A Copycat League -- Except When It Comes to the Patriots

Don Wassall

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A Copycat League -- Except When It Comes to Copying the Patriots
by J. B. Cash

The New England Patriots won Super Bowl XLIX in exciting fashion, sealing the win with a goal line interception in the final minute.

The win marked the fourth Super Bowl victory for the Patriots this century. Along with wins following the 2001, 2003, and 2004 regular seasons, the Patriots also nearly won Super Bowls in 2008 and 2012, losing to the Giants late in those games on miraculous plays. Besides the wins and appearances in those six Super Bowls in 14 years, the Patriots have made it to two other AFC title games for a total of eight, and have been in the playoffs 12 times. During that time they have consistently been one of the best teams in the NFL.

However it is more than just their success which has distinguished the Patriots from other NFL teams, in a league where nearly 80% of the players are black, the New England Patriots are starkly different, starting 9 White players on offense in the Super Bowl and even though New England's roster has always been majority black, the team has been among the relatively "Whitest" NFL teams for nearly all of their long years of winning.

Obviously the mainstream media has problems with the New England Patriots. Because of the rigid social orthodoxy regulating discussions of racial issues they are not allowed to refer to White group interests in any way but negative ones. They can talk about White bigotry, White racism, White prejudice, etc., but it is forbidden to discuss White success. Thus any mention of the Patriots relative "Whiteness" is apart from their achievements.

The media will trumpet any non-White successes endlessly. If an all-black little league team wins the Little League World Series, as recently happened, it is cause for celebration. (Although it turned out that the team cheated and had its title stripped away). If a black tennis player has success, or a black ice skater, or a black swimmer, there is constant fawning media attention paid to them.

There are those that might rationalize the absurdly over the top pandering to non-White achievement as being an attempt to celebrate some concept of growing equality or an acknowledgement that some minority group has overcome daunting odds to succeed against the imaginary bogeyman of White racism. If, however that is the case then why is it not worthy of note that the team with the fewest black players dominates a mostly black league?

You might say that it is because Whites are in the majority, but of course in football, like basketball, they are not. If you believe this is because of the superiority of black athleticism then isn’t it noteworthy that a group of Whites are overcoming those daunting odds? In an environment where each milestone of fading White majority status is being trumpeted from the front page of every newspaper and television network in a positive manner, why isn’t the success of the Patriots similarly newsworthy? If it is significant in some way that White children will soon no longer be more than 50% of that age group, why is it not significant that the highly successful Patriots are Whiter than any other team?

And it is not that the Patriots are representative of some small percentage of the teams. They are far and away Whiter then almost any other team. Nine White starters on offense is not just unusual it is unheard of in recent decades, since the Caste System went into overdrive in the mid-1980s; many teams hardly have few White starters on offense, and the majority have no White starters at all on defense.

The Patriots threw touchdown passes in the Super Bowl to three different White pass catchers. Most teams don’t have a single White receiver. The White players on the Patriots are not just offensive lineman, like on most other teams, they are also the prime movers of the offense.

To the media commentators the fact that the Patriots are highly successful while at the same time highly White cannot be commented on except in a negative way. So instead they are targeted for criticism and mockery and if any small issue arises which might diminish their standing it is made into a major news item. Favorite among the criticisms is that they “cheat.†Successfully painting the Patriots as cheaters has the advantage of explaining away that while the league is nearly all-black, those "White boy" Patriots continue to win.

Before the Super Bowl, in the two week dead time between the conference championships and the big game, the sports media manufactured a cheating controversy so contrived and ridiculous that it was amazing it could have been taken seriously. “Deflate-gate†as it was labeled by the media, for easier internet searches no doubt, was based on some thin evidence that the balls used by the Patriots had a couple less ounces of air in them then the balls used by the Colts in the AFC conference championship game. This was a game in which the Patriots thoroughly destroyed their darker opponents. But for nearly two weeks the media tried to make it seem that those few ounces of air were significant in the outcome.

Rational voices made the whole concept of some advantage from under inflated balls a ridiculous theory, but not until the whole of the anti-Patriot, (also anti-White) members of the sports brainwashing complex, had the chance to smear as much as possible the long, successful legacy of the team.

The end result was that the Super Bowl was turned into a referendum on the reputation and history of winning of the organization, and especially directed at the two main representatives of the frighteningly White Patriots, head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. As such it was also construed to be a comment on the Patriots Whiteness as the insinuation that they weren’t really that good for 15 years but were instead the recipients of an unfair advantage.

Nothing can make the anti-White sentiment of the NFL and the media more obvious than in the fifteen years this team has been so successful no other team has tried to emulate their success. The NFL has rightly been referred to as a “copycat†league. Whenever a team has some measure of success, other teams will attempt to acquire personnel of the same type, run the same offensive and defensive schemes and try to replicate that success. Not in this case though. Despite a generation of winning and unprecedented success in the modern NFL -- which is relentlessly engineered so that there is "parity" between the teams -- there is no rush for teams to find similar players and run a similar offense as the New England Patriots. The NFL, the sports media, and apparently the declining White fan base, always led by media cues, is just fine with that.

