Results tagged “patriots”

Let's face it. That was uglier than Minnesota's starting power forward. But if the Celtics are going to make a run at 70+ wins this season (and while PTI and the Globe and others are speculating about the possibility, we say, let's can that talk and let things unfold), they have to win games like last night. Trap games, against young athletic teams, on the second night of back-to-backs. And somehow, finally, the Celtics did.

When we last saw the Chicago Bulls, it was after the Celtics survived a seven-game street fight of a playoff series. Last night, the Bulls tapped out in about seven minutes. Perhaps that's an exaggeration on the part of Bostonist but the Celtics thoroughly outclassed the team, 118-90.

Before ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons became one of these most popular sports columnist in the country he was simply known as “The Boston Sports Guy” writing for Digital City Boston (what Bill has described as “AOL’s digital newspaper”). More than a decade later, the Holy Cross/Boston University alum has ventured beyond the sports column and into television; as a former writer for "Jimmy Kimmel Live", documentaries; as executive producer of ESPN’s 30 For 30 series and books; his latest The Book of Basketball just hit shelves this week.

It's hard not to experience a letdown after a 59-0 thrashing like the one the Pats put on Tennessee last night. The schedule makers, though, were kind enough to put another winless patsy in the Patriots' path, and the boys responded, delighting Londoners (well, we like to think so, anyway) with a 35-7 mauling of the Buccaneers.

But that's kind of a big deal, since it matches their season high. The "team goes up...team goes down" Bruins survived a tough beginning to come back and win in a shootout in Ottawa last night, 4-3.

"It’s the only team that has the word ‘England’ in it," joked Alastair Kirkwood, the managing director of NFL UK. Ah, so that's why the Patriots had to spend last night flying across the Atlantic to get ready for Sunday's game against the Bucs in London.

The Patriots made a lot of roster moves yesterday. A LOT. To the point where we wonder if (a) Bill Belichick wasn't happy with the 59-0 win on Sunday, or (b) they were worried about jettisoning some extra weight for the team flight to London this week. Officially gone are TE Michael Matthews and WR Joey Galloway, who was handed his walking papers and promptly dropped them. Not gone long enough to be forgotten were linebackers Eric Alexander and Tully Banta-Cain, who were released and then promptly resigned, possibly for paperwork reasons. "There’s a lot of different procedures and rules, and I don’t even know if I understand them all," said Belichick, who's a lot more concerned right now with puffing up the 0-6 Buccaneers in his players' minds to make them think the Bucs are the second coming of the '66 Packers.

Imagine our surprise yesterday to discover that we had a chance to snag ourselves some playoff tickets. And we're not talking just any old playoff tickets. Other people can go and buy themselves Yankees-Angels tickets or Dodgers-Phillies tickets. We had a chance to visit StubHub and get ourselves Red Sox playoff tickets, according to the emails that found their way into our inbox. We could even snag ourselves METS playoff tickets!

Some time this winter, you'll no doubt read about a storm that dumps an inch of snow on some Southern locale and sends the entire town to hell in a handbasket. It happens every year; when you don't see it much, you don't know what to do with it, and it's good night, Charlotte. Or Little Rock. Or Nashville.

Technically, the Patriots aren't playing the Tennessee Titans today. In honor of the 50th season of the old AFL teams, the Titans are dubbing themselves the Houston Oilers today in Foxboro. But whatever they call themselves, they're a good (or so we thought) team that's somehow 0-5, and the Patriots are a good (or so we thought) team that's 3-2 and hasn't really looked like itself. Something's got to give.

Manny vs. Pedro. Two guys we loved while they were here (well, maybe not the last month or two or eighteen of Manny, your mileage may vary), who helped us out a lot in 2004, and stuck around long enough to pose for some goofy pictures.

Nobody can say anything official, but everyone in Foxboro is unofficially saying that Junior Seau, who never strayed far from the phone, will be back with the Patriots sometime soon. Maybe. The amount of information runs from Seau's optimistic "I want to thank the management of both for making my return to the NFL with the New England Patriots a reality", to Bob Kraft's gushing "I’d love to have him part of our team for as long as he wants to be", to Bill Belichick's terse "we don’t have anything to say about it."

