Did you hear?
The Patriots are going to the Super Bowl.
It’s been seven long years, wandering in the wilderness with the likes of the Jets, the Dolphins, and the Browns, suffering through the hardship of not playing in the biggest game on the planet.
Seven years. Can you imagine?
Nearly a lifetime.
The Patriots have appeared in a record 12 Super Bowls (including the upcoming one) in their 65 years of existence, though all their appearances have come since 1986.
Thankfully, all within my lifetime.
It works out to about one Super Bowl appearance every three years since that first one against the Bears on January 26, 1986.
Not nearly often enough.
This will be a difficult game to win. The Patriots are young — the sixth youngest team in the league. Every one of their 2025 draft picks, plus at least three undrafted players, is currently playing for the team. They are the only team in the league with all their draft picks still on the team.
I honestly thought they were a year away from being a contender.
Silly me.
But the Seattle Seahawks are an excellent team. It’s not going to be an easy game. Seattle is rightfully favored to win.
Win or lose, a trip to the Super Bowl is a special thing that happens only once every three or four years, at least for Patritos fans. I treasure every opportunity to watch my favorite team play on the biggest, brightest stage on the planet.
Here are a couple of strange and serendipitous things about this team:
When Tom Brady foolishly left the Patriots on March 17, 2020, for Tampa Bay, his heir-apparent at the time was backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham — the same quarterback the Patriots beat on Sunday to win their record 12th AFC Championship and a trip to the Super Bowl.
Desperate to move on from Brady, who upset me deeply by leaving the team, I purchased a Jarrett Stidham jersey on the day Brady announced his departure.
I had been wearing the same Brady jersey for 20 years. His name and number were nearly worn away. I loved that jersey, but I needed another.
Stidham was now my man.
Except he wasn’t.
Jarrett Stidham never started a single game for the Patriots. I never donned his jersey even once the following season. It’s been hanging in my closet until last Sunday, untouched and unworn, when I took it out and hung it over the chair as I watched Drake Maye, whose jersey I was wearing, beat Stidham and his Devner teammates.
Funny how things can come full circle.
Also, this:
At the beginning of the season, the NFL released this image of one player from each team standing in a large group, staring at Levi’s Stadium, where the Super Bowl is being played.
Thirty-two teams, each hoping to play in the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, at the end of the season.
If you zoom in on the image, you can see that the two players standing closest to the stadium are Sam Darnold and Drake Maye — the two quarterbacks in the Super Bowl.
Quite the strange coincidence.
If it means anything, it appears that Maye is slightly closer to their stadium than Stafford.
This image has thus far proven to be remarkably prescient.
Hopefully, it continues to be so in a couple of Sundays.
