The Real Cobra Kai: Patriots - Code Red

I suppose I just have to get this off my chest, even though I'm sick of reading and hearing about it. 

My kickball team called itself Cobra Kai, after the bad guys in The Karate Kid.  We took on a little bit of the persona.  We scored a lot.  Most of us gave a good deal of effort every game.  We played to win.  We argued with officials when we thought they made bad calls (or no calls). 

But within that, we drew many lines.  We didn't talk smack to our opponents.  If we got a big lead, we stopped kicking short and bunting.  That may sound counterintuitive, but the truth is that in kickball, the more you try to blast the ball, the easier it is to pop out.  We didn't stop trying to score, but we didn't ruthlessly play smallball in an attempt to score as many runs as possible.  When the other team wanted to call the game early, we were totally for it.  The sooner the game was over, the sooner we could go to the bar.  We won our first playoff game last season by something like 24-0, yet we weren't the reason the score got that bad.  The other team insisted on continuing to play even as night feel and they were down by double digits.  We actually wanted it to end.

Sadly, there is a team that has come to personify the movie Cobra Kai in professional sports today - one that has thrown a great deal of sportsmanship out the window: the New England Patriots.  Sportswriter Bill Simmons, a complete New England homer, has even dubbed the team "The Cobra Kai Patriots."  There's simply no denying it. 

Their coach is an egomaniacal jerk who got caught cheating, got his underwear in a bunch because people questioned the integrity of his Super Bowl wins, then decided to "lay waste to the NFL" (whatever that means) by trying to break as many records as possible.  What will this prove?  I have no idea, other than that he's a pouting douchebag. In the process, he has left his startes in during the 4th quarter when the game is already decided, and he has continued to throw passes and try to accumulate as many touchdowns as possible. 

It's almost as if Bill Belichick decided "Well, since everyone now knows what a jerk I am, I might as well stop pretending." 

The Redskins were down 38-0 in the 4th quarter, and Tom Brady was still in the game.  In fact, during this time, Brady threw a 35-yard bomb to Randy Moss.  On 4th down from the Redskins 35, Belichick wen for a first down BY THROWING THE BALL.  Later, on 4th and 2 in the red zone, while winning 45-0, he again went for a first down BY THROWING.  I have no problem with the team going for it on fourth down with a big lead, but I do have a problem with a team continuing to throw the ball when the game has already been decided.  When you're up by an insurmountable margin, you pull your starters and you run the ball.  Period.  Doing anything else is a bad idea on two levels. 

The first is that there are some things in sports you just don't do.  In a team sport where one team is in direct physical contact-style competition with another, the unwritten rule is that you don't run up the score.  Running up the score doesn't count extra in the win column.  All it does is humiliate your opponents -- and only bullies seek to humiliate a lesser opponent.  Most of us learned this when we were kids playing team sports for the first time.  It's called sportsmanship.  Please spare me the argument that professionals are different.  They aren't.  People are people.  Bullies can exist in any profession at any level, and nobody likes a bully.  

You don't bunt when your baseball team is up 13 runs, or to break up a no-hitter when the game is already decided.  You don't keep your starters on the field any longer than you have to, and you don't keep throwing the ball around and trying to score when you have an insurmountable lead.  You also don't score again when 3 kneel-downs will end the game. 

Many people have said things akin to "Well, you're a whiner.  It's classless to whine about running up the score.  It's the other team's job to stop the winning team from scoring.  Other teams have run up the score in the past, including your favorite teams."

Bullshit. 

Just because a team scores a lot of points doesn't mean they are running up the score.  In 2005, the Washington Redskins beat the San Francisco 49ers 52-17.  In that game, the Redskins ran 2 pass plays IN THE ENTIRE SECOND HALF.  By halfway through the third quarter or so, starting QB Mark Brunell's butt was planted firmly on the bench.  Starting RB Clinton Portis?  Same story.  Rock Cartwright -- the team's third-string RB -- was handling all the carries.  That's the way you destroy a team with class and dignity.  In the playoffs, things might be a little different - there are fewer games to play, so starters might play more of them.

There are two key tests of a person's character.  The first is how one behaves when he/she is in dire straits, or thins aren't going well.  The second, and almost as important, is how a person carries himself when everything is going perfectly.  Does he/she get on a high horse?  Become aloof and arrogant?  Act haughty and insecure?  Believe their success puts them above the common rules that most good people abide by?

Some have said, "Well, you're weak.  I'd love to play for a coach like that."  No.  You're the weak one.  There's nothing manly about being a bully, even if you're really good at it.  Steve Young and Mark Schlereth -- both retired Super Bowl Champions -- have passionately expressed their disgust with the Patriots' playing style.  I suppose they aren't manly either?  That Steve Young was a bit of a pansy, eh?

