FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Before yesterday's wild-card playoff game, the New England Patriots urged their fans to get seated at Gillette Stadium by 10 minutes before kickoff.

They didn't say why, or share details; they just said something big was going to happen early in the afternoon.

Little did they realize that surprise would come courtesy of the Baltimore Ravens.

Ray Rice shocked the 68,756 people in the seats by going 83 yards on the first snap from scrimmage, Le'Ron McClain joined him in the end zone less than four minutes later, and the Ravens piled on 24 points in the stunning first quarter of a 33-14 win that simultaneously eliminated the Patriots from the NFL postseason and smacked any semblance of mystique clear off New England's collective face.

"It's very disappointing because we played this game like it wasn't a playoff game. It

just felt like we was out there just to be out there," said Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork. "We talked all week about how we needed to step our game up - and we didn't. We didn't, and it showed."

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With an act of brazen insubordination, followed by a show of intense solidarity, football season came to an end for California's Woodside High School.

It wasn't supposed to end. Not for another few weeks. But after the team's fifth straight loss, Head Coach Packy Moss reportedly returned to the dressing room and heard his players pounding on their lockers in rhythm with the chant, "(Bleep) Packy." When none of them would give her the names of those leading the mutiny, the school's principal canceled the rest of the 2003 campaign.

Moss resigned before 2004, leaving Woodside with some motivated athletes in his wake. They wanted to prove they were better, both as players and as people, than the perception of them after three straight losing seasons and the ugly chanting incident - so they used it as fuel. They focused on their job. They fought for their reputation. And they followed the lead of their quarterback.

His name was Julian Edelman.

"He was a leader," said Steve Nicolopulos, who took over for Moss as Woodside's coach. "He was one of the main characters. Kids looked up to him; he set the tone by example.

"He knew how to take care of business - and he took care of business."

A year after its season was truncated by turmoil, Edelman's three-touchdown title game helped Woodside cap a 13-0 season with a state sectional championship. And more than five years later, Nicolopulos is confident the New England Patriots can count on his former player to take care of business again.

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Maybe he got caught up in the moment, or overcome by the atmosphere created by a Superdome crowd drunk on delirium (among other things). But while sending his viewers to a commercial break with only 5:26 left in his broadcast of Monday Night Football, and the Saints in command of the 38-17 lead that ultimately stood as the game’s final margin, ESPN’s Mike Tirico couldn’t get over what he’d just witnessed.

“This score,” he told us, “is shocking.”

Really, though, it shouldn’t have been.

Not in the least.

After all, results like the one-sided slaughter rendered that night in New Orleans are rather commonplace when a member of the NFL’s elite meets an opponent from the league’s middle-class – and that was exactly the sort of matchup that played out Monday for Tirico’s primetime television audience.

Forget the week’s worth of hype. Forget the expectations of an instant classic. Forget the idea of a showdown. By the time Drew Brees had used the second quarter to become the first quarterback ever to throw three touchdowns in the same period against a Bill Belichick-coached team, it was clear his balanced, explosive and super-athletic Saints were every bit the title contender their 11-0 record would suggest.

And just as clear that the Patriots were on a different level altogether.

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We saw the look so often, some of us in New England might’ve thought they started using it as Peyton Manning’s headshot. Cheeks scrunched. Mouth agape. Hands on the helmet. And befuddlement all over the face.

It didn’t matter if it was a midseason game at home in his dome, or a midwinter game on the frigid field in Foxborough. Marked by that quizzical look, and the mediocrity that matched it, every time the Colts’ quarterback went up against the Patriots in the early part of this decade he appeared a different guy than the one who’d routinely carve the rest of the league – and so many reached the same conclusion: Bill Belichick must’ve been in Manning’s head.

Sunday night, however, we learned that those roles have been reversed.

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Tying the bow on baseball season with a World Series observation for every game it took for the Yanks to give the Phillies the downtime necessary to discover the lotta, lotta culture their city has to offer ...

 

1)  Overcome by the inevitable talk of cash flow and competitive inequity, something rather significant has so far been ignored in discussions of New York's postseason dominance. It took its first hit in 2001, and the hits got harder each year thereafter, but this fall marked the return of the Yankees as an intimidating presence.

The proof is in the path to title No. 27. The Yankees went 11-4 in the playoffs, and in each series left themselves three opportunities to close things out. Never did they need more than two – though it's not as if they enjoyed a cakewalk every night. Of the 15 games, the Yankees actually trailed in 11 of them. Six were tied in the seventh inning or later. And eight of New York's 11 wins were decided by the three runs or less.

But the Yankees wound up on the right side of those results because all three of their opponents played scared in the pivotal moments. As a team New York hit just .225 against Minnesota, .279 against Los Angeles, and .247 against Philly, but all three of those clubs seemed to feel a pressure that they needed to make every play perfectly in order to compete with the high-and-mighty Yankees, and they wound up looking tight, and stiff, and trying way to hard because of it.

