Seriously, fuck Dan Shaughessy. I'm sick of defending him.
There is no doubt in my mind CHB doesn't believe what he just wrote. He's not an idiot, and only an idiot would use the prior matchup as a rubric for what to expect this weekend. A series of fluke events that made the matchup blowout-friendly for the Pats in the first quarter doesn't invalidate all the possible ways things could play out favorably for the Texans on Sunday. There are only three reasons for writing this:
1) Get a reaction from the Texans. He made the conscious choice to use such strong language, no doubt he wanted to be intentionally inflammatory. Misson accomplished. Even if you don't believe in "bulletin board material" and stuff of that ilk, there is a chance that inflammation causes the Pats job to be incrementally harder, even if it's just by one tenth of a percent I don't like it. Fuck him.
2) Position his next column. It's utterly predictable. If the Pats lose - Brady is old, BB is old, Pats are no longer elite and are regular season paper tigers. If the Pats win big - ho hum, it's what we expected, and isn't Brady FAN-tastic? If the Pats win small - The Texans surprised EVERYONE by being competitive gamers. Fuck him.
3) Here, sadly, is the real reason: he thinks this is what the general fanbase thinks and wants to hear. CHB, at his worst, always seems like he wants to operate as a mouthpiece for the BDD/pink hat segments of Boston fans rather than a producer of original opinion and analysis[sup]1[/sup]. While it's great to connect with your readers in a "he writes what I wish I could say" kind of way (see Simmons, Bill, circa 2001), it has to happen organically and with some sense of honestly-held opinions. Fuck him.
I've posted before that I've had positive interactions in real life with Dan and have stuck up for him, at least on a personal-attack level. But...goddammit. Growing up, until I got a close look at the inner workings of journalism, all I wanted to be was a sports columnis[sup]2[/sup]. I can't take it anymore. I was halfway off with the horrific Rex/Bill column from 2010 (still the single worst piece of writing I've ever seen published in a major newspaper that wasn't a reader submission from Ask Abby), and I'm all the way off now. Both articles, for different reasons, are a complete perversion of what being a columnist is supposed to be.
I'm done, Dan. I tried for years and years. You're Mariotti to me.
[sup]1[/sup]Which is probably why I thought CHB was a good columnist when I was growing up in the 90s - I was dumb.
[sup]2[/sup]This is post-1991. Until then, I wanted to be a park ranger and live by myself in a treehouse in the woods.