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The Patriots

The Patriots — the team everyone loves to hate. Probably due to envy. There’s a reason they call jealousy the “ugly green-eyed monster.” The Patriots have now achieved something no other team ever has: a ninth Super Bowl appearance.

At 39, quarterback Tom Brady is playing some of the best football of his life — an unheard of accomplishment. It’s rare that a quarterback that age plays at all, let alone excellently.
Bill Belichick, the Patriots coach, will certainly go down in the history books as one of the greatest of all time.

There are other records, like championship game appearances, and Super Bowl appearances with the same quarterback and coach.

It’s this seemingly never-ending record-breaking that drives people crazy. I know, I was one of them. OK, I was never a hater; in fact, I became a Patriots fan back in the ‘90s, when I was at Brandeis. But I could not countenance that Tom Brady could — or would — surpass the QB who topped my leaderboard: Joe Montana.

When the Patriots won Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, I assuaged myself by saying that Montana still surpassed Brady, since the Forty-Niner had won four of four appearances. Brady also had won four, but lost two.

Now it’s clear that Brady, together with Belichick, are reaching new heights. At this point, regardless of whether the Patriots pull it off in Super Bowl LI — they face very tough competition in the Atlanta Falcons — if I keep insisting that Montana is the best quarterback of all time I’m just going to come off as delusional at best or bitter at worst.

Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected]

Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News



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2 thoughts on “The Patriots

  1. Rob Alexander

    With all due disrespect for your marginally informed opinion there was one quarterback who won four out of four Superbowls before Montana and Brady, i.e. before the NFL instituted the no-touchy no-hurty rule for QB’s, aka “put the QB’s in skirts”: Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers in the 1970’s. He won in an era of essentially unrestricted physicality during which he and his great receivers, Swann and Stallworth, overcame repeated concussions and other injuries. Thus, I believe, he deserved at least to be mentioned for all your fawning admiration of Montana.

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