Just wrong enough

We've been spoiled. We really have.

The Red Sox have won a pair of World Series titles this decade. The Celtics made two whopper trades and suddenly are the best team in the NBA. The Bruins -- the Bruins! -- are on fire. And none of those things even spoiled us as much as the Patriots' run at perfection last season.

We've been spoiled. We're in a new era of Boston sports, and we're spoiled.

This season's Patriots team, though, has brought it all back. This season's Patriots are exactly what Boston sports teams used to be like. Things have gone wrong; the team has fought through it. More things have gone wrong; the team has kept fighting. And unless Dallas beats Baltimore this weekend, things will have gone just wrong enough to keep the Patriots out of the playoffs.

Fighting until the end and coming up agonizingly short. Where have we seen that before?

The scenarios have been well-detailed other places; the Patriots could win out and go 11-5 and still miss the playoffs if Baltimore, Miami and/or the New York Jets don't help them out. (The most plausible scenario is Baltimore losing to the back-on-a-roll Cowboys this week, but a loss by either the Jets or Dolphins this week and a loss by the other in their head-to-head matchup next week would do it, too.)

It would put an end, in some ways, to the extraordinary run of success the Patriots have enjoyed over the last six seasons. Since the last time they missed the playoffs, the Patriots have gone 14-2, 14-2, 10-6, 12-4 and 16-0; they've won two Super Bowls and played in another. They've been undisputably the best football team in the NFL in that span.

Missing the playoffs this season would be agonizing, sure. But look at it this way: Most teams don't make the playoffs every single year. The Cowboys of Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Ervin went 6-10 in 1997; the 49ers of Steve Young and Jerry Rice missed the playoffs in 1991, and with a 10-6 record to boot. Brett Favre's Packers made the playoffs every year from 1993-2004 -- except for back-to-back seasons in 1999 and 2000, when the Packers slipped to 8-8 and 9-7 and spent January at home.

Even the Colts, coming off a 13-3 season and a 10-6 season under rising star Peyton Manning, suddenly went 6-10 in 2001 and missed the playoffs. (The playoffs!)

And things really have only gone so wrong. The Patriots have lost what seems like half their active roster, and they're still 9-5 with two winnable games remaining. They've been dealt every bad break imaginable, and they're still 9-5 with two winnable games remaining. They're so far down on defensive players that we're panicking over the possible loss of undrafted free agent Gary Guyton, and they're still 9-5 with two winnable games remaining.

Things have gone just wrong enough. One more break would have done it.

* If David Thomas doesn't knock over a Colts defender after the whistle -- or if officials are a little more forgiving given the noise in the building -- the Patriots tie that game and are in position to win either in the fourth quarter or overtime;
* If the Jets don't win the coin toss to start overtime, a red-hot Matt Cassel has a chance to march his team down the field before Favre does;
* If Brady doesn't get hurt, or Rodney Harrison, or Adalius Thomas, or Laurence Maroney -- OK, maybe not Laurence Maroney.

One of those breaks goes the other way, and the Patriots probably are sitting at least at 10-4 and a game up on the Jets and Dolphins for the AFC East title.

But those are the breaks. We've stopped getting used to having them dealt against our teams; we've gone from identifying with Chicago and Philadelphia to identifying with New York. This season has just been an abrupt reminder to a spoiled sports region that things really can go just wrong enough.