New England Patriots Quotes

We heard the army before we saw it. The noise was like a cannon barrage combined with a football stadium crowd- like every Patriots fan in New England was charging us with bazookas.

To the New England Patriots. Last year I thanked you and you won the Super Bowl. Let’s keep that tradition going. Free Brady.

With the one hundred and ninety-ninth pick in the draft,” the commissioner announced, “the New England Patriots select Tom Brady.

What was life but good barstools and bad ones, good fortune and bad, shifting from Sunday to Sunday, year to year, like the fortunes of the New England Patriots. There was no such thing as continual good fortune—or misfortune, except for the Red Sox, whose curse seemed eternal.

he suffered from the impatience of the gifted.

It is hardly surprising that to this day New England is considered to be the pie capital of America, whose inhabitants traditionally eat (sweet) pie for breakfast. Apple pies in particular became deeply embedded in the history of America - associated with the old country, the new country and the pioneering spirit, and indelibly identified with the sense of nationhood and patriotic sentiment.

Mary had the solitary and heroic half-virtue of the Tudors: she was a patriot. But patriots are often pathetically behind the times; for the very fact that they dwell on old enemies often blinds them to new ones.

The nation’s patriotic juices were stirred and the new music halls chanted, ‘We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do, / We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.’ Such sentiments became known as jingoism.

Murdoch also derived comfort from some of the other reputable investors he heard Theranos had lined up. They included Cox Enterprises, the Atlanta-based, family-owned conglomerate whose chairman, Jim Kennedy, he was friendly with, and the Waltons of Walmart fame. Other big-name investors he didn’t know about ranged from Bob Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and John Elkann, the Italian industrialist who controlled Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

Around this time, a young man named Samuel Slater slipped through the tight protective net thrown by British authorities around their textile business. As a former apprentice to Sir Richard Arkwright, Slater had sworn that he would never reveal his boss’s trade secrets. Flouting this pledge, he sailed to New York and made contact with Moses Brown, a Rhode Island Quaker. Under Slater’s supervision, Brown financed a spinning mill in Rhode Island that replicated Arkwright’s mill. Hamilton received detailed reports of this triumph, and pretty soon milldams proliferated on New England’s rivers. With patriotic pride, Brown predicted to Hamilton that “mills and machines may be erected in different places, in one year, to make all the cotton yarn that may be wanted in the United States.” 29 Hamilton

football: it might not be enough to just love your job. You had to want to live in the world the job created. Working with people you like, a tribe with a common goal, would make your professional life far happier than any accolade, salary, or a company’s prestige could. You need to do the work you love, at a place and with people you love. You have to feel—Brady repeatedly returned to this word—“appreciated.

The Patriots had picked Brady in the sixth round, and he soon turned out to be one of the two or three best quarterbacks in the League, and absolutely perfect for the Belichick system and for the team's offense. So, as the team continued to make a series of very good calls on other player personnel choices, there was a general tendency to talk about how brilliant Pioli and Belichick were, and to regard Pioli as the best young player personnel man in the League. Just to remind himself not to believe all the hype and that he could readily have screwed up on that draft, Pioli kept on his desk a photo of Brady, along with a photo of the team's fifth-round traft choice, the man he had taken ahead of Brady: Dave Stachelski. He was a Tight End from Boise State who never a played a down for New England. Stachelski was taken with the 141st pick, Brady with the 199th one. 'If I was so smart,' Pioli liked to say, 'I wouldn't have risked an entire round of the draft in picking Brady.

