DennyDoyle'sBoil said:
So, two things seem to be emerging. First, this is whiner crybaby stuff from the losers. Second, they played at least half the game with everyone on notice of the complaint.
Fifteen years ago when the Pats won their first BB/Brady title I remember the 2001 AFC Conference Championship. Looking at the write-ups now you'd be reminded how bad Kordell Stewart was that day (3 INT), and how great the Pats were on special teams (blocked FB, Troy Brown punt return TD, Vinatieri's leg), and that Bledsoe saved their bacon with a TD drive after Brady left with an injury.
I couldn't find anything online (at work so didn't really have time to dig), but I do remember the post-game comments from Steelers players following the loss. They were salty post-game with overarching narrative that "the better team didn't win today." That was a popular refrain that season, because of how the Steelers got beat (and surprised) by the Pats.
And this was one week after the AFC Divisional Snow Bowl game against Oakland (tuck rule), and similar stunned PTSD reactions from Raiders players.
How most teams lost to the Pats in 2001 seemed shocking to the losing teams all season long. That first Pats championship under Belichick was improbable at the time and storybook and they had to fight so hard to win their games, and they were always close games, and we as a fanbase were in undiscovered countries and climbing to higher and higher heights we'd never seen. Every game amounted to a staring contest where one team blinked first and lost. Every game was like Joey Knish in Rounders: the Pats were grinders, always in it somehow, always lurking, hanging around until at the end of the day they somehow had the whole pot and the other teams had their "Mike McD losing to Teddy KGB" face.
So of course if you lost and it wasn't readily apparent why, you'd plead "tuck rule." That hasn't changed, only the excuses for losing have (Spygate, "deception," underinflated footballs).
It's easy to see the origin story of the "Cheatriots" because games like this year's victories over the Ravens and Colts are following that same narrative from 15 years ago, only now one who hates the Patriots has seen 15 solid years of "this shit" stacked mile high and can't wrap their minds around their sustained success over that long period of time nor attribute it to anything other than magic or blind luck. And it's recency bias since no other NFL team has seen this run of success. Since 2001, the New England Patriots have gone to the Super Bowl over 40% of the time. Of *course* these same haters discount those same magic/luck elements in years the Pats fail to win or advance such as the Giants losses in the SB's, or earlier exits in the playoffs to IND etc.
And in threads like this and the Ravens and the countless other games where there's scandals and anti-Pat sentiment, the media knows how to tell that story. It's well-oiled, well-fed Mad Lib for the mainstream media after 15 years of cultivation.