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Shame on me for not articulating this more clearly in the original column yesterday, but I wanted to quickly clarify a couple things — particularly for anybody who may have been redirected here by the hilarious folks at Barstool Sports. I do not mean to suggest, nor do I believe, that the Red Sox are so vastly inferior to the Yankees that the gap between the teams is hopelessly insurmountable. And I do not mean to suggest, nor do I believe, that Josh Beckett is anything but an excellent major league pitcher. (If I didn't, I wouldn't think he'd be so valuable in trade.) But I don't think it's debatable that the Red Sox have some work to do in order to catch up to the Yankees — or that the Sox should try to close that gap as quickly as possible. And that's where Beckett comes in. He's got one year left on his contract, so he could be gone after next year anyway, and at 29 he's probably the Sox player other teams would most covet other than Jon Lester and maybe Dustin Pedroia. In other words, I think Theo could potentially turn his No. 2 starter (sorry, the 14th best ERA in the 14-team AL does not automatically make you an ace) into a solution at shortstop, at clean-up hitter, at the back of the rotation — or maybe all three at once.

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As the Yankees close in on their 27th title, it’s become clear they are the best team in baseball. They have a genuine ace at the head of an effective starting staff, a sturdy bullpen anchored by an untouchable closer, and a relentless lineup that never leaves them hopeless.

Along the course to their rival's 3-2 World Series lead it’s also become clear that the Red Sox have some work to do in order to narrow the gap between themselves and New York’s gold standard. They must add a slugger to the middle of the order. They must add reliability to a rotation that this September counted on Paul Byrd in a pennant race. They must add to a relief corps that became unsteady as summer turned to fall.

And they can make all those additions with one simple – if foundation-shaking – subtraction.

By trading Josh Beckett.

It isn’t something the Sox need to do. In fact, it isn’t something they should do if not presented with the proper, hole-plugging package. But in baseball’s realm of player evaluation there are perceptions, and there are realities – and Boston could be in position to capitalize on the fact that when it comes to Beckett those tend to be two different things.

The perception of Beckett is that he’s a bona fide ace. A guy who has earned a mention among the game’s elite, and is in the midst of his prime. A guy who grabs the ball and gets it done, whether it takes guts or guile or his own good stuff.  A guy who delivers every five days through the summer, then can single-handedly wins playoff series in the fall. And, at times, he has been all that.

But, by and large, the reality has been something else altogether.

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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – For much of this decade, most people in these parts believed Tom Brady was untouchable. He was so good, so often, he seemed superhuman compared with most quarterbacks. While they wore pads and jerseys, he appeared to be clad in a metal suit of armor.

Last night we learned, however, even that armor is prone to rust.

But once that’s knocked off, the man underneath – along with his magic – remains the same.

Trailing by 11 with barely five minutes left in New England’s season opener, Brady sandwiched two scoring drives between Buffalo’s fumbled kickoff and the Patriots somehow pulled out a 25-24 win that left the stunned Bills as losers of 12 straight against their division rivals.

“I’m really proud of the players,” said Bill Belichick, who couldn’t help his smile after watching Ben Watson haul in both of Brady’s bullets. “Not that we played our best, but we hung in there and came back and made the plays we had to make to win.”

The coach was speaking of his team as a whole, but in the process he summed Brady’s night in a nutshell.

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In his 35 years as an NFL Coach, Bill Belichick has had a hand in winning five Super Bowl championships. He's been to the big game seven times in total, while contributing to 13 division titles. And through all that team success he's guided his individual charges to 117 Pro Bowl selections.

He is unmatched in terms of both tenure and trophies in today's game, so when he speaks of a player in the scope of history his words are weighty. And, when doing so yesterday, so was his heart.

"How do I feel about Tedy Bruschi?" Belichick said with emotion that was as audible as it was uncharacteristic. "He's a perfect player."

History, as Belichick well knows, would argue with the coach. Bruschi was a role player at the start of his career, and a step too slow at the end. He doesn't boast statistics befitting a hall of famer. And of the aforementioned Pro Bowl bids, he accounted for just one of the 117 - that coming as Ray Lewis's injury replacement on the AFC's 2004 roster.

Yet it's easy to understand the coach's commendation, which came while the 36-year-old linebacker was announcing his retirement from football after 13 seasons. For almost a decade now, the New England Patriots have been built according to the vision and virtues of what Belichick expects of a football team.

And for just as long it's been Bruschi who has embodied those ideals better than anybody.

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BOSTON - Junichi Tazawa was an all-but-forgotten man on that evening in Manchester, seated between his interpreter and just a single reporter while the rest of the press corps huddled outside the dugout at Merchantsauto.com Stadium, eagerly anticipating the emergence of John Smoltz.

Smoltz, after all, was the hall of famer who was supposed to be the Red Sox's secret weapon for the second half. Officially he was on a rehab assignment, and technically he was something of a reclamation project, but many considered him more of an ace-in-waiting than either of those things. They expected he'd be a big part of Boston's pennant push and playoff run.

Last night, for example, was supposed to be one of those big starts Smoltz was brought here for. It was his turn in the rotation, and the team had lost six of seven. It was facing the Central Division leader. It began

the day up a half game in the wild card race.

But instead it was the afterthought who stood at center stage.

And who seized the spotlight rather nicely.

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