Illustration by Tim Walker

ALLSTON, MASSACHUSETTS -- Kerrie made a bold prediction. And while she didn't intend for me to hear it, she was glad, at least initially, to know that I did.

"They're gonna score a touchdown," Kerrie said as the Patriots lined up on third down at the Tennessee Titans' 10-yard line. "If they get a touchdown right now, they're gonna win the game."

The way the night had been going, there was no reason to believe the Pats would score. They could get a first down at the Tennessee six; that seemed remotely possible. And it was a pretty safe bet Adam Vinatieri would hit the 27-yard field goal even if they didn't gain a yard. So some points were likely.

But this team hadn't scored, or even moved the ball much, in the entire first half. It struck me as a bit overly optimistic to think they would put up six points from 10 yards out, two minutes into the third quarter.

Kerrie hadn't been talking to me, though (she didn't really seem to be talking to anyone), so I kept my mouth shut. And then I watched Tom Brady run up the middle 10 yards and into the end zone.

Touchdown.

The massive crowd at the Sports Depot roared. I took a few seconds to absorb the scene, then turned to Kerrie.

"You called it," I said. "That was amazing."

She turned her head to look at me, every inch of her face engaged in a giant smile.

"I did!" Kerrie said with a hearty nod. "You heard that?"

"Oh, yeah, I heard it."

Her head spun back to her left. "I called it," she told her friend Jaime. Then, gesturing toward me with a short head bob, "He heard me."

She turned back to face me. "I did it once before," she said. "I said if they score a touchdown on this play, they'll win the game. And they did."

"So you think they're gonna win now?"

Kerrie looked at me as if I were crazy for asking, as if it didn't matter that the Pats were still down 14-7 in a road game in which they weren't playing well by any standard. She had just one word for me: "Yup." And she punctuated her point with a swig of beer.

A minute later, with the commercial break over and the Pats preparing for the kickoff, Kerrie turned to me again.

"I'm glad you heard me, she said. Then, to clarify, "I'm glad someone heard me. No one ever listens to me."

I didn't need to see Kerrie's big grin to know the statement wasn't meant as some sort of sad sack's lament. Rather, it was a football-fan thing. Deep down, all serious football fans believe we know the game better than just about anyone. Deeper still, we all know we're full of shit. But that doesn't stop us from feeling like unrecognized geniuses, especially on those occasions when we successfully predict what's going to happen on the field. It doesn't matter how many other predictions we've made that have been wrong; we want recognition for that odd good call. And we're convinced no one's ever going to give it to us.

It was satisfying, then, to be able to offer some momentary validation to a fellow fan. Even if she was a perfect stranger who just happened to be sitting next to me at a bar. Even if it was abundantly clear that her bigger prediction, that the Pats were on their way to victory, was completely off the mark.

KERRIE WAS hardly the only person at the Sports Depot who believed the Pats had begun a second-half comeback. In fact, as far as I know, I was the sole person in the crowded bar who believed otherwise. And I can't pretend I've ever been given to optimism.

I think Bobby probably would have shared my sense of impending doom if he'd stuck around. But he hadn't stuck around, largely because of his own variety of fatalism.

Bobby, the first person I met at the Sports Depot, had seen enough by the end of the first half. By the time I started talking to Kerrie, he was home, peeking at the game, I'm certain, but refusing to be more thoroughly engaged. He had $100 on the Pats, and it's hard to watch your money slip away from you like that.

Bobby had come in hopeful on a few fronts. Clearly, he believed a Pats victory was in the cards. He was also hoping for some luck with the evening's prize drawing -- or at the very least the T-shirt giveaways. As much as anything else, though, he was looking to get a seat at the big bar that fills much of the left side of the Depot. That was the first thing that didn't work out for Bobby.

He might have had a chance at a seat if he'd arrived around the same time I did, 7:30 p.m. The place was already fairly full by then, but there was some ongoing turnover as the remnants of a crowd from a private function from earlier in the evening slowly dissipated. By the time Bobby showed up around 8:30, though, the room had filled up with Pats fans who stood three and four deep at the bar in places.

"I thought I was getting here early enough," Bobby told me, looking around the room and shaking his head. "I could probably get here at six o'clock and not get a seat."

"I don't know if I'll stay," he said. "You can't sit down and watch the Patriots game standing up." Then, recognizing the Berra-ish quality of his statement, he added, "You know what I mean."