Brute strength doesn't make a man strong.  Restraint does.  It's a lot easier to act the way the Patriots are right now than it is to be humble.  Being a bully is about instant gratification.  It's about image and show, up until you run into someone just as tough as you -- and then you fall apart.  Do you think it's a coincidence that after mocking the Chargers, that Patriots team blew their AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts the following week?

Some of you might be thinking "Well, you're only saying this because you're a Redskins fan, and the Patriots ran up the score on your favorite football team last weekend."  No, you're wrong.  I've been thinking this for a few weeks now.  The Redskins game was simply the final straw. 

The truth is, I used to love the Patriots.  I've made excuses for the Patriots for at least a year now.  

When the Patriots knocked off the Rams to win their first Super Bowl title, I cheered almost as hard as if it were the Redskins.  I loved how they were introduced as a team.  I loved how they were a bunch of no-names.  I loved how they triumphed against all odds.  And being a Michigan alum, I loved Tom Brady for making it happen.  I watched him take his first snaps as a college quarterback.  I was so proud of him for coming so far, and for representing the Wolverines so gallantly. 

When Bill Belichick went on The Tonight Show after winning the Patriots' second Super Bowl and mocked Freddie Mitchell's pathetic Super Bowl Performance, I thought it was a bit odd for a coach to be mocking a player.  But I excused it, since Mitchell was a bit of a tool anyway.  

When the Patriots taunted the Chargers by imitating one of their players' sack dances on midfield of their opposing team's stadium last year, I winced.  I winced even more when one Patriots player said after that playoff game, "Lights out!  See you next year, chumps!"  But I still wanted to believe in them. 

When the team scored a touchdown instead of kneeling on the ball with 23 seconds left against the Cowboys, I tried to justify it based on my dislike of the Cowboys -- and by the fact that Wade Phillips had been quoted as saying the Patriots titles were somewhat tainted.  Even though the quote was taken out of context and released just in time for the game by a sensationalist media, I figured Belichick would harbor a grudge.  But my doubts grew. 

When Belichick pulled Tom Brady out of a blowout against the Dolphins...and then put him back in when his backup threw an interception for a touchdown, my doubts became warning bells.

But then the Pats ran up the score against the Redskins.  A team they couldn't possibly harbor a grudge against.  A team with a coach who, to anyone's best knowledge, has never said a bad word about Bill Belichick, the Patriots...or anyone else, for that matter.  It would be news if Joe Gibbs said something bad in public about Osama bin Laden.   But that didn't stop them from trying to pad the stat sheet, even though this isn't college football and each win counts the same. 

To the Redskins' credit, most of them didn't say anything bad about the Patriots after the game.  Most of them held their tongues.  To those who say that complaining about sportsmanship makes me look weak: stuff it.  I don't play for the Redskins.  I don't refer to the team as "we."  Therefore, I can say whatever I want.  If I played on the Redskins, it would be a different story.  I'd keep my mouth shut.  But I don't. 

The Patriots have left me with almost nothing to admire.

But there's another reason why running up the score is a bad idea: you just might run into a team that is willing to be an even poorer sport than you.

Back in the early 90s, Charles Martin of the Green Bay Packers wore a towel to a game with names and numbers of Chicago Bears players.  He called it his "hit list."  Later in that same game, he grabbed Bears QB Jim McMahon and body-slammed him to the turf, dislocating McMahon's shoulder.  Punches were thrown, Martin was thrown out -- and McMahon didn't play for at least a few weeks.  The slam occurred well after the play was dead.

This brings me to the second reason it's a bad idea to run up the score against your opponents.  If you do, people who are just as morally weak as you are will get vindictive.  If they can't beat you within the rules, they just might break them to get back at you. 

We saw this when New York Knicks coach and sexual harrasser Isaiah Thomas said, "Don't have someone come down the lane again" when he felt the Denver Nuggets were trying to run up the score against his team in the final minutes of a victory.  When the next Nugget came into the lane and went airborne, Knicks player Nate Robinson quite illegally clubbed him to the ground.  A brawl broke out, people were suspended...but Isaiah didn't particularly care. 

If the Patriots continue this boorish style of play, it will only be a matter of time before someone orders a Code Red.  If you don't know what a Code Red is, I suggest you watch the movie A Few Good Men.  So, good teams also have a self-interest incentive to avoid humiliating and embarrassing their opponents unnecessarily.  You don't want to incite unscrupulous individuals to start taking shots at your best players.

As impressive as Belichick's record has been with Brady as his QB, he would feel pretty damn stupid if, during a blowout against the Jets in the 4th quarter, some Jets' defensive player rolls over Tom Brady and deliberately tears up his knee when Brady should have been on the bench. 

I'm not saying this should happen, or that I would do anything like this.  But just because I wouldn't do it and don't approve of it doesn't mean that nobody else would.  If this keeps up, someone will do the one thing the Patriots have not done so far: they will order Johnny to sweep the leg.  You can take that to the bank.   

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit