New England Patriots Gameday: The power of the solid

“You shouldn’t abuse the power of the solid. Bad things will happen.”

He doesn’t exactly say what it is that would happen if one were to abuse the power of the solid, though the immortal Yeti-like character “Skips” ends up saving his foolish co-workers a violent end – and Mordecai and Rigby live to slack off another day.

The AFC Championship will be played at Gillette Stadium tonight. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

Regular Show is an animated series focused on the lives a blue jay, Mordecai, and his best friend, a raccoon named Rigby – and together they manage to bring a plague of surrealistic catastrophes to the park where they are groundkeepers, putting everyone that works with them in harms way.

So when Mordecai and Rigby keep asking each other for solids, each one more ridiculous than the previous one, it puts the park – and everyone in it – in danger, and it is Skips that ends up saving the day…

The Baltimore Ravens did the New England Patriots a solid last weekend.  In fact, they did every fan in the NFL not rooting for Denver a solid by taking out the over-rated Broncos…

…and while it’s true that the Ravens denied the world another Manning versus Brady showdown for the AFC Title, it is equally true that they saved us from the nauseatingly endless hype that was sure to accompany it.

But one must be careful, because to abuse the power of the solid – to repeatedly ask for favors – causes bad things to happen.

In fact, what the Ravens did last weekend was to find a minute tear in the space-time continuum and rip it wide open, generating a rift that caused the center of the football universe to gravitate from Denver back to Foxboro where it should have been all along – where it was all along, we just needed something to open our eyes to it.

Throughout the season, the football universe watched knowingly as the Houston Texans dominated the AFC and as the Denver Broncos kept right on their heels – The Baltimore Ravens started quickly as well, yet floundered and eventually fell out of the chatter about the top teams in the AFC…

…and then there was the Patriots lurking in the weeds and waiting to ambush those who felt that their slow start was anything other than an aberration.  Denver found out when they came to Foxboro and took a beating just when the Patriots were starting emerge from their early season funk – but it wasn’t until the Houston Texans visited Gillette Stadium in early December did the tear in the continuum begin.

And by the time the Ravens were celebrating on that frigid field in Denver, the football universe was as it should be again, the teams aligned like planets according to their prominence and girth, with those Ravens and the New England Patriots being the farthest from the great vortex that sucks in the unworthy.

So tonight, these two teams meet for the American Football Conference title, battling for a spot in the Super Bowl two weeks from now…and how each of them got here is unimportant, but will make for an interesting story once this season is completed.  For now, all we need be concerned with is that the two best teams in the AFC are meeting with no ambiguity…

…and the solids?  Opponents neither ask for, nor receive favors when battling each other – but at times a team with offer a gift to the other in the form of a football put on the ground or a throw to the wrong hands…but in a game such as this the teams take what they want, because when comes down to the last warriors standing it becomes brute will and strength and is indeed a matter of the survival of the fittest.

The only unfulfilled solid left is the promise that both of these teams made to their fans, the idea of favoring them with an appearance in the Super Bowl – but since only one of them can fulfill their promise to the fans, you can rest assured that tonight neither will be doing the other any solids…

…because if they do, bad things will happen to them – such is the power of the solid.