He resolved to suck it up, partially, I think, because the Sports Depot is his regular haunt -- the bartenders know him, and they know his drink (Captain Morgan's and ginger ale) -- and partially because he really was hoping to score a free T-shirt (for his girlfriend, he said).

The fact that he never got his T-shirt probably had a lot to do with the fact that he never got a seat at the bar.

I'd been good about helping Bobby get drinks throughout the evening -- my seat by the taps gave me ready access to the bartenders -- but when the time came for the T-shirt giveaway I had other things on my mind.

The Titans were threatening just as the young woman with the shirts stepped behind the bar and started tossing them out.

"Call her over here," I heard Bobby say as I focused on the nearest TV. "I want to get one of those."

I wanted to tell him there was finally something happening in a game that had been scoreless through the first quarter, but I would have had to take my eyes of the TV to do it. So I just kept watching.

"Hey," I heard Bobby yelling as Tennessee lined up on third and eight at the Patriots' 11-yard line. "Hey, over here."

The bar crowd roared as Titans quarterback Steve McNair darted the full 11 yards into the end zone. I was confused by that reaction for a second, until I looked away from the game and saw that almost no one else had seen the play. They were cheering for free T-shirts.

"Hey, over here," Bobby yelled again as the T-shirt woman's last couple of freebies sailed into the crowd at the far end of the bar. I felt bad for letting Bobby down for a second or two before I remembered that my only crime was watching the football game.

BOBBY DECIDED to call it a night just before halftime, when McNair ran in for a second touchdown, putting Tennessee ahead 14-0. It wasn't his night, and he knew it. The Pats had managed 78 yards of total offense; they were going nowhere. No sense in standing around T-shirtless for another two hours just to watch the Pats lose.

The couple who had been sitting next to me at the bar left a few minutes later (Bobby would have had his seat), which is when Kerrie and Jaime sat down.

I might not have noticed Kerrie at all -- although there are TVs throughout the bar, the one closest to me was to my right, while she was seated to my left -- if it weren't for two drunks. There was a sloppy-drunk BU dropout to my right who wouldn't stop yammering about how he's going back to school eventually (he never will). And then there was the mildly drunk woman who'd moved into Bobby's spot behind me, who reached over to grab a drink and dumped Kerrie's beer directly onto my leg.

I was still trying to figure out if there were some way to sit that would let me keep my soaking-wet jeans raised a quarter inch off my leg when Kerrie made her prediction. After that, I was too fascinated with Kerrie's confident devotion to a team that I thought looked just plain lousy to pay much attention to how my pants were doing.

I asked Kerrie how she could possibly be so certain the Pats were going to come back and win. Her answer was simple: she's a die-hard, a lifelong fan who can't do anything but believe in her team.

A Rhode Island native, Kerrie was raised a Pats fan. Her mother was such a football fanatic that high-school friends were afraid to visit Kerrie on Sundays during the season. Her grandfather's an all-around sports nut. So it all just sort of rubbed off.

"Where are you from?" she asked me.

"Well, I live in Northampton, but I grew up in Milford, Mass."

"Then you must be a Pats fan," she offered.

"Actually, I'm a Raiders fan."

"Oh," Kerrie said. "That's too bad."

I didn't take offense. I knew exactly what she meant: too bad I didn't have the guts to stick by the home team. Any lifelong Pats fan over the age of 20 has met at least a few dozen guys like me. They know my type. We can't believe.

In the end, Kerrie probably shouldn't have believed so thoroughly herself. No matter what she predicted, no matter how accurate she'd been in the past, the Patriots were never going to beat the Titans. And they didn't. That touchdown was their only score of the night.

"That sucks," Kerrie offered as the clock wound down with the Titans up 24-7. "Last time I predicted the same thing, and they won. It's probably because you heard me."

"Sorry to be a jinx," I responded. Kerrie offered no relief.

"I think they'll still win the division," I said, attempting to be conciliatory.

"Yeah, they'll win the division," Kerrie agreed. "But I don't think they're going to the Super Bowl again. I hope they will, but I don't think they will."

Maybe it was just the disappointment of the evening speaking. Or maybe even a die-hard has her limits.

Sean Glennon can be reached at sean@thispatsyear.com.

Issue Date: December 20 - 26, 2002