When it comes to the New England Patriots, you can always count on two things:
1. The team will be very good.
2. The fans will whine.
The “very good,” you know: five Super Bowl rings, the greatest comeback in NFL history, odds-on favorite to win it all again this year. The whine, though: that’s where it gets fun. Patriots fans somehow manage to combine arrogance and victimization into a chowder noxious to anyone outside of the Greater Boston region. They’ve somehow managed to channel all their rage at being called cheaters (over and over again), their frustration at seeing their glorious quarterbacking god suspended for four games (to be fair, they have a point there), their seething fury at Eli Manning’s (and, by association, New York’s) effortless ability to dismantle them, and their understanding that they’ll never be as cool as Cowboys fans or scary as Raiders fans into white-hot fury aimed at one single target: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.