I Think I Finally Understand What It Was Like To Not Be A Patriots Fan

Is this what it was like? 

All those years of watching Tom Brady and the Patriots swag-strut into the AFC Championship game like it was an Outlook calendar invite? The feelings of disgust, anger, and jealousy all mashed together to form a blood-oath level hatred of a common enemy? 

Is this what it was like?

As I watched the Chiefs squeak out another nailbiter against the poor old Bills, punching their ticket to their sixth straight AFC Championship game, I muttered to myself over and over “I’m so sick of this team”. After my sixtieth mental repetition, it hit me. This was the Patriots. This was me. This is what everyone else felt for the last twenty years while I sat on my high horse upset about not winning our divisional playoff game by more points like an asshole. 

I always knew people hated the Patriots, and hated me for flaunting my fandom like a drunk girl flaunting her hoo-haws at Mardi Gras. But as someone who never experienced the other side, I didn’t understand the levels to it. Until this week.

The world revolves around football. Look at Detroit, who’s entire economic ecosystem is changing for the better with each Lions playoff victory. People need their football team to be good. And for years and years, teams and cities around the league were deprived that opportunity due to the New England Patriots. 

But that foe is now the Kansas City Chiefs. Year in and year out, this team dominates the NFL. Hosting five straight AFC Championship games, a feat even those vaunted Patriots never accomplished, and coming off a Super Bowl the year after they traded arguably the best WR in the league, it seemed there was no end in sight.

Until this year when they appeared mortal for the first time in the Pat Mahomes era. Defense was better than ever, but their offense was puttering through the regular season like a deer stuck in mud. They led the league in drops, had an island of misfit toys in the WR room, and saw defenses start to contain Travis Kelce. And unlike seasons past, all of their problems weren’t fixed by Christmas. 

But fear not. Play a road playoff game for the first time? No problem. Play your two best offensive games of the season in consecutive games in January? Of course. Defense comes up big in late game situations? You bet. And just like that, against all odds, the Chiefs are back in the AFC Championship. Sound familiar?

Maybe it’s the million commercials Pat and Travis are in. Maybe it’s the crybaby antics I feel like Mahomes has shown more this season than ever before. Maybe it’s the deep insecurity I have of Pat one day overtaking Brady as the GOAT if he stays on this trajectory. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that I’m sick of watching the same guys wearing the same uniform win. But I’m sick of it.

And I’m in no place to speak. I’ve been the enemy and trust me, it’s glorious. But I now understand what it was like to be the common folk. I feel the pain, agony, and untempered outrage the Patriots caused all those years. I get how easy it was to root against us, like I and many are now rooting against KC. I understand why fake cheating scandals like deflategate were concocted and fabricated to global proportions to attempt to tear us down (unsuccessfully I may add).

No one wants to see people win, win again, and win some more. Everyone was rooting for the upstart Chiefs when Mahomes was the NFL’s hot new toy challenging the Patriots in the AFC. But now that the Patriots are less relevant than Trump’s PR team, and the Chiefs have been the cream of the crop for five years, it’s time for them to go. That’s the circle of life. 

I have nothing but respect for the greatness Mahomes and the Chiefs put on the field every year. But by no stretch of the imagination does that mean I need to cheer for them. And I won’t. I don't want another Patriots. Unless it's the Patriots.

P.S. The Chiefs have to do this for another fifteen years to match what the Patriots did. Think about how annoying this team already is, and how annoying they’d be if they went to half the AFC Championships until 2037? That’s the Patriots, so we’re not quite there.