I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman,” she told her troops as the Spanish Armada sailed for home in 1588, “but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” Relishing opposites, the queen was constant only in her patriotism, her insistence on keeping ends within means, and her determination—a requirement for pivoting—never to be pinned down. 38 Her hopes for religion reflected this. Knowing the upheavals her country had undergone—Henry VIII’s expulsion of the pope from English Catholicism, the shift to strict Protestantism in Edward VI’s brief reign, the harsh reversion to Rome under Mary—Elizabeth wanted a single church with multiple ways of worship. There was, she pointed out, “only one Jesus Christ.” Why couldn’t there be different paths to Him? Theological quarrels were “trifles,” or, more tartly, “ropes of sand or sea-slime leading to the Moon.” 39 Until they affected national sovereignty. God’s church, under Elizabeth, would be staunchly English: whether “Catholic” or “Protestant” mattered less than loyalty. This was, in one sense, toleration, for the new queen cared little what her subjects believed. She would watch like a hawk, though, what they did. “Her Majesty seems to me incomparably more feared than her sister,” Feria warned Philip—which was saying something since that lady had been “bloody” Mary. “We have lost a kingdom,

I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with — for I see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the United Europe. It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century — this reparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the "Fatherlanders" — then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can be said without some such "perhaps." But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe — I refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires" — will in a short time become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new role of broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility of shutting out homines novi from the government will ruin her, and her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in the footsteps of Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are the most inappropriate imaginable.

In the wake of British atrocities, both real and imagined, the ambient rhetoric heated up. Jonas Clark, pastor of the First Parish Church of Lexington, Massachusetts, was a fair representative of New England’s patriotic Church Militant. For some time he had been delivering sermons on such matters as “The Importance of Military Skill, Measures for Defense, and a Martial Spirit in a Time of Peace.” In commemoration of the killing on Lexington Green, he now thundered out a homily about “The Fate of Blood Thirsty Oppressors and God’s Tender Care of His Distressed People” with such resonant authority that cows were said to have been “startled into attendance” in pastures nearby.

Other big-name investors he didn’t know about ranged from Bob Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim

In early July 1777, Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York fell to the British, prompting King George III to clap his hands and exclaim, “I have beat them! Beat all the Americans.” It was a potential calamity for the patriots, since it opened a corridor for General John Burgoyne and his invading army from Canada to push south to New York City, slicing the rebel army in half and isolating New England—an overarching objective of British war policy.

Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin. —Victor Kiam, entrepreneur; former owner, New England Patriots

remove procrastination from your life. As Victor Kiam, an entrepreneur and former owner of the New England Patriots, said, “Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.” Conversely, change is the instigator of opportunity.

Driving University: Listen to audio books or financial news radio while stuck in traffic. Traffic nuisances transformed to education. Exercise University: Absorb books, podcasts, and magazines while exercising at the gym. In between sets, on the treadmill, or on the stationary bike, exercise is transformed to education. Waiting University: Bring something to read with you when you anticipate a painful wait: Airports, doctor’s offices, and your state’s brutal motor vehicle department. Don’t sit there and twiddle your thumbs—learn! Toilet University: Never throne without reading something of educational value. Extend your “sit time” (even after you finish) with the intent of learning something new, every single day. Toilet University is the best place to change your oil, since it occurs daily and the time expenditure cannot be avoided. This means the return on your time investment is infinite! Toilet time transformed to education. Jobbing University: If you can, read during work downtimes. During my dead-job employment (driving limos, pizza delivery) I enjoyed significant “wait times” between jobs. While I waited for passengers, pizzas, and flower orders, I read. I didn’t sit around playing pocket-poker; no, I read. If you can exploit dead time during your job, you are getting paid to learn. Dead-end jobs transformed to education. TV-Time University: Can’t wean yourself off the TV? No problem; put a television near your workspace and simultaneously work your Fastlane plan while the TV does its thing. While watching countless reruns of Star Trek, boldly going where no man has gone before, I simultaneously learned how to program websites. In fact, as I write this, I am watching the New Orleans Saints pummel the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. Gridiron gluttony transformed to work and education.

Without a doubt, the New England Patriots are one of the most popular teams in the entire National Football League.

