Patriots

Turns out Mark hadn't been to the new stadium yet. I haven't been there since they started surrounding the place with enormous shopping malls. It's impressively, massively tacky around there now... too little green and way too much asphalt.

The practice session, was way cool. Though the afternoon was hot and humid, there was a nice breeze to tone it down and the clouds gathering by the time we arrived eventually gave way to blue sky. I'd guess there were somewhere around 1,000 to 1,500 fans and media watching from the small stadium set-up and grassy knoll surrounding the twin practice fields behind Gillette Stadium.

In the first game that year, New England lost to the Buffalo Bills, 34-0. Tom Brady was sacked a number of times and had one of his worst games ever... statistically, at least. It's hard to be on top of game when you're underneath a laughing defensive end or blitzing safety.

Fast-forward to the regular season finale; New England turns it around and dumps the Bills by an identical 34 to zip whitewash. The game wasn't as close as the score indicated, y'all will recall.

You don't how good or how bad your team is and what's needed to improve your chances until at least game six or eight.

It's too bad... an injury. No player deserves it, but football is a violent game and the mother of a lot of hard, sometimes fatal accidents.

This is going to make the road to another Superbowl muddy and slow. I figure Tom Brady is worth 10 points more per game than Matt Cassel, not to mention ball control issues and keeping the other offense off the field. If the Pats scored ten less per game last year, they would have been 10-6 instead of 16-0 in the regular season.

On the other hand, other AFC powers seem to have like problems, so who knows?

To tell the truth, toward the end of last year, you started to worry when they weren't blowing off the opposition by more then 30. That's how 'spoiled' we were.

After the game was over, I said to May, "That was so intense, if my dad were still alive that game would have killed him."

Not sure where Randy Moss has been all our life, but I'm sure glad he finally got here. Moss was the difference maker in the game, the one non-QB you could point to and say, "He's the reason they were able to pull this out".

I have never seen a player with hands that can rip the ball out of the air like Randy can. When the ball is in the air, he goes for it as if he needs it.