Happy Buttfumble-versary, everyone!
What a day Thanksgiving is. I can’t think of a better way to kick off a long weekend of eating, shopping, more eating, and sports than a holiday set aside for the express purpose of being thankful and unplugging for a few hours to enjoy a huge meal with friends, family and loved ones. Thanksgiving Day is basically everyone’s favorite things all rolled into one, and so here’s hoping that you all have something awesome going on this Thursday.
But even if you don’t, even if you’re one of those people who has to work or will be just kind of hanging out at home relaxing this weekend, if you’re a Patriots fan, then there’s one Thanksgiving tradition that you’ll be able to celebrate no matter what:
The Buttfumble.
Mark Sanchez. Brandon Moore. Vince Wilfork. Steve Gregory. A busted play, an attempted slide, a facemask, a rump, a loose football, and a touchdown. An embarrassment of epic proportions, the undefeated ESPN Worst of the Worst Champion for 40 straight weeks.
It’s hard to imagine that it has been six years since that fateful Thanksgiving Night game between the Patriots and Jets when Mark Sanchez Buttfumbled his way out of New York and directly into our hearts. However, the stars are really aligning in 2018; not only are the Patriots getting ready to return to the scene of the crime this Sunday as the Pats get ready for their first game of the year against the Jets, but this year, Thanksgiving falls on the same exact day as it did six years ago. November 22nd, 2012 will always be an incredibly special day for Patriots Nation, and during those rare years when Thanksgiving manages to fall on the same date as The Buttfumble, we should all take a moment to be especially grateful that we weren’t the ones on the ass end of the...um...ass end. Six years ago tomorrow, to the day, the Pats hung 49 on the Jets on national television during a game in which a team scoring 21 points in 52 seconds isn’t even a blip on anyone’s radar anymore. Ask your average fan if they remember the 83 yard catch and run by Shane Vereen or the Edelman fumble return that sandwiched the play, and odds are you’ll get the kind of blank stare that you usually only see after too much stuffing. But ask them where they were when the Buttfumble happened, odds are you’ll not only get a vivid recollection of time and place, but what they were eating at the time. I was on the couch with my dad gnawing on a turkey leg, which froze halfway to my mouth as I saw, for the first of what would become hundreds of times, The Top Patriots Moment of 2012 .
So this Thanksgiving, give The Buttfumble an even more special remembrance. Tomorrow night at about 9:15 or so will mark exactly six years since our lives were all irrevocably changed for the better.
The traditional gift for a six-year anniversary is iron for some reason. I’ll spare you all the obvious jokes about needing iron to club your spouse over the head or lock them up somewhere and just move right along here. I’ve thought long and hard about this one - and by “long and hard,” I mean barely at all - and I’ve come up with a gift that I’m sure Mark Sanchez will really be able to use this year.
Happy Thanksgiving, folks. Happy Buttfumble as well.