The biggest bummer about the Patriots losing is no weird cartoon from Tom Brady

The Patriots lost to Jay Cutler and the Dolphins Monday, and it’s all my fault. If you’re a Pats fan, I’m sorry, and if you’re a Dolphins fan, you’re begrudgingly welcome. I guess.

Here’s what happened: I jinxed New England. I was so sure they’d beat the Dolphins, so sure we’d be graced with another edition of the TB Times (the fake newspaper Tom Brady posts to his social networks when the team wins), and so sure I’d get the pleasure of analyzing it and going down yet another weird-ass cartoon rabbit hole, that I totally blew the whole thing.

Here’s proof, in Slack messages between me and my editor Nate Scott Monday evening:

So last night, in the throes of embarrassment that hits Patriots fans when Bill Belichick and Brady lose — and in a desperate attempt to stave off the nagging fear that Brady isn’t immortal and is failing in his mission to become an ageless football robot powered by turmeric shots and lentils serums — I drew my own TB Times.

I know, I know, it’s in black and white, unlike the colorful pictures the elusive artist who simply goes by “D.K.” makes each week. But I couldn’t find my markers, and it was late, and I was very emotional.

I also drew this alternate cover, because at halftime we had to watch frosted-tipped chef (can you even call him a chef?) Guy Fieri feed commentator Jon Gruden sandwiches (“Gruden Grinders”) for some reason:

I later added Croc, the ever-present crocodile from the cartoons, because I forgot to put him in the picture. In my haste to draw him, he ended up looking more like a salamander here. Fun fact I just learned, thanks to Google: salamanders are amphibians, while crocodiles are reptiles. Something new every day, folks, amiright?

I tried to imagine what it’s like to be an artist in the land of Brady’s electric, all-natural-version-of-Kool-Aid acid test as I drew these pictures. I bet when you descend into the Social Media Lair that I’m now fairly convinced exists underneath a TB12 workout facility in Waltham, Mass., or something, they greet you with a lemongrass-cayenne smoothie and a quick dermabrasion session. Then a screen behind reception shows you pictures of wet noodles that will inspire your muscles to be more pliable before you begin your electrolyte infusions.

I have to say — and maybe TB12 therefore deserves some credit — since I started following the TB Times case as a Private Investigator of Sports, I do feel like I’ve been taken to new creative and sometimes unsettling places. In the words of Kanye West, “Name one genius that ain’t crazy.”

Now, I’m not calling myself a genius. If anything, finding yourself Googling Bill Hader’s entire acting career and trying to match it up with images from a cartoon posted to a qaurterback’s Instagram is a surefire way to know you’re the opposite. All I’m saying is that when you’ve devoted most of your brain space to figuring out what a football player’s social media means, and when that social media often looks like it was inspired by Fear and Loathing Las Vegas, and you stare at it for hours, and even dream about it sometimes, it can make you feel, well, a little nuts.

“We can’t stop here, Tom, this is bat country!” I might’ve cried at my television last night as Brady threw another interception.

Here’s a picture of me in a corner of my apartment trying to crack the case:

If I’d been thinking straight at 1 a.m. last night when I was furiously scribbling weird pictures of football players, I would’ve drawn an actual version of what I thought the TB Times would look like had the Pats won. Because I’m willing to be we’d have gotten a reprise of the South Beach Spinners who appeared last time when the Patriots beat the Dolphins.

#tbtimes
A post shared by Tom Brady (@tombrady) on Nov 26, 2017 at 1:16pm PST

I so badly want to know what it all means. I’m consumed by this. Doug Kyed, a Patriots reporter who’s been helping me out in this investigation (he asked Brady what the hell was going on last week at a press conference), has a theory based on the Dolphins’ stadium architecture.

Doug, buddy, get some sleep.

As Belichick would say, It’s on to Pittsburgh. We can’t dwell on this loss of a game or loss of what I’m sure was spectacular content. Please know, however, that if the Patriots lose again next week and we’re robbed of another TB Times for the second game in a row, I will be apoplectic. You think the drawings are weird this week? Wait ‘til they’re covered in tear stains and have LACES OUT, DAN!!!! written all over them in crayon.

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