Thursday night was a pretty spectacular night. It felt really good to get back to watching two different sports at once.
The Red Sox obliterated the Yankees 15-7 at Fenway (on a three-homer night by… wait for it… no seriously, hold on… Steve freakin’ Pearce! WHAT?!?) in the first game of a four-game set, and while the beat down was going on, the Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears engaged in what was a pretty entertaining, yet meaningless, Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio.
Ah, football. Even though I had no dog in the fight between the Ravens and the Bears, it was plenty joyful just to see an NFL game on the television screen for the first time since… ugh… Super Bowl LII.
Watching the Hall of Fame game reminded me of all the things I’ll be doing very, very soon. In just a few short weeks, I will be…
…Watching my favorite team, the Patriots, embracing somewhat of an underdog role during the 2018 season, even though they will be the favorites to win the AFC for the third straight year. The 2018 Patriots will be a very confusing, yet very fun, team to watch.
…Cheering on a 41-year-old quarterback and wondering during every single play if this is the last season that he will be here.
…Watching said quarterback, Tom Brady, throw passes to Eric Decker, a former member of two teams I don’t really care for, the New York Jets and Denver Broncos. This year will be Decker’s own personal redemption tour, just like Darrelle Revis in 2014. Hopefully this one ends with a Super Bowl championship as well. Also, are there going to be any power couple competitions this season? Because the Pats now have not one, but two power couples (Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen, and Decker and singer Jessie James Decker). Did anyone ever imagine that Foxboro, Massachusetts would be overloading on celebrity couples? Anybody else on the team want to get in on this? There have to be plenty of single celebrity women out there.
…Watching fellow AFC East teams, the Jets and Bills, and wondering which rookie quarterback, Sam Darnold (Jets) and Josh Allen (Bills) – or both – will have a better season than veteran quarterback Ryan Tannehill (Dolphins).
…Still wondering why Malcolm Butler didn’t play in the Super Bowl (sorry, that one isn’t going away any time soon).
…Annoying the hell out of my girlfriend by having football on the TV for 10 hours every Sunday, and three hours of every Monday and Thursday night. Seriously, she HATES football season. It’s already one thing that she doesn’t understand the game itself; to her, it’s just a bunch of grown men getting paid millions of dollars to chase a ball around for a few hours with no real purpose. But on top of that, it doesn’t help that I become completely useless every single Sunday from September through January because my butt doesn’t move from the couch. If she had the choice of either winning the lottery or eliminating football season forever, I think she would have a really tough time choosing.
…Looking forward to erecting a statue of Bill Belichick outside of Gillette Stadium in a few years, but also trying to figure why the heck he passed on so many great young quarterback prospects in this year’s draft (like Lamar Jackson, Mason Rudolph, Kyle Lauletta, Luke Falk etc.) when his starting quarterback just turned 41.
…Watching Sony Michel take handoffs from Brady and hoping that he can be the same stud in the NFL that he was at the University of Georgia.
…Patiently, and impatiently, awaiting the return of Julian Edelman in Week 5 after more than a year and a half.
…Hoping that after back-to-back trips to the Super Bowl, the Patriots once again find their way to Atlanta next February for the big game, and win it this time so that Brady gets his sixth ring and pretty much guarantees that his record will never be broken.
Anyway, that’s just a few of the things I’ll be doing when the season officially kicks off next month, and watching the Ravens and the Bears play in the Hall of Fame game on Thursday got me thinking about all these wonderful things.
Welcome back, football. You have been greatly missed.