Dear Christopher, This is the perfume of March: rain, loam, feathers, mint. Every morning and afternoon I drink fresh mint tea sweetened with honey. I’ve done a great deal of walking lately. I seem to think better outdoors. Last night was remarkably clear. I looked up at the sky to find the Argo. I’m terrible at constellations. I can never make out any of them except for Orion and his belt. But the longer I stared, the more the sky seemed like an ocean, and then I saw an entire fleet of ships made of stars. A flotilla was anchored at the moon, while others were casting off. I imagined we were on one of those ships, sailing on moonlight. In truth, I find the ocean unnerving. Too vast. I must prefer the forests around Stony Cross. They’re always fascinating, and full of commonplace miracles…spiderwebs glittering with rain, new trees growing from the trunks of fallen oaks. I wish you could see them with me. And together we would listen to the wind rushing through the leaves overhead, a lovely swooshy melody…tree music! As I sit here writing to you, I have propped my stocking feet much too close to the hearth. I’ve actually singed my stockings on occasion, and once I had to stomp out my feet when they started smoking. Even after that, I still can’t seem to rid myself of the habit. There, now you could pick me out of a crowd blindfolded. Simply follow the scent of scorched stockings. Enclosed is a robin’s feather that I found during my walk this morning. It’s for luck. Keep it in your pocket. Just now I had the oddest feeling while writing this letter, as if you were standing in the room with me. As if my pen had become a magic wand, and I had conjured you right here. If I wish hard enough… Dearest Prudence, I have the robin’s feather in my pocket. How did you know I needed token to carry into battle? For the past two weeks I’ve been in a rifle pit, sniping back and forth with the Russians. It’s no longer a cavalry war, it’s all engineers and artillery. Albert stayed in the trench with me, only going out to carry messages up and down the line. During the lulls, I try to imagine being in some other place. I imagine you with your feet propped near the hearth, and your breath sweet with mint tea. I imagine walking through the Stony Cross forests with you. I would love to see some commonplace miracles, but I don’t think I could find them without you. I need your help, Pru. I think you might be my only chance of becoming part of the world again. I feel as if I have more memories of you than I actually do. I was with you on only a handful of occasions. A dance. A conversation. A kiss. I wish I could relive those moments. I would appreciate them more. I would appreciate everything more. Last night I dreamed of you again. I couldn’t see your face, but I felt you near me. You were whispering to me. The last time I held you, I didn’t know who you truly were. Or who I was, for that matter. We never looked beneath the surface. Perhaps it’s better we didn’t--I don’t think I could have left you, had I felt for you then what I do now. I’ll tell you what I’m fighting for. Not for England, nor her allies, nor any patriotic cause. It’s all come down to the hope of being with you.

Ten months after Jamie’s death, the 2006 football season began. The Colts played peerless football, winning their first nine games, and finishing the year 12–4. They won their first play-off game, and then beat the Baltimore Ravens for the divisional title. At that point, they were one step away from the Super Bowl, playing for the conference championship—the game that Dungy had lost eight times before. The matchup occurred on January 21, 2007, against the New England Patriots, the same team that had snuffed out the Colts’ Super Bowl aspirations twice. The Colts started the game strong, but before the first half ended, they began falling apart. Players were afraid of making mistakes or so eager to get past the final Super Bowl hurdle that they lost track of where they were supposed to be focusing. They stopped relying on their habits and started thinking too much. Sloppy tackling led to turnovers. One of Peyton Manning’s passes was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Their opponents, the Patriots, pulled ahead 21 to 3. No team in the history of the NFL had ever overcome so big a deficit in a conference championship. Dungy’s team, once again, was going to lose.3.36 At halftime, the team filed into the locker room, and Dungy asked everyone to gather around. The noise from the stadium filtered through the closed doors, but inside everyone was quiet. Dungy looked at his players. They had to believe, he said. “We faced this same situation—against this same team—in 2003,” Dungy told them. In that game, they had come within one yard of winning. One yard. “Get your sword ready because this time we’re going to win. This is our game. It’s our time.”3.37 The Colts came out in the second half and started playing as they had in every preceding game. They stayed focused on their cues and habits. They carefully executed the plays they had spent the past five years practicing until they had become automatic. Their offense, on the opening drive, ground out seventy-six yards over fourteen plays and scored a touchdown. Then, three minutes after taking the next possession, they scored again. As the fourth quarter wound down, the teams traded points. Dungy’s Colts tied the game, but never managed to pull ahead. With 3:49 left in the game, the Patriots scored, putting Dungy’s players at a three-point disadvantage, 34 to 31. The Colts got the ball and began driving down the field. They moved seventy yards in nineteen seconds, and crossed into the end zone. For the first time, the Colts had the lead, 38 to 34. There were now sixty seconds left on the clock. If Dungy’s team could stop the Patriots from scoring a touchdown, the Colts would win. Sixty seconds is an eternity in football.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday tried to recruit a delegation of 20 former NFL players who were visiting Israel to oppose a nuclear deal with Iran. The group on a trip led by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft included Curtis Martin of the Jets and Patriots, Thurman Thomas of the Bills and Tim Brown of the Raiders. Netanyahu used football lingo to encourage the players to oppose a nuclear deal the Obama administration and allies hope to strike with Iran. "Iran is one yard away from the goal line," he said.

