03:08 AM EST on Thursday, December 23, 2004

So now the Patriots have our undivided attention.

Finally.

Has there ever been a great team that's flown so low under the radar?

It's hard to think of one.

But that's where this Patriots season has been until now. Taken for granted. Overshadowed by the Red Sox. Winning week after week as if they were some fat-cat college program in a weak league. Winning week after week as if that's just the way it's supposed to be, ho hum. Under the radar.

There are reasons, certainly, the two biggest being (1) they are victims of their own success, and (2) the Red Sox.

It's been the Pats' fate to have had another great season in the biggest Red Sox autumn in 86 years. Who is bigger, the Red Sox or the Pats? For several years now, that's been the question, debated back and forth like philosophers asking whether there's a God. No more, though. This past fall gave us the answer, namely that when the Sox win there is nothing on God's green earth any bigger than that.

Not here, anyway.

So all through the baseball playoffs, the Pats were like an afterthought, Miss Congeniality at the Miss America Pageant.

Maybe it would have been different if they had been struggling, in the middle of the post-Super Bowl blues. Maybe it would be different if they hadn't won two Super Bowls in three years, establishing a kind of grace period.

Maybe it would have been different if there had been some minor scandal, some little controversy, like Tom Brady saying he couldn't stand Charlie Weis' play-calling, or Corey Dillon saying he hated New England, something. Anything that would have put this team back into water-fountain conversation, back into our consciousness for anything more than the three hours they played on Sunday afternoons.

Take away the loss at Pittsburgh, and it never happened.

The Sox went on to their first World Series title in the modern era and the Pats just went on. Back to what they did. Winning every Sunday afternoon. Spending the week in virtual obscurity. No controversy. No examples of boorish behavior. No Pedro throwing everyone under the bus on the way out of town. No Curt Schilling retaliating. No happy bunch of idiots. No hijinks in the dugout, like one big frat party in doubleknits. None of the things that make the Sox such great theater.

No, this was everyone goose-stepping to the party line, where never is said a disparaging word.

Could anyone say boring?

Not that that was the right word. Winning is never boring, especially for a franchise that used to be synonymous with pathos and ineptitude. Winning is never boring, especially when a team is flirting with the record book. And how is it fair to say a team is boring just because it wins all the time when we rip teams for not winning?

Yet, it still seemed weird. This was watching a great team do great things, and yet there was the feeling this was all like a pregame warmup, something to get through before the real games started, the ones in the playoffs. This was the equivalent of watching September baseball when you know your team is already in the playoffs. This was watching a team win every week and starting to take it for granted.

In a sense, the Patriots had become a victim of their own success, and the style that came with it. For all of our lionizing togetherness and focus, all our admiration for the selfless way this team plays, so much of being a sports fan is fueled by controversy. Sports talk shows don't run on people saying nice things. We love arguments. We love theater, the endless soap opera. We admire the Patriots; we talk about Pedro and the Sox.

For the Pats are anti-theater.

This is Tom Brady, who never says the wrong thing. This is a whole clubhouse full of players who never seem to say much of anything except how much they respect their opponents, and have to play well or they might lose. No "who's your daddy" here.

Every week, Bill Belichick would stand at his Monday morning press conference and set the agenda, saying how the next opponent was going to be tougher than everyone thought, and everyone would simply roll their eyes, as if here we go again. Then the Pats would go out and win again, to the point where Belichick soon became just another coaching version of the boy who cried wolf, just another guy immersed in coach-speak.

Until Monday night.

When Belichick's fears all came true and the Pats let one get away.

When the Patriots lost the kind of game they never seem to lose.

When this NFL season finally arrived here.

When the Pats finally got our undivided attention.