The major sources of media, moving in lockstep with each other, following a bible of unwritten rules on race and how it can be discussed cannot say it, but the New England Patriots recent Super Bowl win and their long record of winning is a source of pride for many White people. In a society where all peoples except Whites are granted the option of feeling pride when someone that “looks like them†has success, I feel pride in Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, Julius Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, Nate Solder, Daniel Connolly, Bryan Stork, Ryan Wendell, Sebastian Vollmer, Rob Ninkovich, and all of our other fellow European-Americans that exhibited qualities we respect so much in our people: character, skill, strength, teamwork, intelligence, and the will to win.
 

Westside

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Great piece. I had just posted last night that Steven A. Smiff was afraid of this team and its continued success, hence the BS remarks he made about Chip Kelly turning the Eagles into another "Patriot like" team.
 
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I think black columnist Jason Whitlock wondered a few years ago if NFL teams would "copycat" the formula used by the Patriots and Peyton Manning's Colts (who then used white pass receivers).

Obviously not.
 

Colonel_Reb

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Yes, another nice article by the Cash man! If too many (2 or more) other teams copied the Patriots, then the big lie of "black affletic supremacy" would be revealed as the lie that it is to too many people. It would work against the Caste System, so they don't copycat the Pats as a result.
 

Riggins44

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Actually as all of us here at CF know, a couple of teams have copied the Patriots' formula for success. Green Bay did so in the 2011 season when "The Whitest Team Won the Superbowl". But then they inexplicably backslided on that method that worked so well for them, and have not been back to the SB since, though they should have been back this year. The Colts were one of the whitest teams with lots of great white wide receivers and tight ends for years, and won one Super Bowl. And the Eagles seem to be moving in that direction, though it is hard to tell what Chip Kelly is doing these days. But Cash's point of course is well made; the vast majority of the league has not copied the formula of the most successful team in the league by a wide margin over the last 15 years.
 

jaxvid

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Actually as all of us here at CF know, a couple of teams have copied the Patriots' formula for success. Green Bay did so in the 2011 season when "The Whitest Team Won the Superbowl". But then they inexplicably backslided on that method that worked so well for them, and have not been back to the SB since, though they should have been back this year. The Colts were one of the whitest teams with lots of great white wide receivers and tight ends for years, and won one Super Bowl. And the Eagles seem to be moving in that direction, though it is hard to tell what Chip Kelly is doing these days. But Cash's point of course is well made; the vast majority of the league has not copied the formula of the most successful team in the league by a wide margin over the last 15 years.

I don't think anyone has really copied the Patriots offense. For the last few years at least, with Welker and then Edelman, the offense has revolved around Brady making quick reads and hitting Welker/Edelman for short to medium gains. This style has basically replaced what teams used the power running game for, and it puts the Patriots in short yardage situations on 2nd and 3rd down. It also keeps the chains moving and opens up medium to longer gains for Gronkowski (and formerly Hernandez) by creating mismatches where slower linebackers had to guard them.

It also opens up the running game for the Patriots, they seem to be able to put virtually anyone in the backfield with success, by forcing the defense to use smaller guys to watch Welker/Edelman and yet still have one or two TE's to block when they aren't being a pass catching threat.

The Colts with Manning were a pure passing team, while Manning did use White out of the slot for a very short time, his main targets were the two wide receivers who racked up huge yardage with him, unlike the Patriots who don't get a lot of yards from the wide outs. Manning also used his tight end Dallas Clark effectively but that was because Clark was basically a racially miscast receiver.

The Packers bear no resemblance to the Patriots on offense in my opinion, the only things that makes them different then every other team in the league is a mostly white o-line and deep threat Jordy Nelson, and of course Aaron Rodgers is a great QB.

The Eagles last couple of years had lots of white guys but they didn't use them that effectively, Cooper was underused as was the TE. I think the closest anyone has gotten to the Pats is the Cowboys for a short time last year when they used Beasley effectively out of the slot like a Welker/Edelman, but of course the egos and philosophy of the Cowboys could never go in that direction except for a short time.
 

Thrashen

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Nice article. For a more visual reading experience, is there a way to insert GIF files or photos for when it's posted on the CF homepage? After the portion where the article talks about "3 different white pass-catchers scoring TDs," for instance.

If so, feel free to use these...

gronktd.nocrop.w529.h316.2x.gif


TameWildKinglet.gif


bradyy.0.gif
 

SneakyQuick

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It seems that to some degree other teams must have copied it (eg. The rams) but for some reason there can only be one or two of these teams a year.
 
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For me it has lately become "enjoy the NFL at your own risk". Too many things don't add up as far as managerial and coaching decisions go. Just as a ferinstance take that LB Leo Chenal. Anyone could see he's better that lots of what was drafted before he was. It sometimes all seems choreographed. Even with the Rams. Look at all those top draft picks that suddenly went to the Rams in the last few years from other teams. Freaking Jacksonville was like a Rams farm team. Suddenly they go back to LA and then win the Superbowl?
 
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