Bobby had once gotten to slip into the Boston Athletic Club and watch Big Kevin's Sunday morning workout, when he put 225 pounds on the bar and cranked out twenty nine reps on the bench press as his admiring buddies counted them out. Bobby was quietly made aware that this was beyond the capability of most any of the New England Patriots, which was akin to saying someone was holier than the pope himself.

Castine is a quiet town with a population of about 1,500 people in Western Hancock County, Maine, named after John Hancock, when Maine was a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was the famous statesman, merchant and smuggler who signed the “Declaration of Independence” with a signature large enough so that the English monarch, King George, could read it without glasses. Every child in New England knows that John Hancock was a prominent activist and patriot during the colonial history of the United States and not just the name of a well-known Insurance Company. Just below the earthen remains of Fort George, on both sides of Pleasant Street, lays the campus of Maine Maritime Academy. Prior to World War II, this location was the home of the Eastern State Normal School, whose purpose was to train grade school teachers. Maine Maritime Academy has significantly grown over the years and is now a four-year college that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine, as well as educating students in marine-related industries such as yacht and small craft management. Bachelor Degrees are offered in Engineering, International Business and Logistics, Marine Transportation, and Ocean Studies. Graduate studies are offered in Global Logistics and Maritime Management, as well as in International Logistics Management. Presently there are approximately 1,030 students enrolled at the Academy. Maine Maritime Academy's ranking was 7th in the 2016 edition of Best Northern Regional Colleges by U.S. News and World Report. The school was named the Number One public college in the United States by Money Magazine. Photo Caption: Castine, Maine

Ethan was smiling when he pulled back the door, wearing jeans and a New England Patriots sweatshirt that was badly frayed at the collar. He grinned, noting the direction of her gaze. “No making fun of my lucky sweatshirt. I’ve had it since college.” Ashlyn eyed him skeptically. “Are you sure it’s lucky? The Pats haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire the last few years.” The smile morphed into a lopsided grin. “Maybe not, but you watch. One of these days, they’re going to get the right guy under center, and when they do, they’re going to win so many Super Bowls that the entire country will hate them.

million-dollar smile. The earnest, all-American niceness of the guy. Not to mention the pure, high, spiraling arc of the thrown football as it zeros in, laser-like, on the expected position of the wide receiver. Never mind that said receiver is flat-out running for his life, dancing, dodging, leaping and spinning in a million directions just inches ahead of several thundering tons of rival linebackers. And never mind that the architect of that exquisite spiral was himself beset, nanoseconds earlier, with similar masses of murderous muscle bearing down on him as he threw. The ball hammers down precisely into the receiver’s arms as he sails across the line, and the fans go wild. TOUCHDOWN! Who could not love Tom Brady? The accomplishments, honors, and accolades go on and on: youngest quarterback ever to win three Super Bowls. Only quarterback ever to win NFL MVP by unanimous vote. As of 2013 he had been twice Super Bowl MVP, twice NFL MVP, nine times invited to the Pro Bowl, twice on the AP All-Pro First Team, five times an AFC Champion, and twice leader of the NFL in passing yards. He had also been (at least once, and in some cases multiple times) Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, Sporting News Sportsman of the year, AP Male Athlete of the Year, NFL Offensive Player of the Year, AFC Offensive Player of the Year, AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year, PFWA NFL Comeback Player of the Year, and the New England Patriots’ all-time leader in passing touchdowns, passing yards, pass completion, pass attempts, and career wins. But Tom Brady didn’t get to be Tom Brady overnight. And he didn’t get there alone.

