The Darkness Descends

This is the worst.

It's late January in Boston. The guilty pleasures of global warming have been beaten back by the biting cold of the all-too-familiar New England winter. The Patriots are finished. The Red Sox are months away from playing. The Celtics and Bruins are afterthoughts. And the only DI basketball team in town, Boston College, aborted its season after dismissing two key players for smoking the weed.

For all intents and purposes, Boston sports is in hibernation until April and fans have several months to deal with the uncertainty surrounding the area's teams. And it sucks.

As bad as the on-field action during the Patriots loss to the Colts in the AFC Championship was, it pales in comparison to the serious questions surrounding this team heading into the offseason. And make no mistake- there are serious questions surrounding the reigning AFC East Champions.

The Patriots were exposed against the Colts as being too old and too thin at too many critical positions. The linebacker corps is old, really old. When the possible return of ancient ILB Junior Seau next season is a cause for optimism, rest assured that the Patriots have some problems to address. Tedy Bruschi looks worn down and played like a shadow of his former self this season. Maybe it's the lingering effects of his stroke. Maybe it's his advancing age and the accumulation of a decade of NFL play. But regardless, the Patriots can't survive another season with Bruschi playing the role of inside enforcer.

But Bruschi is just one of several major personnel decisions awaiting Bill Belichick, Scott Pioli and the Krafts this offseason. The free agent status of CB Asante Samuel is certain to be another "Belichick vs. the world" public negotiation played out in the national and local media. And for once, a player may have the upper hand against Belichick. As bad as the New England secondary was at times- and just like Seau, when a team is counting on an injury-prone senior citizen like SS Rodney Harrison to rejuvenate a unit's play, there's reason to be concerned- imagine it without Samuel. Ellis Hobbs seems capable at times but after him, the cupboard is very, very thin.

And then there's Tom Brady's offense. By the end of the season, the Patriots couldn't run the ball despite the presence of Corey Dillon, Laurence Maroney and Kevin Faulk and they couldn't throw the ball unless they spread the field with five receivers, a plan that can work for stretches of a game but isn't the optimal season-long gameplan. Something needs to be tweaked.

But at least the Patriots have a proven plan that works. The Celtics and Bruins don't even have a plan that sorta works. The Celtics are an abject disaster, a strange collection of youngsters and Paul Pierce that seem as faraway from contending for an NBA Championship as they were five years ago. If Danny Ainge has a plan and has just been patiently waiting to unveil it, now may be the time. The GM has managed to stockpile plenty of young talent except that the talent really isn't all that talented. Ainge managed to find plenty of players with "a talent" but missed the boat on finding guys with several talents, which as far as I can tell is fairly important when constructing a good NBA team.

The Celtics seem destined to finish out the season too bad to make the playoffs but too good to make a serious run at Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Instead, the team will be forced to roll the dice with someone like Joakim Noah or Al Horford or Julian Wright and, hell, I don't know. If the Celtics don't end up with Oden or Durant, you might as well write off this decade because there's no way they'll be a serious championship contender.

And while the Bruins are losing at about the same clip as the Celtics, at least the team appears to have a decision-maker with a definite plan and a proven track record of building winning teams. Peter Chiarelli is still feeling his way along with the Bruins but fans can find some comfort in the fact that the guy making the calls has shown in the past that he knows what he's doing.

It's just too bad that there may not even be an NHL by the time Chiarelli's plan comes to fruition.

This is usually the time of year when I write my annual "Al Skinner is a way better coach than I gave him credit for and I think the Eagles can do some damage in March" article. This will be the first time in three years that I haven't written that article. The dismissal of Sean Williams and Akida McLain ended the Eagles' season and any hope of meaningful games in March. I don't fault Skinner for pulling the plug on Williams and McLain- he gave them many, many, many chances- but if I was Jared Dudley, Williams and McLain would be at the top of my hit list.

Dudley is, in my opinion, BC's best ever player and he was putting together an All-American season. He was going to be the ACC Player of the Year. He was going to lead BC to a top seed in the NCAA's. He was going to make some noise in the tourney and position himself to make some money in the NBA. But now, thanks to Williams and McLain's inability to do what millions of other college students do every hour- smoke weed and get away with it- Dudley will be stuck playing a NIT game against Dartmouth in early March.

And as much as I want to get excited for Red Sox spring training, the cold weather and thought of two weeks of Peyton Manning fluff pieces has me seriously contemplating just what the hell happened on Yawkey Way this offseason. J.D. Drew is probably going to be our right fielder but he may need to have his arm amputated in the next few weeks. Daisuke Matsuzaka is from Japan and as much as I want to believe all the hype and stat geek projections about how great he's going to be, I still can't shake the terror that he's just going to be "OK" and all of Boston.com's hard work of finding a good nickname for him will be for nothing. And maybe Manny will still be traded and maybe the Sox never find a closer and maybe Coco Crisp is as bad as he looked.

This is what we're in for- months of uncertainty and doubt, frustration and paranoia, no championships and no more big games. Yikes.

I finally realize what it means to be a New York sports fan.

Jamie Chisholm