Eric Dickerson Still Believes the Patriots Cheated the Rams Out of a Super Bowl

“I’ll say this to all the Boston fans, as I watch them on social media: We want a rematch in L.A. We want them back again, because they cheated us. They know they cheated us back in New Orleans. They watched our film. We want some more of them.” – Eric Dickerson on Undisputed

Sigh. Really? Do I honestly have to go through this again?

OK, everybody. Looks like we have to go over the material one more time because obviously Eric Dickerson didn’t do the reading. So close your laptops and repeat after me: “The Patriots did not cheat to beat the Rams.” Let’s hear it. … Louder now. … OK, once more with feeling.

In spite of what Eric Dickerson says, they didn’t watch the Rams film. Though that’s a new twist I haven’t heard before. In spite of what John Tomase and his editors at the Herald posted on the front page the day before the Super Bowl in 2008, they did not tape the Rams walk-through. Do you know how we can be sure? John Tomase and the Herald said there was no tape. They printed a retraction months later. The NFL said, and continues to say, there was no tape. They say these things because … wait for it … there fucking was no fucking tape of the fucking Rams. C’mon, people. We’ve been over this.

The Patriots won because they were better prepared. Because they watched the legit coaches tape every team gets and realized the key to stopping their offense wasn’t going after Kurt Warner, it was physically punishing Dickerson’s fellow conspiracy theorist Marshall Faulk. Because Mike Vrabel put his hand on the ground for the first time all game, which messed up the Rams blocking assignments and he was left uncovered to get in Warner’s face to throw a Pick-6 to Ty Law. And because when it was tied and the world was expecting the Patriots to take a knee and play for overtime, they let a second year quarterback try to win it while their former franchise quarterback told him, “Fuck it. Get out there and sling it.” And he did. That’s why they have a ring that the Rams don’t.

I’ve been told Tomase rips me on the air on WEEI for being too much of a Patriots homer. Geez, I can’t imagine why. Maybe 10-plus years of trying to fight the fire he started with that out-and-out lie has made it necessary. Maybe listening to players, coaches, executives, media outlets and social media ignoramuses sit on the Throne of Lies he built and use the falsehoods to discredit everything the most successful team in sports has accomplished gives me no choice.

The Tomases, the Eric Dickersons, the Faulks, the ESPNs and a thousand others did this to me. They made me the grim, brooding, loner vigilante I am. I wouldn’t have to spend my nights in a mental cape and cowl defending this metaphorical Gotham if these supervillains would just stand down. But they never do. Their crippling Patriots Derangement Syndrome has blinded them to the point they can’t tell fact from fiction, and it’s driven them insane. And I’m left with no choice but to fight against it. And hope truth eventually wins out.

I was ready to pull for New Orleans Sunday, just to set up a dream matchup of two franchises that have been forcibly buggered by the NFL. A Roger Goodell Hate Bowl would be world-changing. But part of me now wants the Rams to win, just so the Patriots can crush Eric Dickerson’s soul all over again.

18 years later and they’re #StillHere.