Picked-up pieces while reminding myself that nobody knows anything when it comes to betting on the NFL playoffs . . .
■ Five seasons into our post-Brady world, it’s still weird to be on the outside looking in during the NFL’s biggest weekends of the year.
I still have flashbacks of walking across the sprawling acres surrounding Arrowhead Stadium en route to the AFC Championship game in January 2019. Eyeballing thousands of festive/frozen Heartland fans, many barbecuing ribs and blissfully boasting about how they were going to beat the Patriots, I remember thinking, “Poor dopes and losers. These people have no idea what they’re in for. They think they’re Super Bowl-bound, but they don’t stand a chance. Something hideous will happen to their team at the end of this game and the Pats will prevail.’’
Sure enough, that’s how it went. What appeared to be a game-losing Tom Brady interception in the final minute of regulation was negated because Chiefs pass rusher Dee Ford lined up offside. Ford’s transgression had no bearing on the turnover, but it gave the Patriots the ball back. Naturally, Brady tied the game, then won it in overtime when . . . you guessed it . . . the Chiefs lost the coin flip and never touched the football.
That’s how it always was for us.
Not anymore.
The Chiefs went 15-2 this season and have won three of the last five Super Bowls. The 13-4 Bills, a team we laughed at for decades, are featured in this weekend’s “must-watch’’ matchup, a Sunday night special against Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. The long-suffering Lions (one playoff win from 1958-2022) were the top seed in the NFC this year.
In 2025, we are the dopes and losers. The AFC Championship of Brady’s penultimate season with the Patriots turned out to be the last great game of the dynasty. Since winning a ho-hum Super Bowl in Atlanta, 13-3, over the Rams, the Patriots have endured a six-season freefall fueled by ego, greed, hubris, and legacy.
Brady and Bill Belichick are long gone. In their absences, the Krafts have emerged as meddling, overrated owners enlarged through the greatness of their former quarterback and coach. We’ve seen zero playoff wins in six seasons, three head coaches in three seasons, and back-to-back 4-13 campaigns.
Tedy Bruschi, a Patriots Hall of Famer and the most loyal of the loyal, this past week said on ESPN that the Patriots “have been absolutely a mess the last couple years in how they’ve handled things . . . In my opinion, there are some people in the front office that need to be told, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing and you need to take a step back.’ ’’
Once again, Bill Parcells was right. All these years later, Bruschi makes it sound like we’ve got a new iteration of Bob Kraft with his stopwatch, telling us that Tebucky Jones would be a fine “press corner.’’
Mike Vrabel, a Patriots Hall of Famer with six years of head coaching experience and considerable NFL gravitas, this past week was hired to clean things up.
Let him do his job. It’s time for the Patriots to allow football people to run the football operation again.
■ Quiz: 1. Name four players with multiple 1,800-yard rushing seasons; 2. Name five players who rushed for 3,500 or more career yards with the Patriots. (Answers below.)
■ The Tampa Bay Red Sox (who’ve spent less than the Athletics on free agents this winter) did it again Wednesday, acquiring backup catcher Blake Sabol, who’d been designated for assignment by the Giants. Find another allegedly big-market team that’s taken on more released and DFA’d players than your Full Throttle Red Sox.
■ The results of the writers’ ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2025 will be announced Tuesday. Ichiro Suzuki has a shot to be a unanimous selection, a feat only accomplished by Mariano Rivera. CC Sabathia looks like a lock and reliever Billy Wagner, who pitched 15 games for the Red Sox in 2009, is likely to be voted in in his final year on that ballot. Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones will be close. Dave Parker and the late Dick Allen were selected by the Classic Baseball Eras committee last month. Dustin Pedroia, in his first year on the ballot, will be fortunate if he gets 15 percent of the vote but should have enough support to return to the ballot next winter.
■ Beltrán’s Hall status makes for a small bowl of awkward at Citi Field. Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza are the only Hall of Famers wearing Mets caps, and Beltran could become the third. Beltran was named manager of the Mets for 2020, but he was fired before he managed a game because of his involvement in the Astros’ cheating scandal. New owner Steve Cohen welcomed Beltrán back to the front office in 2023.
■ Oft-injured shortstop Trevor Story does the Red Sox no favors when he lobbies hard for them to acquire his pal, Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado. Picking up Arenado would require Rafael Devers to move across the diamond to play first base, and it’s unlikely Devers would be happy.