emerge

New England patriots hastened toward Boston. A Connecticut patriot named McNeil reported on September 2 how women and children were fully engaged in supporting the men: All along were armed men rushing forward—some on horseback. At every house, women and children making cartridges, running [i.e., casting molten lead into] bullets, making wallets, baking biscuits, crying and bemoaning and at the same time animating their husbands and sons to fight for their liberties, though not knowing whether they should ever see them again.

While assuring the authorities of their loyalty, the patriots made thinly veiled threats concerning their prowess with firearms. The Boston Gazette declared: "Besides the regular trained militia in New-England, all the planters sons and servants are taught to use the fowling piece from their youth, and generally fire balls with great exactness at fowl or beast.

There is nothing about Lee that is at all picturesque, but his dignity and distinction are impressive, and this memoir helps us better to understand the reasons for his lasting prestige in the North as well as the South — why a New Englander who had served in the Union army like the younger Charles Francis Adams should have wanted to have a statue of him in Washington. The point is that Lee belongs, as does no other public figure of his generation, to the Roman phase of the Republic; he prolongs it in a curious way which, irrelevant and anachronistic though his activities to a Northerner may seem to be, cannot fail to bring some sympathetic response that derives from the experience of the Revolution. The Lees had been among the prime workers in our operations against the British and the founding of the United States. Robert’s father, “Light-Horse

coaches would know; writers, most of whom at least try to talk to insiders; former jocks; former greats, most of whom know the game, but can’t explain it because of how easily it came to them or because it was simpler in their day; NFL assistant coaches; NFL head coaches; winning NFL head coaches; Super Bowl–winning head coaches; and finally, at the very top of arcane knowledge and expertise in a faintly ridiculous corner of American intellectual esotery, Bill Belichick.

As it turned out, Moss and the Patriots were hotter than the game-time temperature of 84 degrees. They ran the Jets off the field in a 38–14 rout highlighted by Moss’s 51-yard touchdown against triple coverage and 183 receiving yards on nine catches. “He was born to play football,” Brady said of his newest and most lethal weapon. The quarterback had it all now. He was getting serious with his relatively new girlfriend, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen (his ex-girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, had just given birth to their son, Jack), and now he was being paired on the field with a perfect partner of a different kind. Brady wasn’t seeing the Oakland Randy Moss. He was seeing the Minnesota Moss, the vintage Moss, the 6´4˝ receiver who ran past defenders and jumped over them with ease. Brady had all day to throw to Moss and Welker, who caught the first of the quarterback’s three touchdown passes. He wasn’t sacked while posting a quarterback rating of 146.6, his best in nearly five years. Man, this was a great day for the winning coach all around. On the other sideline, Eric Mangini had made a big mistake by sticking with his quarterback, Chad Pennington, a former teammate of Moss’s at Marshall, when the outcome was no longer in doubt, subjecting his starter to some unnecessary hits as he played on an injured ankle. Pennington was annoyed enough to pull himself from the game with 6:51 left and New England leading by 17. “That was the first time I’ve ever done that,” Pennington said. Mangini played the fool on this Sunday, and Belichick surely got the biggest kick out of that. But the losing coach actually won a game within the game in the first half that the overwhelming majority of people inside Giants Stadium knew absolutely nothing about. It had started in the days before this opener, when Mangini informed his former boss that the Jets would not tolerate in their own stadium an illegal yet common Patriots practice: the videotaping of opposing coaches’ signals from the sideline. The message to Belichick was simple: Don’t do it in our house. It was something of an open secret that New England had been illegally taping opposing coaches during games for some time, and yet the first public mention of improper spying involving Belichick’s Patriots actually assigned them the collective role of victim. Following a 21–0 Miami victory in December 2006, a couple of Dolphins told the Palm Beach Post that the team had “bought” past game tapes that included audio of Brady making calls at the line, and that the information taken from those tapes had helped them shut out Brady and sack him four times. “I’ve never seen him so flustered,” said Miami linebacker Zach Thomas.

