in the AFC championship game.
Only NBC and the NFL want the Patriots to advance to their third Super Bowl in the last four years because, frankly, who outside of Northern Florida and Minnesota or Philadelphia would watch Jacksonville play again? Most of America will still be partying because the team they love to hate is OUT. Hooray!
The Pats opened as a 9-point favorite to beat the Jaguars in what would be the easiest path to the Super Bowl in NFL history, but the line has dropped to 7 after word spread that Tom Brady jammed his throwing hand in practice this week. Brady is expected to play, but if the injury is to his thumb, as is being speculated, that is serious. It is the only finger on a hand that could make throwing a football with any accuracy prohibitive.
It’s not the Patriots fault that they play in such a sorry division in the weak American Football Conference, and they had nothing to do with the No. 4 seed Chiefs and second-seeded Steelers losing to the Titans and the Jags. But perhaps fate has leveled the playing field and Brady can’t play effectively against a pretty good Jacksonville defense, nicknamed Sacksonville.
Their game plan will be to blitz, rush and harass Brady, who is expert at getting the ball off quickly to his receivers. Those throws must be on the money for the Patriots to play their dink and dunk offense that breaks down most teams and breaks open most games, but if Brady is hurt the Jags might actually win.
Of course, New England could pull it off even if Brady doesn’t play. He missed the first four games last season due to his Deflate-gate suspension, and the Patriots went 3-1 with second- and third-string quarterbacks. In one of the games, their defense shut out a better team than Jacksonville.
If you’re a hater, though, hope the stars could be aligning in a freakish way to deny the 40-year-old Brady a shot at winning his sixth Super Bowl ring. It would only make him more determined to come back and play at 41.
But you can worry about that next year.
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