Couple of ancillary observations/opinions:
1. I hate the Patriots, but if your reason for disliking them is that they have a lot of bandwagon fans, then I don't think that's a very good reason. This type of thing happens literally every time a team begins to win a lot. Living in the Boston area like a lot of us do, you're immersed in it, so it seems worse...but it's really not. The Patriots were a big deal to a lot of people - myself included - before Brady and they will be a big deal afterwards. The people who leave games in the fourth quarter and boo the team at halftime of a tie game are s***y fans in my opinion, but there are a lot of good ones, too.
2. The spygate/deflategate stuff is pretty tough to have an educated fair/opinion on, no matter who you are. Seems to me a lot of conflicting stories/evidence. They got punished very hard for the deflategate thing, so I've pretty much dropped that. With spygate...who the hell knows.
3. Belichick is probably the greatest coach of all-time and Brady might be the best quarterback of all-time. I have no idea what type of person either of them is off the field, but with Belichick, even Patriots fans have to admit the guy is kind of a d*** a lot of the time. I don't like when guys like Popovich get lumped in with Belichick...the better comparison would be somebody like Saban where you wonder if they have the ability to feel joy. Personally, I don't dislike him for it, but I can understand how others do.
Brady...nothing but class off the field, but his on-field demeanor is sort of bratty. And, no fault of his own, but he and Peyton are emblematic of an era of football that's frustrating for defense-first guys like me. They're protected to the extent that you wonder if they're real football players.
Rooting against the Patriots is really fun. They are the perfect villains. Some of that is self-inflicted, a lot of it is a product of circumstance. Wherever you fall, I don't think everything always has to be perfectly pure or perfectly evil. The perception is that the Patriots are cheaters. And, while it's hard to have an objective opinion as a self-described Patriots hater, I like to think they bare responsibility for some of that perception. I feel the same way about UConn. A lot of it, though, is our insistence on portraying everything in black and white when it hardly ever is. Sometimes it's OK to just admit you don't know...and with the Patriots, I don't. Will that stop me from needling the Patriots fans I know in real life? No, but that's what fans do.
4. What I do (think) know is that Russell Wilson is really, really good. He reminds me a lot of what Brady was on those first couple Patriots Super Bowl teams. It's still fair to wonder if he can carry a mediocre defense like Brady/Peyton did for so many years, but I think the guy is unfairly discounted just because of his defense. Also, I question how anybody could define Drew Brees as an elite quarterback but not Wilson/Roethlisberger/Newton/Palmer.
Hopefully some of that makes sense.
