Beer and football X — weeks sixteen and seventeen; playoffs, week one

Week sixteen
The game: Bills at Patriots
The beer: Maine Fall Coffee Stout
The result: Win, 24–17

---

Week seventeen
The game: Dolphins at Patriots
The beer: Newburyport Overboard India Pale Ale
The result: Loss, 27–24

---

Playoffs, week one
The game: Titans at Patriots
The beer: Great Marsh London Brown Porter
The result: Fuuuuuuck

---

The commentary: Four games to glory? Not so much. But this was never the plan anyway. This was never the plan.

Losing to the Dolphins was bad enough and even worse after an encouraging, season-best win against the Bills a week earlier. Who says you can't enjoy a "Fall" beer on the first day of Winter? In retrospect, we as fans (and media) saw what we wanted and forgot that twenty-four points represented, at best, an above-average offensive effort in this league. That they lost the next game (and the second seed) a week later with the same output underscores its fine-ness.

Rewind. "The season is an unsettling one, not quite in the 2009 category (first-round blowout loss to the Ravens) but similar to 2010 (divisional-round stunner against the Jets)." Surely it was somewhere in between—not unforeseen, but brutal still.

"Can they win a playoff game? If the defense plays well and gives up, say, seventeen points, is the offense capable of scoring eighteen?" Nope!

"Assuming the team wins out and locks in the second seed–" Your services are no longer required.

A general recap plays out this way: the offense and defense beat the Bills, the defense lost to the Dolphins and the offense lost to the Titans. All season it was a model of inconsistency and failure to overcome weakness, in this case (mainly) an ineffective offensive arsenal beginning and ending with Brady (incapable of carrying mediocre players à la 2006) and a banged-up Edelman. The defense did its part but the offense wasn't given the chance, mainly because of Belichick's decision to surround Brady with no talent whatsoever. This was not a season plagued by injuries like the (goddamn) Eagles or bad turnovers like the (goddamn) Buccaneers—it was plagued instead by arrogance and incompetence, to which Belichick basically admitted with two in-season acquisitions. Antonio Brown was the ultimate panic move, a signing that went against everything we came to expect from Robert Kraft before he was caught paying for suburban-strip-mall handjobs. And a second-round pick for Mohamed Sanu (Sr.)? Sure, I'm one ⌘-Tab away from Googling his phone number to arrange our brewery tour, but can he qualify for last month's list of second-round busts? "Ain't never met nothin' like us." You are way off.

And the defense? And the defense! Actually, the defense was pretty goddamn good for once. Sure, a lot of them won't be back next year but… uh… at least we can't squander a second-rounder trying to replicate Van Noy's production with an injury-prone stiff who misses the preseason, never catches up and is traded to the Seahawks for a conditional seventh-rounder in late August 2022. "Defense wins championships," my ass.

One notable free agent has likely been Biff! Bang! Kapowed! more than anyone. Rather than break down the all twenty-two and examine safety (sāf·tē: "denoting something designed to prevent injury or damage") Devin McCourty's postseason performance, I offer everything I've written about his play over the years and leave it to my reader (!) to infer whether I am for or against resigning him. Enjoy the progression from Pro Bowl beginnings:

November 23, 2010
"The Bears are total frauds who will be exposed by the Eagles this weekend and death-killed by McCourty and Chung (plus maybe some more Sanders and a little reckless Meriweather) making crazy athletic interceptions and tackles all over the field."

November 29, 2010
"McCourty would be a lock for Rookie of the Year if it weren't for Suh, but timing is everything and them's the breaks."

January 27, 2011
"The quarterback just had the second-best season of his career (maybe the best, if you consider the talent differential from 2007), some defensive building blocks are in place with Vince Wilfork, Devin McCourty and Jerod Mayo (who still needs to emerge as a consistent playmaker) and the young guys learned the hard way that it's not all kittens and pancakes—hopefully they'll want to know what it feels like to win a playoff game."

February 8, 2011
"Count me among the people disappointed—at the time—with last year's McCourty draft pick. Not because I thought he was a lousy player—I don't follow college football in any capacity—but because the first thing the 'experts' on the NFL Network said about him was that he was a strong special-teams player."

September 17, 2011
"McCourty looked like Ellis Hobbs, in position to make too many tackles (which means too many catches allowed)."

September 27, 2011
"The 'new' pass rush stinks, but when the ball is thrown two seconds after the snap and Devin McCourty (what in the worldwide fuck is going on with him?) and Leigh Bodden are being dusted and racking up tackle stats then there is an inherent problem with the secondary."

October 9, 2011
"Devin McCourty has secretly switched places with his inferior twin brother Jason from the Titans."

October 28, 2011
"Almost as epic as Mike Wallace's undressing of Devin McCourty on Sunday."

December 8, 2011
"This wasn't a slam on [Brady's] offense not keeping up—it's a sign that his might just murder McCourty and friends by the time the playoffs roll around."

January 4, 2012
"Then, because Belichick's draft résumé from 2006 to the present is more luke-warm water (McCourty, Mayo, Maroney) than fire (Gronkowski, Hernandez, Mankins) with way too much ice (Meriweather, Darius Butler, Chad Jackson), no hotshots with limitless potential are in place to come in off the bench."

January 14, 2012
"The Pats go big on the defensive line to try to stop the run, entrust Ninkovich to escort Tebow wherever he goes and ensure that no passes are thrown behind Chung and (probably starting at safety again) McCourty."

January 21, 2012
"Any or all of McCourty, Arrington and Ihedigbo will still find ways to look foolish."

February 2, 2012
"Slumbrew Porter Square Porter [=] Devin McCourty. High expectations, but among the more disappointing beer- or football-related things all season."

