Massarotti: Celebrating The Patriots On Super Bowl Sunday
PHOENIX (CBS) -- Today, on Super Bowl Sunday, we celebrate the Patriots for bringing us to the very end of yet another football season, for pushing us and themselves to the precipice of football and sports history, for reminding us that, in some ways, the journey is more important than the ultimate destination.
We celebrate them, quite simply, for being here.
And so we celebrate football in February.
We celebrate Bill Belichick for being the best football coach of his era, for being arguably the greatest coach of all-time, for the good that comes from his unrelenting need to thumb his nose at the establishment, to push a little harder, for his willingness to adapt and to just keep going.
Because you just don't get to nine Super Bowls, including six as a head coach and three more as an assistant, by accident.
We celebrate Tom Brady for the competitive drive that has brought him to this game for the sixth time, more than any quarterback in the history of the game, and for the precision passes, the efforts to become more elusive in the pocket, and for an underrated physical toughness that has allowed him to make every possible start in 13 of his 14 years as the first-string quarterback of the Patriots.
Because that, too, doesn't happen solely as a result of good fortune.
We celebrate Darrelle Revis for being a football version of Baryshnikov.
And Brandon Browner for being his bouncer.
And Devin McCourty for being the definition of a solid, stable and reliable performer since the day he moved to safety.
We celebrate Robert Kraft for standing behind his coach, quarterback and team, for taking on the commissioner and his fellow owners in the process, for giving the Patriots the organization stability they lacked for decades, for because anyone who was here before Bill Parcells remembers that the Patriots were once the laughingstock of not merely the NFL but of all professional sports.
Because, again, anyone who remembers The Jacksons' Victory Tour knows it was neither a tour nor a victory.
We celebrate Rob Gronkowski, in a good way, for being stuck at 16 years old, for being the definition of youthful ignorance, for reminding us that there is nothing wrong with having fun and because he acts with positively no contempt off the field and plays with absolute malice on it.
And because we should all be able to draw those lines so clearly.
We celebrate Julian Edelman for being Wes Welker 2.0.
We celebrate Danny Amendola for absorbing the transitional pain from Welker to Edelman – and for bounding back.
And we celebrate Brandon LaFell for being the outside receiver the Patriots have been looking for a seeming eternity, for making us forget about Aaron Dobson and Brandon Lloyd, Chad Ochocinco and Joey Galloway, Reche Caldwell and Doug Gabriel, and everyone from Donald Hayes to Donald Jones.
We celebrate Michael Hoomanawanui for being, far more simply and succinctly, the Hoo Man.
Because seven syllables in any name is just way, way too many.
We celebrate Shane Vereen, Jonas Gray and LeGarrette Blount for being, effectively, the Snap, Crackle and Pop of the Patriots backfield, because they embody the complementary and situational kind of football the Patriots preach, from pass catchers to thumpers to everything in between.
And we celebrate the offensive linemen for forging on, despite criticism both warranted and unwarranted, because there may not be a job in sports less glorious and glamorous – but more critical and downright grueling – than being one of the five men asked to pull the Patriots' tractor from the start of September through the end of January.
And because the Patriots have now gone farther.
We celebrate Vince Wilfork for being the (wink, wink) 325-pound sandbag in the middle of the Patriots defensive line for a whopping 11 years now, because Wilfork essentially has been the only constant from Willie McGinest and Mike Vrabel to Chandler Jones and Rob Ninkovich, and because the trip for him personally hasn't always been so pleasant.
Because Wilfork has sometimes had to tussle with Patriots management as much as he has to grapple with opposing centers, guards and tackles, and because we all know that can be the biggest challenge of all.
Because at the negotiating table, the Pats have been known to throw a cut block or two.
We celebrate Patrick Chung for being better than many of us thought he could be.
We celebrate Kyle Arrington making T.Y. Hilton M.I.A..
And we celebrate Stephen Gostkowski, Ryan Allen and Matt Slater for making the Patriots' special teams this year among the very best in the game, particularly Slater, who continues to cover every kick like a kamikaze on amphetamines.
Because that job can't be easy.
We celebrate Chandler Jones for being the axis on which the Patriots' defensive philosophies seemingly started to change, for helping the Pats transform from a bigger, slower to defense to the faster, more aggressive one required to play in the current NFL.
We celebrate Ninkovich for being Jones' bookend and, in some ways, precisely to the front seven what McCourty is to the secondary, a smart, solid and stable performer who serves as a model for what someone like Belichick believes in.
Because, of course, Ninkovich is a little like Mike Vrabel and because there is never, ever anything wrong with a rock solid B+.
We celebrate Jerod Mayo for giving up his body, again, and we celebrate Don't'a Hightower and Jamie Collins for some of the very best play we have seen from Patriots linebackers since the team last won a Super Bowl 10 years ago.
Because Hightower looks leaner, faster and smarter now.
And because Collins looks like an absolute athletic freak.
We celebrate any Patriots player we left out, from Alan Branch, Sealver Siligua, Duron Harmon and Akeem Ayers to Brandon Bolden, Stevan Ridley, James Develin and Tim Wright, because a 53-man roster is too long to mention and because we all know it takes far, far more than just 53.
And we celebrate, still, this positively incredible era in Boston sports history, from late 2001 to early 2015, during which our teams have already won eight championships while making 20 trips to the semifinals and 13 trips (counting this one) to the finals, including six Super Bowls, three World Series, two Stanley Cups and two NBA Finals, and because no city in American sports history has ever held onto the stage for anywhere close to that long.
And because that, metaphorically, is a true Boston Marathon.
Tony Massarotti co-hosts the Felger and Massarotti Show on 98.5 The Sports Hub weekdays from 2-6 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @TonyMassarotti. You can read more from Tony by clicking here.
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