Cold comfort

I can hear the Mikes and Sullys tuning up already, even from halfway across the country. They've got their pah-kas on while they w-ahm up the c-ah in the y-ahd, and they're laughing/sneering at T-ahm Brady because the poor guy's blood is too thin to handle a man's winter anymore.

This is because Brady, California born and bred and now playing football in Florida, said the other day he's never liked cold weather, and you couldn't pay him enough to live where the four seasons are winter, mud, fall and winter.

"I've loved being outside every day," TB 12 said the other day, via Boston.com. "... I was a native Californian for a long time in my life and I went away from it for about 25 years, and you won't catch me dead living in the Northeast anymore."

To which the Mikes and Sullys no doubt responded, "Yeah? Well we don't want ya heah anyway, turncoat. Suck it, loser."

Now, the Blob can get behind that sentiment, having once been a fan of the Baltimore Colts, whose entire team abandoned their city in its hour of need. But I've also been in Gillette Stadium in the middle of January, so I get where Brady is coming from, too.

The last time was 2004, and what the Blob remembers about that is a lot of cold and gray and geared-up military types, because it was just two-plus years after 9/11 and America was fighting a misbegotten war in Iraq. So lots of ordinance and security checkpoints and grimness out there in the wilds of Foxborough, which sits halfway between Boston and Providence, R.I. and is roughly the size of Bluffton down in Wells County.

In all that cold and gray, the Patriots beat up on Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, 24-14. And I walked away thinking, What a dreary place. Thank God it didn't snow.

So, yeah, I can understand why Brady was practically giddy about practicing outside in actual sunshine in December. And I can also understand why the Mikes and Sullys are sneering, because no one likes to be abandoned by your forever GOAT and have to face a New England winter on top of it.

And to make it even worse, the Patriots are 6-7 and Cam Newton is proving to be, well, Cam Newton.

But you know what?

Tampa Tom's Buccaneers are trudging along at a so-so 7-5 themselves, three distant games behind the Saints in the NFC South. So at least they've got that goin' for 'em up there in the Northeast.

Plus snow blowers, of course. Lots and lots of snow blowers.