March 12, 2012
"Two or three rookies who can start immediately, McCourty getting at least halfway to year one's production, Wilfork continuing to do what he does on slightly fewer snaps… suddenly you're a top-fifteen defense."

September 12, 2012
"Our McCourty—assuming Devin and Jason didn't switch places before last season so Jason could get a fat new contract—absolutely got away with pass interference on what might have been a first-quarter touchdown but I'm not sure the receiver could have caught it even if McCourty weren't assaulting him while looking in the complete opposite direction of the ball."

September 30, 2012
"Joeflacco had all the time he needed to scan the field and find his man—his man being Devin McCourty, who just isn't an NFL cornerback at this point."

November 2, 2012
"McCourty won Special Teams Player of the Week for: A) Returning a kickoff one hundred four yards for a touchdown with fifty-one and a half minutes remaining in regulation; B) Fumbling a kickoff with two minutes remaining in regulation; C) Threatening to Doublemint the wife of the guy who chooses the Special Teams Player of the Week."

February 1, 2013
"McCourty is locked in at safety. The rest of the secondary, in all its base, nickel and dime packages, is up for grabs as far as I'm concerned."

September 12, 2013
"Is it me or was this the week of the safety? I mean the two-point play, not the defensive position—I didn't hear McCourty's name all game."

January 17, 2015
"McCourty's volleyball spike (though Gronk was initially credited) sealed it."

October 1, 2015
"This game's fumble/incompletion mix-up looked like a fumble to me, even as multi-million-dollar safety Devin McCourty jogged right by the ball without worry of falling on it."

November 23, 2015
"Meanwhile, McCourty and Harmon are perfecting the bad angle in the presence, and continued mastery, of Professor Brandon Meriweather."

December 4, 2015
"It's a wonder how much Pro Bowl talk McCourty gets during national broadcasts from people who don't have to watch him every week."

September 21, 2016
"Miami's comeback is entirely because of a defense that earned their degrees from the Devin McCourty School of Exposure."

November 20, 2016
"…a bewilderingly expensive, middle-of-the-road safety in need of more ['Free Safety Advice'] instructional videos (Devin McCourty)…"

December 24, 2016
"Only toward the end when Devin McCourty made his first above-average play of the season and TJ Ward lost his mind by flexing a post-suplex exclamation point was I confident."

January 20, 2017
"Are Malcolm Butler, Devin McCourty and Logan Ryan (coming off a career game that he cannot match against not-Osweiler) on their way to holding [Antonio] Brown under a hundred yards?"

April 23, 2017
"I still want [Malcolm Butler] on the team this year and beyond—he was all in during Devin McCourty's hype speech before kickoff and those are the kinds of 'dependable' players Belichick wants around."

January 28, 2018
"The Pats could be down ten, fourteen, twenty-five points in the fourth quarter… Gronkowski pacing in street clothes on the sideline… McCourty perfecting bad angles against Alshon Jeffery… but you keep watching because it's Tom Fucking Brady out there."

June 17, 2018
"I was never comfortable, even after Gronk's go-ahead touchdown, thanks to eight years of Devin McCourty bouncing off tight ends."

September 8, 2018
"Don't let her enthusiasm to ride 'Again! Again!' fool you because she was scared out of her mind the whole time. Just like… me! Whenever McCourty (Times Two) & Friends are defending against third and long. Good grief."

October 20, 2019
"Devin McCourty, whose current edition of 'Free Free Safety Advice' instructs viewers to 'Just stand there and they'll throw it right to you,' gave my man Brandin Cooks some postgame love as the confetti fell."

December 21, 2019
"I would give up all five Devin McCourty interceptions if he could just make one contested tackle in a big spot. One."

Wouldn't you know it, yesterday I finished George Saunders's newly chronicled Lincoln in the Bardo, a much quicker read than its three hundred forty pages suggest due to the generous line-spacing of a script-like format. Halfway through the book (four stars out of five), single-page chapter fifty-four—stylized, like next month's Super Bowl, as "LIV"—consists entirely of the following exchange:

Had we—had we done it?
HANS VOLLMAN

It seemed that perhaps we had.
ROGER BEVINS III

Had the Pats advanced and repeated as champions—the improbable achieved—I would have written six thousand words about this "coincidence," complete with infringing Fox screenshots and in-game correlations to every character in the book. Can't you see it?

I run through a m___________'s face.
Offense, defense, special teams, whatever you want.
ELANDON ROBERTS (EDDIE BARRON)

Drag. In its place, what of the nonfiction matchup? The Niners knocked off the Vikings tonight while G. fed goats at a friend's farm and A. and I sipped dark beer at one of the dozens of area breweries, so Jimmy G. dreams tonight of winning three of five Super Bowls (in four appearances) like Brady has since the 2014 draft. They seem like the NFC team to beat, but something about the Seahawks intrigues me—can they take out the Packers tomorrow? "Aaron Rodgers was on Letterman last night and admitted he didn't have much faith in his team's kick-coverage unit. That's exactly the kind of maturity you want in your Super Bowl MVP. On a related note, head coach Mike McCarthy will be out of a job in five or six years." (I was off by two years. Good luck, Dak.)

In the AFC, the Ravens (down eight to the Titans as I write this) are It, featuring a generational quarterback and forecasting a presumed dynasty. Hmm. The Chiefs, though? No one is talking about the Chiefs. Not even me! Yet here I am, predicting them to beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, say 35–30. The Saunders excerpt above, therefore, is my February 2 gift to the lucky Kansas City resident who maintains, I don't know, "myhomes-yourhomes-mahomes.blogspot.com" for no one but himself. Your city is wonderful and you're welcome.

Up next: G., Papa and I return to training camp and restore order to the dynasty… so long as Tom Brady is also in attendance. Happy new year!