10 reasons to dislike the Patriots

Bondy: 10 reasons to dislike the Patriots

There are plenty of reasons, good ones, we hate the Patriots around here. It isn't just those three Super Bowl rings or Tom Brady's weird hair tricks or that 45-3 shellacking last month.

It's many things - some obvious, some obscure, but all of them gnawing at our insides like a rancid, undercooked New England lobster.

We could go on forever, but the big game is only two days away. So here are the top 10 irritations that stick in our craw

10. Bill Belichick can't resign from a coaching position without using abbreviations.


It has been more than 11 years since Belichick scrawled on a piece of loose leaf paper, "I resign as HC of the NYJ." And still we wonder: How hard, really, would it have been for Belichick to write, "I resign as head coach of the New York Jets"?

Such shorthand displays utter disdain for a city, for a fan base, for an organization. Take the extra five seconds, big guy. Write out the words.

Or was Belichick simply, ingeniously prophesying the arrival of the texting generation? In which case, OMG!! Why wouldn't he be our BFF?

9. They plow snow for their field-goal kickers.


The Patriots have always been way too good at cheating, even BB (Before Belichick). They slyly hone their craft against non-New York teams, so they'll be ready with the really big stuff against the Jets.

On Dec. 12, 1982, snowplow driver Mark Henderson cleared a spot at Schaefer Stadium with less than five minutes left so that placekicker John Smith could boot the winning field goal against Miami for a 3-0 victory.

Henderson received a game ball for his efforts. Dolphin coach Don Shula protested the game to no avail, foolishly believing the Patriots should have demonstrated an iota of sportsmanship. The NFL banned snowplows the next year from ever appearing on the field during a game. Too late. OMG!

8. What is that, exactly, on their helmets?

New England used to have a humorous illustration on their helmets of kitschy colonial figure, Pat Patriot, hiking the ball. It looked really dumb, but was, in its own way, kind of retro and cool, an AFL throwback. Then in 1996 the Pats changed their logo to something best described as a nationalistic fish swimming upstream.

It is a disturbing image, this half-fish, half-xenophobe, and one that would look more appropriate perhaps on the jersey of an expansion hockey team. The rest of their uniforms are fairly generic, which only makes Nathan Hale-ibut stick out that much more.

7. An odd fetish for razor blades.

We have no idea what this is about, and probably don't want to know. But the Patriots were owned for several years until 1991 by Victor Kiam, the former president and CEO of Remington razors. Now they play in Gillette Stadium, one of the cookie-cutter sound stages that have rendered NFL fields so interchangeable.

Considering Tom Brady's occasionally unshaven appearance, this franchise attachment to razors is perhaps a meta-message from management to the quarterback, hoping he will clean up his act. Or maybe it's a vague, sharp-edged threat to the rest of the league.

Or maybe it's merely about money, in which case New Yorkers would know nothing about such mercenary matters. We think their place should be called the New Foxborough Stadium.

6. They gave us Eric Mangini.

This was one of the dirtiest tricks of all, and then Belichick pretended he was unhappy about losing the guy, which only made matters worse.

Of all the terrible football coaches to come our way over the years, Mangini was one of the worst. For now, we'll rank him second behind Ray Handley. It wasn't so much that his record was awful. Mangini was a mediocre 23-25 with the Jets. It's just that the guy spoke Martian to the media, while demonstrating all the paranoid, unpleasant, control-freak traits of Belichick - without the positive results.

We dumped him on Cleveland, which dumped him on ESPN. Haven't heard yet who will be translating his analysis for the network.

5. Spygate.

It wasn't bad enough that Belichick's teams were so much better than their New York counterparts. The coach then had to go and illegally videotape the Jets' defensive signals, so that he could trounce Mangini's teams rather than merely defeat them.

Spygate was a case of piling on after the tackle, a personal foul on Belichick for unnecessary check-mating. As for the notion that everybody did it, well, the Jets never thought of it.

4. Tom Brady dumped his beautiful, pregnant girlfriend actress for a supermodel ...

... who kind of freaks us out. That's our take, anyway, and we're sticking with it. We liked Bridget Moynahan, who gave birth to Brady's son in 2007. We don't particularly trust supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who looks oddly other-worldly and may speak Mangini.

Maybe "Coyote Ugly" wasn't "Citizen Kane," but at least Moynahan could read her lines.

3. The Tuck Rule game

Just another example of the endless, lucky-bordering-on-illegal advantages bestowed upon the Patriots. In a tight, 2002 divisional playoff game against the Raiders, Brady was sacked by Charles Woodson and apparently fumbled the ball, which was recovered by Oakland's Greg Biekert.

But nooo . . . the refs cited the 1999 "Tuck Rule" which stated, "When a player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession . . . as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body."

Sheer nonsense, of course, but it was enough to set up a tying field goal, an overtime victory and eventually a Super Bowl title. The title remains tainted in our minds, though somehow still celebrated as a championship in Boston

2. We're never sure how to spell Foxboro(ugh), because Foxboro(ugh) isn't sure, either.

This is the biggest pain-in-the-neck dateline in the newspaper business. We used to spell it without the "ugh", and then they told us to spell it with the "ugh," which looks pretentious. The official spelling is Foxborough, yet the post office building in town still identifies the municipality as Foxboro.

Go figure. Either way, as far as we can tell, there's no there, there. If you have to vacation in one place or the other, gun to the head, pick East Rutherford.

1. The fish handshake.

Look, we really didn't want to shake postgame hands with Mangini either, but Belichick's handshakes have been halfhearted, at best, even with other coaches around the league.

The guy doesn't often make eye contact. He looks like that unfriendly neighbor who won't turn around to acknowledge our hello, even after we helped him change his flat tire.

So on Sunday, win or lose, we are refusing to extend our figurative, regional hand in friendship after the game.

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