Story’s enthusiasm for Arenado reminds us of Kevin Millar’s midwinter (2003-04) ESPN interview when he said he’d prefer Alex Rodriguez at short for the Red Sox over Nomar Garciaparra. This made for awkward moments when Garciaparra was still here in the spring of 2004.
■ Get ready for a lot of Eli Manning Hall of Fame debate. Manning is one of 15 finalists when the committee picks five in New Orleans during Super Bowl weekend. On the negative side, Manning was only 117-117 in regular-season play and his career passer rating was 84.1, putting him 66th all time. On the plus side, he was a Super Bowl MVP twice (beating you know who both times) and started 210 consecutive games, mostly for Tom Coughlin.
■ Washington Commanders kicker Zane Gonzalez struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder and his symptoms were on full display as he readied for his winning 37-yard field goal (which doinked off the upright) in Tampa last Sunday. Watching Gonzalez repeatedly play with his hair before donning his helmet no doubt made a lot of fans nervous before the kick. It was like watching Nomar tugging at his batting gloves between pitches.
“It makes you a perfectionist and more detail-oriented,’’ said Gonzalez to ESPN in 2017. “Off the field, it’s a pain in the butt.’’
■ Headline you like to see in the New York Post: “Biggest Losers — Even in offseason, Jets manage to fall to bottom of division with Patriots hiring Vrabel.’’
■ More to love about the 1980s Celtics. A former radio ad guy for the flagship recalled a team event with car dealers and other sponsors during the Larry Bird era and remembered one of the dealers offering a free car to Kevin McHale, who asked, “What percentage of US steel goes into your cars?’’
Bird was among the Celtics who would only drive American. He was also a union guy. In 1983, when NBA officials were on strike, Bird ordered the team bus to find an alternate route into Indianapolis’s Market Square Arena when it was stopped by a zebra picket line.
■ Mega-brands Ohio State and Notre Dame are in the CFP national championship game Monday night. It’s only fair to note that ND’s 24-year-old senior linebacker, Jack Kiser, will be playing his 70th college game. A thousand years ago, quarterback Joe Montana’s Notre Dame career added up to 27 games over three seasons.
The playoff TV viewing record was set when 33.4 million watched Ohio State-Oregon in 2014. The Buckeyes have beaten the Irish six straight times over the last 30 years. Notre Dame’s last national championship came in 1988, when the Irish were coached by Lou Holtz.
■ Texas quarterback Arch Manning, grandson of Archie, nephew to Eli and Peyton, is likely to be the favorite for the 2025 Heisman Trophy. The Longhorns have brought him along slowly. He endured a redshirt season, then backed up Quinn Ewers in 2024 and came off the bench for a five-touchdown performance against Texas El Paso. Manning’s debut as the new starter for Texas will be against Ohio State on Aug. 30 in Columbus.
■ Former Boston College basketball player Rick Kuhn died at the age of 69 in Pennsylvania on Dec. 22. Kuhn was part of the infamous Henry Hill (of “Goodfellas’’ fame) point-shaving scandal that involved BC during the 1978-79 season. Kuhn was sentenced to 10 years for his involvement and served 28 months. Before playing at BC, he was drafted as a righthanded pitcher by the Cincinnati Reds and played two seasons of minor league baseball.
■ The UMass men’s basketball team beat Fordham, 120-118, Wednesday in triple overtime in a game with 79 fouls and nine players fouling out. Rahsool Diggins led the Minutemen with 46 points.
■ RIP Felix Mantilla, who played three seasons for the Red Sox in the early 1960s. Puerto Rican-born Mantilla hit 30 homers in 1964 and was the American League’s starter in the 1965 All-Star Game. The Sox traded him for Eddie Kasko after the ’65 season. Mantilla was 90.
■ RIP Frank DeFelice, legendary high school baseball coach who won 465 games and a state championship in his years at Swampscott. DeFelice died Tuesday at the age of 84.
■ RIP Margaret “Peg’’ Rooney, mother of Southie-born NHL veteran official Chris Rooney, who has worked 1,500 games in the league. Chris Rooney is one of 11 sons of Margaret and the late Frederick M. Rooney. A daughter of Irish immigrants, Mrs. Rooney lived to be 91, and had 30 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
■ Quiz answers: 1. O.J. Simpson (1973, ’75), Eric Dickerson (1983, ’84, ’86), Barry Sanders (1994, ’97), Derrick Henry (2020, ’24); 2. Sam Cunningham, Jim Nance, Tony Collins, Curtis Martin, Kevin Faulk.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.