Humanity is Rooting for Josh Gordon
At this point, it almost feels wrong to root for the New England Patriots. Since 1996, the Patriots have appeared in ten Super Bowls and have won six of them. Their quarterback, Tom Brady, is widely considered to be the greatest quarterback to ever play the game of football. And their coach, Bill Belichick, is on equal footing in the pantheon of great coaches. Their teams have won in just about every way imaginable against the highest level of competition professional football can offer. The only entity they have left to beat is time itself and even Father Time grows weary of waiting for their sunset act.
Dynasties are a cyclical component of professional sports. They come and they go. Sometimes they are savagely usurped by an incoming dynasty. Other times dynasties fizzle out and fade away, returning to their mediocrity with nothing other than hardware and memories to show for it. The phenomenon of a perennial doormat transcending into league titan is a rare circumstance. The historical powerhouses always seems to be good and even when they are bad, they aren’t bad for long. Teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers have perfected the cycle of good-bad-restructure-good. Teams like the Browns, Jets, and Bills have shortened the cycle to just bad-restructure. It’s hard to be good, but after so many consecutive years of failure, failure itself becomes a statistical anomaly. It becomes statistically improbable that a team can miss the playoffs yet again. However, we as fans, expect historically bad teams to be bad forever. Not because of what the statistics tell us, but because of what historical precedent has shown us. And most of the time, we’re right.
That’s what made the Patriots so special in the early 2000s. The team was an afterthought, a perpetual loser of a franchise. The times they made the Super Bowl before Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, they were thoroughly stomped. A prompt reminder of where they belonged on professional football’s totem pole. It took a combination of two all-time greats to rewrite the narrative in New England. And if the Patriots win next year’s Super Bowl, they will have the most championships in NFL history.
Rags-to-riches tales are the feel-good stories that inspire us and ultimately, drive our capitalistic system. We watch these stories unfold and express a sentiment of “Good for him” because we see ourselves in these stories. We want to be the next underdog to overcome the odds en route to wild success. It’s in our blood as Americans. Yet, there becomes this strange moment where a celebrated underdog becomes the favorite. The odds are suddenly in their favor. They start to win too much. Then we slowly turn on the former longshot.
First, it’s just indifference. We stop rooting for them and their success no longer resonates emotionally within us. As they continue to succeed, in spite of our apathy, the indifference transforms into disdain. Perhaps, some of that derives from envy. No one (besides the shareholders) gets excited to see Jeff Bezos make more money. “Give it a rest, you’ve already made your millions,” is what we, the working class, internally scream. In the same way, no one outside of Boston wanted to see the Patriots win their 4th, 5th, or 6th Super Bowl. It was someone else’s turn and New England had refused to cede the spotlight.
After a certain level of sustained success, the favorite becomes the system. Just as we root for the little guy to beat the system, we hate when the system wins. A victory for the system, is a victory for the status quo and the prevailing odds. Fate is already stacked against us on our journey to fulfill our own success story. We don’t need that reminder.
The Patriots went from beloved NFL underdogs to notorious villains. Gillette Stadium has become an annual graveyard where aspiring Cinderella’s are tersely put to rest come January. The “Patriots Way” has become a system in of itself, establishing a code of protocol that has piloted success on the football field. No one outside of New England has rooted for the Patriots in half a decade. The greater sports world groaned when Seattle blew it, they collectively gasped when the Falcons choked, and they snored as the Rams spluttered in 13-3 loss. Death, taxes, and another Super Bowl appearance by the New England Patriots. Indeed, the sun never seems to set on New England’s empire. America’s team is no longer the Cowboys, it’s whoever is playing New England.
The fall of New England’s dynasty is coming and it will likely be sooner than it is later. In the end, Father Time always wins. Tom Brady is playing on borrowed time and Bill Belichick has grown long in the tooth. But before the football equivalent of the Roman Empire collapses, I hope the Patriots win one more Super Bowl. Not for Tom Brady, not for Bill Belichick. And not for Robert Kraft or Julian Edelman either. I want them to win one for Josh Gordon.
Gordon is one of the newer acquisitions by a dynasty known as much for its rotating cast of characters as it is winning. But Gordon was different. After missing nearly three complete seasons, Cleveland’s patience with the talented wide receiver had evaporated. He had missed the entire 2015 and 2016 season after multiple violations of the NFL’s substance abuse policy. The wide receiver was then reinstated on a conditional basis at the end of the 2017 season. However, after one game in 2018, the frustrated Cleveland Browns traded the former Pro Bowler to New England for a fifth round pick. Gordon had recently hurt himself during a photoshoot for his clothing line and the Browns organization believed the player was once again having trouble staying sober. New England took a chance on talent, believing their rigid organizational discipline could be the antidote to Gordon’s struggles.
Gordon once again flashed the talent he had displayed in 2013. He was an immediate impact player and a deep threat for the Tom Brady-led offense. Eleven games into what was shaping up to be a very productive season, Josh Gordon stepped away from football. He explained that his decision was to focus on his mental health. The NFL later revealed that Gordon had, once again, violated the league’s drug policy. In a rare organizational move, the Patriots stuck by Gordon and chose not to release him. They have cut and traded fan favorites from the team for less. In August, the NFL granted Gordon a conditional reinstatement to the league and eligible to play in Week 1 of the 2019 season.
In a country plagued by a mental health epidemic that has permeated every level of society, we see these demons manifest themselves through Josh Gordon in an all too familiar way. The substance abuse crisis is a direct result of the deterioration of mental health in the United States. Whether the outbreak was maliciously designed by nefarious pharmaceutical executives or fueled by irresponsible healthcare practitioners, the dilemma is no closer to being fixed. Meanwhile, millions of victims suffer a lonely, self-destructive path in silence. Josh Gordon can’t fix the enormous issues burdening our healthcare system, but he can inspire those victims that have lost all hope. A Super Bowl win would cap Gordon’s comeback from rock bottom to the pinnacle of modern sports glory. The wide receiver would become the poster child for victory over the behemoth that is substance abuse, because the scariest monsters are the ones lurking inside your own head.
In reality, Josh Gordon doesn’t have to win the Super Bowl to be an inspiration. If he were to finish out his football career without any more substance abuse violations that would be a triumph in and of itself. But the fact of the matter is: Storylines in sports matter and storylines always follow the winners. There are people that need to hear Josh’s story and they might never get that opportunity unless the Patriots have another deep run in the playoffs with Gordon playing a crucial role.
So, in a twist of irony, the cold-hearted system has another chance to assume the underdog identity, vicariously, through one of its own. Josh Gordon might be one the biggest longshots in professional sports. He has not played a complete season since his rookie season in 2012 because of his struggles off the field with substance abuse. But, he has another chance to rewrite his narrative and symbolize a fight that has captivated America. Humanity is rooting for Josh Gordon to overcome the odds. If that means rooting for the New England Patriots, then so be it. Because for just this one time, it’s for the right reasons.