How considerate of the Boston Bruins. After the Red Sox and Patriots choked fell to the Angels and Broncos, respectively, on Sunday, Boston's boys of hockey decided to show solidarity and keep the losing ways going on Monday. A sloppy early afternoon game at the Garden ended with a happy Colorado Avalanche leaving with a 4-3 victory and the Bruins wrapping up a homestand with a 2-3 record.

It was a relatively quiet send-off for the Red Sox on Monday. Without the pageantry of Rally Monday, an event that MLB had been adding to post-season revelry since 2004, the Red Sox made their way from Fenway onto the team bus that sent them on their way to California for what is hopefully the first stop on a postseason tour that has grown awfully familiar over the years.

In some ways, the game was as ugly as the pink accents all over everything (yeah, we know, good cause and blah blah blah and all, but in the words of MAD Magazine, bleccch). In other ways, it was one of those tight, efficient Patriots game that may not be aesthetically pleasing but get the job done. In any case, it's a win, a grinder of a 27-21 over the previously undefeated Ravens.

Last time the Bruins saw the Carolina Hurricanes, Scott Walker beat Tim Thomas in OT to put an abrupt end to the magical 2008-09 season. Last night, they got together again, and the Bruins beat them on the scoreboard, in the face, and up and down the ice in a 7-2 pummeling that almostsortakinda erased the pain of last season, or at least redirected it onto their foes.

Your 2009 Boston Red Sox clearly don't like to make anything easy. They hit losing skids, slugging droughts and pitching woes. They load the bases before settling in to retire the batters. They fall into deficits before they creep back to make the game thrilling.

Someday, we're going to know what exactly we're supposed to expect out of the 2009 New England Patriots.

Boston and Los Angeles don't have much in common. We have miserable winters, they have palm trees. We have Ben Affleck, they have everybody else. They have Rodney King, we have Skip Gates. It's a different world.

We're officially done agonizing over Monday's collapse and Tuesday's shutdown. The Sox handled the Royals exactly the way a playoff-bound squad should handle a team of no-hopers, riding the cold-weakened arm of Clay Buchholz and the efficient offense to a 10-3 series finale in K.C.

It took a while, but after two straight losses, the Red Sox finally figured out how to beat those plucky KC Royals, and got themselves a much-needed 9-2 win last night.

The Red Sox are competitive with the Yankees head-to-head. They don't have a lot of trouble with the Angels. And both of those teams are headed for October. So why can't the Sox do anything against the going-nowhere KC Royals?

If you skipped over NESN on Monday night, confident in the outcome of a Red Sox-Royals matchup in Kansas City, you weren't alone. Many people surely thought that it was going to be relatively easy for Tim Wakefield to get back on track with a return to the mound in Missouri. Why not catch a few winks and rest up as best as possible for the Yankees series this weekend?

It might have been even worse if Kerry Rhodes had played (wait, he did?). Anyway, the Patriots did a fine job of embarrassing themselves yesterday in New Jersey, playing a listless and mistake-prone game and coming out of it the proud and deserving owners of a 16-9 loss to the Jets.

The magic number is twelve. That's all that really matters, when you think about it; true, the Red Sox failed to complete the sweep of the Southern California Regional Angels of Los Angeles, and true, Billy "Country Time" Wagner suffered his first Boston loss. But these things happen.

As if Rex Ryan hadn't done enough to fan the "flames" of the Jets/Patriots "rivalry", now we have Jets "safety" Kerry Rhodes unwisely sent in front of a microphone in anticipation of Sunday's game.

Paul Byrd comes back from a year on the shelf and throws a gem. Tim Wakefield comes back from the DL and gets a W. And now Daisuke Matsuzaka comes back from three months away and beats the Angels. Clearly, some of these guys need weeks and weeks off between starts. Let's seriously look into the 75-man rotation next year.

Our QB's back, now there's gonna be trouble. Hey now, hey now, Tom Brady's back...

After 2008, it seems odd to say that a September double-header against the Rays seemed anti-climatic, but there you go. We said it. The Red Sox took two games from the fading Tampa Bay team in a fashion that could only be described as "inevitable." The wins brought the Sox' record against AL East teams to 42-21, the best in baseball against a team's home division.