2013: Emmitt on the Brink – Week 19

2013: Emmitt on the Brink.

The premise: Coming off a Super Bowl victory, the Patriots open the 2013 season with a blowout win. Unfortunately, they get into trouble for Spygate II. As punishment, Roger Goodell orders the Patriots to fire Bill Belichick and replace him with Emmitt Smith.

This is a weekly feature that will take a newspaper reporter’s perspective and follow the 2013 New England Patriots as they traverse the 2013 NFL season under Emmitt’s guidance. This page will be updated every Thursday during the real 2008 NFL season.

Of course, you can always look at all of Emmitt’s quotes in the Emmitt Smith Anthology.

Emmitt Smith 2013 New England Patriots head coach.

Emmitt Smith name head coach of the New England Patriots in 2013!

PATRIOTS BEAT CHIEFS WITHOUT MORELLI

By Steve Sanders, Boston Beat Senior Writer
Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014

It’s every coach’s worst nightmare. Well, not every coach’s. Make that the only coaches who have had Anthony Morelli as their quarterback.

As the players took the field for warmups on Saturday evening, there was one player missing. No one noticed this, however, until Randy Moss ran a route and no one threw him the ball.

The players and coaching staff began their search for Morelli – save for Romeo Crennel, who was on dunkindonuts.com looking for great deals. When it was determined that Morelli was not inside Gillette Stadium, Emmitt gave backup Kevin O’Connell the nod.

“I have no choice,” Emmitt said after the game. “When your starter is not on the stadium, you have to go with your backup plan. Our backup plan, Kevin O’Gordon, played pretty good last night… and today.”

While O’Connell gave the Patriots something they haven’t had since Tom Brady went on the IR – a sober quarterback who throws the ball accurately – the key to New England’s victory was the absence of another man on Kansas City’s side.

One hour before kickoff, a green light shined over Gillette Stadium. Chiefs executives explained that Tom Cruise had to drive Katie Holmes’ spaceship to Gamma Mu VIII to act as a moderator in the peace discussions between the walking brown mushrooms and the hammer-throwing turtles, who have been fighting since 1985.

Without Cruise by his side, Herm Edwards lost his cool. He used all three of his second-half timeouts in the first minute of the third quarter. He often punted on second down to avoid turnovers. And down 34-31 with 20 seconds to go and in field goal range, Edwards elected to punt on third down. O’Connell kneeled down once and the game was over.

“It was too risky! Too risky!” Edwards shouted. “Nine out of 10 times, it’s safer to punt in that situation! It just didn’t work out for us this time, but that’s how we do things here. We play to win the games! We don’t play to lose the games! We play to win the games!”

MORELLI FOUND; WILL START VS. RAIDERS

By Steve Sanders, Boston Beat Senior Writer
Monday, Jan. 13, 2014

Sorry, Pats fans. Anthony Morelli is alive and well.

Morelli contacted the team on Sunday afternoon after walking up in a garbage can outside of a bar. According to Cedric Benson, the bar owner, Morelli stopped in to have a drink before the Chiefs-Patriots game.

“That Anthony Morelli guy drank more than any human being I’ve ever seen, including myself,” said Benson, who was later pulled over for a DUI. “At one point during the night, he saw the Chiefs-Patriots game on TV and yelled, ‘Oh no! I suppose to play in game!’ As he was leaving, someone bought him a shot. And that’s when he forgot all about the game.”

Though he was heavily hung over, Morelli assured the media that he was fine.

“I have big boo-boo in head but I OK,” Morelli said.

While Emmitt expressed his disappointment in Morelli, citing that his quarterback did not use his “golden brick of a brains to think good,” the Patriots head coach announced that Morelli will be under center against the Raiders in the AFC Championship.

Oakland easily dispatched the Colts on Sunday afternoon. In fact, one could say it was over on Saturday night when Oakland’s new special weapon, Glandor, showed up to one of Peyton Manning’s commercial shootings. When he was denied air time with Manning, an enraged Glandor, a 14-foot, 10-inch man who runs a 0.7 40-yard dash, debacled the cameras and even ate one of the commercial producers.

With Manning unable to film his commercials, the Indianapolis quarterback was confused on game day.

“He was crazy,” Reggie Wayne said. “Instead of telling us what plays we had to run in the huddle, he told us to buy products he was endorsing.”

Manning threw nine interceptions, eight of which were returned for touchdowns. It was the worst playoff performance by a quarterback since January 2009, when Jake Delhomme purposely committed six turnovers in order to get his son back from kidnappers.