The Miracle in Miami Gets the 8-Bit Tecmo Bowl Treatment

We all deal with loss in different ways. Emily Dickinson famously wrote of grief, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.” Which is probably not the best quote to pull out so soon after Bill Belichick dropped these golden words of perspective on us:

Not to disagree with The Hooded One, but a little piece of me did. The Pats have averaged only 3.5 losses per season since 2003, so they all get exaggerated. And none are easy to swallow because we’re not used to them like other franchises are.  Granted, the stakes on the loss in Miami weren’t anywhere near as high as some others. We’ve had historically bad losses and managed to move on. And in this case, the best way to accomplish that is to embrace it. Lean into it. Like Aragorn told Theoden when the orcs had the fortress overrun, ride out to meet it.

And this helps. The Tecmo treatment always does. It’s a kind of magic that can make even the most grave circumstances feel better somehow. Half the population of Earth could be wiped out by plague, natural disaster, asteroid strike or the finger snap of a magic alien gauntlet and an 8-bit rendition with cheesy music would cheer me right the fuck up. Watching this again Tecmo Bowl style makes you realize just how ridiculous and unlikely this once-in-a-lifetime accident of the universe really was.

So good for the Dolphins. It’s yet another season where something insane happened in Miami and the Patriots will go 5-1 in the division. Like always. It’s the natural order of things. Life is starting to make sense again. And not only does the Tecmo video help, it’s also doing wonders for me to know the Dolphins wasted no time treating it like they won the Super Bowl.

Now everything is back to normal.