Why can't three-quarters of our teams get out of their own way?
The Patriots are staggering toward the worst record in football. The Red Sox are entering Year 6 of an endless rebuild. The Bruins have magically turned two All-Star goalies into none.
Everywhere you look, it's dysfunction, and we're excepting the defending champion Celtics from this discussion because they're the one team in town that has its bleep together. And they're for sale. As Gob Bluth might say, "COME ON!"
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This is how Title Town crumbles, not with a spectacular crash, but a series of stumbles. The negative momentum builds until our downfall feels as inevitable as the wonder years that preceded it.
And let's face it, we're long overdue. Thirteen championships since the dawn of the century make us the envy -- and scourge -- of every other fanbase. Maybe this is just karma.
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The Patriots were bound to regress after an unprecedented two-decade run atop the NFL, but it's breathtaking to consider how badly the entire operation has been exposed since Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady took his talents to Tampa.
Bill Belichick coached himself right out of the league and now must endure the weekly degradations of Pat McAfee and his braying donkeys. The Krafts embraced their own infallibility, convinced those six Lombardi trophies owed as much to their inherent greatness as Brady's right arm. They own whatever comes next, and it's not pretty.
Between overcommitting to overmatched head coach Jerod Mayo and assembling the worst talent base in the NFL, they've been reduced to hoping an over-drafted quarterback can save them. Please don't be Zach Wilson, Drake Maye.
At least the Pats rolled the dice on a potential franchise player. The Red Sox have just basically sat out life for the last six years, making the playoffs only once even though the expanded field means more than a third of teams qualify. They herald a .500 season as a step in the right direction while insisting that hope is marinating at Triple-A. Meanwhile, their brand continues to circle the drain like a clump of hair. Might want to fish that out.
Then there are the Bruins. They built what looks like a really good team this summer, with one disastrous exception. Recognizing the impracticality of paying two goalies starting money, they traded former Vezina winner Linus Ullmark to Ottawa. That left restricted free agent Jeremy Swayman, last year's breakout postseason performer, as the starter. No qualms there. It was a sound plan.
Except the B's miscalculated Swayman's reading of the market – namely, that he wants to reset it. So now we're in this ugly tit-for-tat where president Cam Neely sneers that Swayman has 64 million reasons to play and his agent is like, "This is the first I've heard of it, and by the way, go eff yourself," and now the marriage feels headed for divorce.
Even if Swayman signs at the 11th hour, he has already missed training camp and there are hard feelings all around. From the deepest goalie tandem in the league to the shallowest, that's a trick that even David Copperfield said couldn't be done.
And so that leaves us in unfamiliar territory. If Maye can't play, the Patriots won't contend again for at least five years. The Red Sox keep waiting for prospects that might never arrive. If the Bruins really intend to open the season with Joonas Korpisalo between the pipes, they'll get what they deserve.
This isn't how Boston sports are supposed to operate. Where once we handed the baton from one contender to another with the changing of the seasons, now it's rattling around on the track while we point fingers at how we missed our window.