In 1815, the gargantuan eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia produced “The Year Without a Summer,” a worldwide disaster that killed crops, prompted widespread starvation and food riots, and brought snow to New England as late as June.

Real estate developer Donald J. Trump weighed in on the dispute. He wrote Sumner a letter saying he should listen to his daughter. Trump had shared a box with Shari at a New England Patriots game, and she evidently made a favorable impression. Trump had followed up with questions about the theater business, and Shari gave him and his daughter Ivanka a tour of one of National Amusements’ new luxury theaters. With the National Amusements board firmly lined up behind Sumner, Trump was one of the few people willing to stand up for Shari—a gesture she never forgot.

But leadership isn’t yelling at your teammates on the field or giving some fiery speech. Leadership is work. It’s the example you set.

Emboldened by the new atmosphere of hostility to occult practices, the Kentish magistrate Reginald Scot published his avowedly sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584, which took aim at Leicester and, without naming him, at Dee as well.174 However, the change in atmosphere meant that not only the overt practice of magic but also the ‘prophetic politics’ beloved of Dee and sustained by astrology came under attack.175 Even the use of occult imagery in Elizabeth’s cult of personality met with a frosty reception. In 1590, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, a wide-ranging mythological epic poem directed at Elizabeth and suffused with alchemical, Neoplatonic and Hermetic symbolism, gained the poet little favour. It has been suggested that the poem’s heady mix of patriotic imagery and prophetic enthusiasm may have been linked to Dee’s Arthurian theories about the ‘British empire’,176 but publication came at the wrong time. In England in the 1590s ‘the spirit of reaction’ prevailed against ‘the daring spiritual adventures of the Renaissance’.177 Nevertheless, in spite of official hostility to magic, Elizabeth remained fascinated by alchemy and continued to hope for the Philosophers’ Stone, employing Dee in alchemical experiments from July 1590. Elizabeth also began her own personal correspondence with Edward Kelley, promising him incentives to return to England as her personal alchemist.178 However, by May 1591 Burghley had lost patience with Kelley’s claims. Meanwhile, the alchemist was imprisoned in Bohemia by Rudolf II for killing another man in a duel.179 Dee may have temporarily won his way back into Elizabeth’s favour in June by claiming occult knowledge of a Spanish invasion,180 but the subsequent discovery of threats to the queen’s life that summer by William Hacket and other messianic Protestant sectaries did not shed a very flattering light on Dee’s style of political prophecy.181

Given the focus on language, it should come as no surprise that this book deals with what individuals said and published … The new “linguistic” emphasis of modern scholarship has added to our understanding of the past … Throughout, “language” is not recovered divorced from its historical context, but linked to the individuals who used it, and to their (and others’) actions and activities

Easterners condemned even the methods of protest used by the farmers. According to merchant David Sewell, “these conventions of counties are seeds of sedition [that] ought always to be opposed.” A “Citizen” wrote to the Worcester Magazine that such meetings were “treasonable to the state” and the proposed remedies of the petitions were simply “measures to defraud their own and public creditors.” The irony of such reactions to their pleas for redress was not lost on the westerners. Parallels to the colonies’ petitioning of Great Britain seemed obvious to the rural New England patriots. It was the state’s rejection of this parallel that a “Freeman” caricatured in the Worcester Magazine: “When we had other rulers, committees and conventions of the people were lawful—they were then necessary; but since I myself became a ruler, they cease to be lawful—the people have no right to examine my conduct.”22

The reason shadow histories remained in the shadows lay in the centralization of information: If an idea wasn't discussed on one of three major networks or on the pages of a major daily newspaper or national magazine, it was almost impossible for that idea to gain traction with anyone who wasn't consciously searching for alternative perspectives. That era is now over. There is no centralized information, so every idea has the same potential for distribution and acceptance. Researching the events of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center is no harder or easier than absorbing the avalanche of arguments from those who believe 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government. There will be no shadow history of the 2008 financial crisis or the 2014 New England Patriots' "Deflategate" scandal, because every possible narrative and motive was discussed in public, in real time, across a mass audience, as the events transpired. Competing modes of discourse no longer "compete." They coexist.

