Sports Redux: More Than A Game Is Lost, Or Is It?

So the Patriots' first move of the offseason - whenever that begins - should be to sign Bernard Pollard. Sign him, and then immediately send him on a fact-finding mission to Micronesia or wherever the Red Sox stashed Julio Lugo. Because having Bernard Pollard in the building is bad news.

Pollard, of course, is the guy that knocked Tom Brady out of 2008. And although he wasn't directly involved in Wes Welker's bad landing yesterday, he was right there, and we're too upset not to point fingers. So move over, Laimbeer and Samuelsson. There's a new villain in town.

So what now? The Patriots knew for most of the day that the Ravens would be their first round foe; the only question would be whether the Pats were the 4 seed (which could mean a date with Indy in the second round) or the 3 seed (which only would have happened if the Bengals had Colted the place up last night and rolled out a red carpet for the Jets to stroll into the playoffs). They're the 3 seed. The Ravens came to Foxboro earlier this year, and (according to the Ravens) would have won if not for the conspiracy between the refs, the league office, the Illuminati and the Alpha Centaurans, which is actually their standard reaction to a loss. Can the Pats win without Wes? Why not? This is a team that lost their All-World QB and almost made the playoffs last year. This is a team that spent the season rolling out Julian Edelman, who looked so Welkerian in his rookie season that we spent weeks scrambling to see if the two were ever in the same camera shot (they finally were). And the playoffs feature a bunch of teams that are about to relearn the old lesson that football teams can't turn momentum on and off anyway. And this was kind of a transitional year anyway. So why are we still devastated?

We'll leave you with what Benjamin Watson told Peter King, which basically sums it all up: ""The sad part isn't so much the pain of the injury. It's the pain for Wes, if he's not able to play, of not being able to do the thing he loves to do in the playoffs. He's such a great competitor and valuable guy on the team." For more reading, BSMW has all the links.