Finding Meaning In a Meaningless Win

I'm sure lots of people jumped aboard the Patriots bandwagon after they drafted Drew Bledsoe in 1993. Still more became fans after the team made it to the Super Bowl following the 1996 season. And droves joined Patriot Nation during their current run of sustained success. But it was one of the Pats' worst teams that made me fan, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I was born in Massachusetts and raised in New Hampshire, but my dad wasn’t a big football fan. I remember watching the Bears of Jim McMahon, Mike Ditka and Refrigerator Perry crush the Pats in Super Bowl XX (I was 11 at the time). After that, we didn’t watch much football in our house.

Maybe 18 months later, a new family moved to our street from Virginia. They were huge Redskins fans.

They hosted a party at their house to watch the Redskins’ first preseason game of 1987. About 20 people attended their party, all of them ‘Skins fans. I had never seen anything like it. As a 13-year-old boy, I was caught up in their excitement and enthusiasm for a game I barely understood.

Because of them – and that party – I started following the Redskins. As serendipity would have it, Washington went on to win the Super Bowl that year, and I was hooked.

I worshipped the Redskins. I loved their defensive players – Wilber Marshall, Charles Mann, Darrell Green. I had hats and shirts and pennants. I justified my love for an out-of-town team by explaining to everyone that they were originally the Boston Redskins, and played in Fenway Park some 60 years earlier. I taped the NFC East standings to my bedroom door every week for the next five years

When I left for college in 1992, the Patriots were but an afterthought. The ‘Skins were my team, having just come off another Super Bowl victory.

But then a funny thing happened. Maybe it was because the Patriots had just hired Dick MacPherson away from Syracuse, where I was now a student. Or maybe it was because my freshman-year roommate was a die-hard New England fan. Whatever the reason, I started watching the abysmal Patriots of 1992, and following them as if they were my team again.

Despite opening the season with nine consecutive losses, I watched every game, waiting for some glimpse of hope, some inspirational moment that would show me the team was headed in the right direction.

That moment came in the 10^th game of the season against the division-rival Indianapolis Colts.

The Pats came into the game 0-9 and starting their third-string quarterback, the lowly regarded but heady Scott Zolak.

The Colts, 4-5 at the time, were quarterbacked by Jeff George, he of the laser cannon arm and No. 1 overall pick cache.

The Colts, fighting for their playoff lives (they finished the season 9-7 and just missed the wild card), came into the game thinking it would be an easy win over the league’s doormat. It turned out to be a battle for the ages.

With nothing to play for but pride, the Patriots rallied to a thrilling 37-34 victory, slugging it out with the Colts for 64 minutes before prevailing on a field goal in overtime. The Patriots won despite trailing by seven different scores and never leading until the overtime kick.

That game is forever etched in my memory and inspires me to this day. The Patriots refused to surrender, even though the season was already lost. They refused to give up, even though Zolak was but a practice-squad player a few weeks prior. They never ran up the white flag, despite the fact that their coach was hospitalized earlier in the season, leaving assistant Dante Scarnecchia to hold the reins. They were without star running back Leonard Russell, who would go on to win the Rookie of the Year award – but they plugged along anyway.

The next day, I cut out every article I could find and made a couple of posterboard collages (one is pictured above) celebrating the team's lone win to that point.

They won the following week, before closing the season with five consecutive losses to finish at 2-14. But for two glorious weeks – Chris Berman sarcastically called them “a juggernaut” during their mini-streak – the Patriots were the toughest team in the NFL.

I admired their heart, their determination and their competitiveness so much that I put all my Redskins paraphernalia away, and took up the Pats standard as my own once again.

I’ve been a fan ever since, following them through the aborted move to St. Louis, the hiring of Bill Parcells, the drafting of Bledsoe, the purchase of the team by Bob Kraft, the Super Bowl loss to Brett Favre and the Packers, the Pete Carroll Error, the swirling controversy of Bill Belichick coming over from the NYJ, and the glorious Super Bowl wins in 2002, 2004 and 2005.

I wonder sometimes if I would have become a fan again if they had lost that game to the Colts that day. By winning a meaningless game they had no business even competing in, they gained a fan – and I gained a lifetime of great memories.