And if your difference of opinion with a friend reflects a difference in core values, you might want to handle it with a little less honesty and an extra dose of polite. Saying you don’t believe in the health benefits of organic nut spread is a little different than saying you don’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, or a free Palestine, or that the New England Patriots are dirty rotten cheaters.

The historical periods I like to learn about aren’t so much costume dramas as slasher flicks. The French Revolution is a favorite because it features the beloved plot of carnage in service of democracy, but I prefer American history. And if I had to pick my pet domestic bloodbaths, nothing beats Salem or Gettysburg. I’m a sucker for Puritan New England and the Civil War. Because those two subjects feature the central tension of American life, the conflict between freedom and community, between individual will and the public good.

Madden stayed at Stingley’s bedside to offer him whatever comfort he could. Eventually, the tragedy was too much for Madden and he retired from coaching for good to become a broadcasting, video game, and foot-powder pitchman legend. Those who disliked Madden when he was coaching the Raiders had perhaps never been more wrong in their judgment of another human being than they were about him.

I can honestly say by the time I was standing on U.S. Bank Field, I had no doubts that we would win. I had watched a lot of tape, including the previous year’s Super Bowl when the Patriots came back against the Falcons. In fact, I reviewed a lot of games where the Patriots were losing and came back, focusing on their ability to pull it off. What did I learn? It wasn’t about the Patriots as much as it was about the teams they were playing. Their opponents weren’t playing for sixty minutes. They weren’t finishing. They weren’t executing their offense. Play callers became more conservative and stopped being aggressive. A great example was the AFC Championship Game. When the Jacksonville Jaguars had a four-point lead on New England and had the ball with fifty-five seconds left in the first half, they took a knee and ran the clock out. I was watching the game from our locker room at Lincoln Financial Field as we were getting ready to play Minnesota. I sat there thinking, “You have got to be kidding me right now.” They had two time-outs and close to a minute left. They could have at least tried for a field goal. They took it out of their quarterback’s hands, and they didn’t give it to their big back, Leonard Fournette. I thought, “If they lose this game, this is why.” Sure enough, they would go on to lose the game. It made me mad because Jacksonville had New England right where they wanted them. I was screaming at the television in my office. When they knelt right before halftime, inside I was like, “I’ll never do that.” It fueled me. Against the Vikings later that day, we had twenty-nine seconds left in the first half and three time-outs. Instead of taking a knee, I called for a screen pass to Jay Ajayi to the sideline, a pass to Zach Ertz up the sideline, another pass to Ajayi, and then we kicked a field goal to grab three points. All in twenty-nine seconds. That’s how I wanted to play the last minute of a half—with an aggressive mentality.

The noise was like a cannon barrage combined with a football stadium crowd—like every Patriots fan in New England was charging us with bazookas.

In an interview on 60 Minutes, Tom Brady, the New England Patriots star quarterback, winner of three Super Bowls before turning thirty, tried to explain what was bothering him. “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there is something greater out there for me? A lot of people would say, ‘This is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream. It’s got to be more than this. I mean, this isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be.”9

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.” —Arthur Schopenhauer The happiest coach in football remembered how to cry. Tears do not fall easily for Pete Carroll, especially sad ones. He is too sunny, too hopeful. His mother, Rita, taught him to live each day as if something positive were about to happen. When the New York Jets fired him after one season in 1994, he said, “I think I’ll take the kids to Disney World.” When the New England Patriots fired him five years later, he took the kids back to Disney World. Carroll is the boxer who smiles after an uppercut to the chin, no matter how much it hurts. This new pain, however, wrenched his soul. The Seattle Seahawks were one yard from a second straight Super Bowl triumph, one yard from the onset of a dynasty. They trailed the Patriots—the Carroll-jilting Patriots!—28–24 with 26 seconds remaining in Super Bowl XLIX, and they still had one timeout, three downs and the best power running back in the National