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| Credit: nfl.si.com |
The New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos met last weekend for Sunday Night Football. The game featured Tom Brady and Peyton Manning battling it out for the 14th time as their teams’ respective quarterbacks. By then, Tom Brady' Patriots had a commanding 9-4 record over Peyton Manning-led teams. The Pats had the homecourt advantage but the Broncos were tagged as the favorites to win because of their plethora of offensive and defensive weapons. The Patriots were still fresh from a Monday night defeat the previous week against the Carolina Panthers. Furthermore, their two best defenders (Vince Wilfork and Jerod Mayo) were out for the season. The Broncos, on the other hand, had crazy momentum as they defeated the last unbeaten team in the league – the Kansas City Chiefs. Peyton even has longtime elite Patriot receiver Wes Welker on his side. The Broncos were favored by 2.5 points.
Despite all of these, I stubbornly picked my New England Patriots to win the game.
There were two factors that led me to that decision. 1) The game is played in New England where the Massachussetts crowd could deafen Peyton Manning’s team, and 2) it is in New England on a late November Sunday night (in case you don’t know: the recorded temperature then was 22 degrees Fahrenheit… yes, below zero degrees Celcius). The Patriots have been known to play strongly under cold weather while Peyton Manning is still iffy on cold games. In case you are wondering, Peyton’s Broncos lost to underdog Baltimore Ravens at home as Peyton struggled to throw effectively in the Colorado cold.
But aside from these, if you asked me how confident I was of my Sunday night pick then, I would have just said that I was a homer and I just wanted to show how strong my faith was on my New England Patriots.
I was eating those words at the very start of that game. The Patriots fumbled the pigskin in their first three possessions leading to Denver scores. By middle of the first quarter, Denver was already leading by a whopping 17 points. And Manning has not even done that much damage yet. It was a clusterfuck situation. The Pats went on to drop the ball for a lot of times early on (they have recovered some, but still) so it became more frustrating. There came a point that I just accepted that this was going to be a Broncos game and I would just let it be because the last I wanted to have then was to have more distractions at the start of the week.
Skip Bayless was already saying via his Tout account on how he was disappointed and how he wanted the game to end already.
If you have been following me on Twitter and on this blog, you might have noticed that some of my favorite topics have been about believing, having faith on your team or to be more redundant, have hope.
News Flash: It was never easy to believe.
Believing is one of those things that is easy to say but is hard to do. There is always doubt. Perhaps, it is because of years of experience blemishing my optimism on things like this. Realistically, you often observe your team succumbing to defeat after trailing down. Moreso if you have not yet even seen them come back from 24 points down against a team led by a future Hall of Famer.
Strange, right? After all these times that I have experienced my sports teams win in dramatic fashions that would make you want to shed a tear of ecstatic happiness, I am still this
1) On the way to their five-peat, the Ateneo Blue Eagles came back in huge fashion after being down by two big halftime leads against La Salle and UST. I can still recall myself almost having a heart attack when Kiefer swiftly pulverized La Salle’s lead in the Final Four last year.
2) The Boston Bruins scored two straight goals in a span of 31 seconds (while the regular timeclock dwindled down) to tie the Game 7 against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Bruins eventually won it. Well you can say that the Blackhawks’ Game 6 two straight goals more than nullified this but still…
3) Gilas Pilipinas finally defeated their perennial tormentors (the South Korea National Team) in FIBA Asia.
4) Down by four points and with their opponents having the ball at the two-minute mark, the New England Patriots were in a sure-lose situation against the New Orleans Saints. The Saints defenders were already celebrating when they intercepted Tom Brady’s pass. The commentators were even saying that New England has lost the game then. Guess what, Tom Brady got the ball with a little more than a minute remaining and drove it downfield for the winning touchdown.
5) At that same night, the Boston Red Sox were headed to a dire situation. The Detroit Tigers’ pitchers were blanking the Red Sox hitters in Fenway. The Tigers were leading by four runs in the eighth inning of Game 2. The probability of a Red Sox win was at 7.5 percent. Their next three games would be at Detroit with Tiger ace pitcher Justin Verlander pitching for Game 3. At that situation, Realistic Me would have said that this is mostly hopeless. (Thank God, I did not watch that game live) What ensued then was this: David Ortiz hit a grandslam homerun to tie things up. The Red Sox would go on to win the game and the series
6) Oh, have I forgotten about Boston Red Sox’ World Series Championship? It was the epitome of believing on a team this year.
Yes, I have to admit: Even if I was almost losing hope on that Pats-Broncos game by the halftime, there was a little hope in my heart saying, “don’t you effin’ give up.” The biggest sports stories usually revolve around moments like this. I grew up watching countless of these moments unfold in my eyes. #OhShitIJustLinkedThisToAProLeBronWriteupIDidAFewYearsAgo #IWillLightMyselfInFireNow
But you know what, it was never easy to believe. Especially, if you are damaged in the process. That Patriot team was damaged by then. When things of similar and dire consequences happen like that in real life, your doubts and weaknesses show up. I, for one, have experienced failure on such before. But with each day, each second, there is hope. And with it, you need to have at least a glimpse of the light in the dark tunnel. Speaking of which…
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| Credit: washingtonpost.com |
When sports fans get exposed to a multitude of positive sports experiences, their pessimistic tendencies change. Yeah, I had that realistic side of me that tells me that the Patriots would most probably still lose that game being down by 17. However, I have developed some kind of optimism to say something of an equivalent to “Hey, wait a minute. We can actually do this. We are at home. We have Peyton Manning’s number. Hey, look at him. He is shivering and struggling in the cold. We have been to some positive moments lately that we should be thinking that we have a shot in this. This is ours for the taking!”
It was like Friday Night Lights’ Coach Taylor motivating his team in the Mud Bowl episode: “"It all comes down to this: Blood, sweat and tears. It all stays right here on this field right now. This is our dirt. This is our mud. This is ours, baby. Clear eyes, full hearts can't lose!”
It was the same experience when Kiefer Ravena led Ateneo to the huge comeback games in their quest for the five-peat. You know that the team has that poise to overcome deficits. There was doubt at first but we had that little hope that the Blue Eagles would prevail. You do not want to be overconfident but your hope levels shoot up. The Patriots went on to decimate the once-seemingly insurmountable Broncos lead and even got the lead to themselves.
Peyton Manning was able to tie the game up to go to overtime but by then, the confidence level of the Patriots have been high. They already had the look that they could win this game. I know that the Pats were not able to score on a convincing way in the end (because it was more due to the Broncos’ brainfart) but the fact that the team was able to come back and put themselves in a position to win the game was one for the books. The New England Patriots just made history of coming back from the largest deficit the team has ever encountered. It feels great to believe in them.
I know that sports is not bigger than life, but moments like this inspire the heck out of regular people like you or me. We do need to have faith in life. Not just in sports teams but in a lot of things. Be it at yourself, on God, on your country (yes, even our government) or your peers.
It is never that easy to believe.
Yes, I can still say that up to now. To be honest, it is still a longshot for the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl. A lot of things in my life are still longshots of being successful, but I will try and believe (hopefully) the same way as those men from Beantown had. They had faith that they could overcome the juggernaut team from Denver last Sunday. I hope we all do.
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