I Spy a Patriots Blowout

As long as Eric Mangini says "it was legal," then I guess we should all believe him, right?

Hey, Barry Bonds says he never knowingly took steroids, and even if he did—they didn’t work anyway. I guess we should believe him too, right?

Hank Steinbrenner says he’s not negotiating with A-Rod, because A-Rod opted out of his contract. He wouldn’t lie, would he?

Speaking of Hank, he’s no longer interested in Santana, because his self imposed deadline passed. He wouldn’t lie twice, would he?

So the Jets cheated? So what? The Patriots did to the Jets what the Packers did to the Patriots when they caught a guy videotaping things he shouldn’t have been. They asked him to take his camera and leave. One has to wonder why the Jets didn’t extend the same courtesy that was extended to them the previous year.

The answer is Eric Mangini.

Mangini is an overrated coach with an underrated inferiority complex. According to ESPN, his focus was on his new job days before the Patriots lost their playoff game in 2005 to the Broncos. On the plane ride home, he was trying to convince members of the coaching staff to go with him to the Jets. He went after Patriots’ players, which in the Parcells coaching tree is considered the ultimate showing of disrespect (why do you think Parcells, in desperate need of a kicker in Dallas, never even talked to Adam Vinatieri?).

He spit on the franchise that made him. and tarnished the head coach who mentored him. He threw into question the validity of his own three Super Bowl rings in an attempt to...well, I’m not really sure what he was attempting to do.

To put it in terms Tony Soprano would understand, he’s nothing more than an ungrateful rat.

Thanks to his actions, his former team is on a historic quest to not only defeat the team they happen to be playing on any given week, but to destroy and embarrass them. They want to make every opponent pay for what the Jets did to them. They nearly destroyed Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs. They beat the Bills so badly that the team is considering moving to Canada in shame. They undressed the Steelers and made the Chargers play like Norv Turner was their head coach (errr...oops).

Now they get the face the Jets. Now they get to turn their aggression on the team that set them off in the first place.

Duck and cover kids, this could get ugly.

The only thing that can save the Jets from the ultimate embarrassment (the Patriots are widely expected to make a run at the record, 73-0) is an act of God. Luckily for them, there may be an act of God on Sunday, as Foxboro is bracing for a potential blizzard. The type of weather that could limit the ability of the Patriots to throw the ball. The Jets may not be able to slow them down, but the weather might.

The Jets better hope the early forecast is correct, because if it isn't, watch out.

All of the following records have a legitimate chance of falling on Sunday:

1) Single season TD record for a QB – Tom Brady needs four to tie, five to break Manning’s record.

2) Single season TD record for a WR – Moss needs three to tie, four to break Jerry Rice’s record.

3) Most points scored by a team in a single season – Patriots need 54 points to break the ‘98 Vikings’ record.

Long after Mangini is fired (maybe in a few weeks, maybe next year—but it's coming) I wonder what will be worse for Jets fans: the fact that the Patriots set all of these records at their expense, or the following clip of their disgraced, pathetic former "Man-genius" coach: