Seems as if the New England Patriots ' long-time preseason "Territorial" Rivalry with the New York Giants will continue after all.
The National Football League released it's 2013 Preseason schedule on Tuesday afternoon, and the one thing that folks around these parts always look for, calendar in hand, is to make sure that the Patriots and Giants will be lacing them up the preseason finale.
There was some question amongst the regulars around the bar at the Rock Bottom Grill on Tuesday afternoon as to whether the rivalry would continue, something along the lines of the mysterious way that the Indianapolis Colts seem to wind up on the Patriots' regular season schedule every year, despite not being in the same division.
The AARP crowd are mostly Giants' fans, as they started watching the game before the Patriots even existed, and were heavily influenced by their fathers and grandfathers. They are typically unrecognizable by their attire, as very few seem to possess Giants' gear, in direct contrast to the Patriots' fans.
Lewiston is crawling with Patriots fans, to the point that if you are male and not wearing Patriots gear, you are either a Giants' fan or one of those "Hockey perverts" that hang out down around the Colisee, hoping that fight between rival gangs somehow evolves into a hockey match...
Ah, Lewiston. A typical dirty little New England town with a population of 35,000 - a former textile mill town with an access canal running the entire length of Canal Street, separating downtown from an area known as "Little Canada", well known as Giant's turf...
...while on the other end of town, a railroad cuts through town where Main Street becomes Route 202 leading into thousands of square miles of nothing - the tracks eventually running parallel to the Androscoggin River, a rusted tressel crossing the river at Great Falls, which really aren't that great.
A town dominated by Patriots' fans, with little pockets of aging Giants' fans scattered about, mostly on their turf in Little Canada and in seedy bars downtown - and somehow they tend to assemble at the Rock Bottom when it comes time for things like schedules being released, so that the two team's fans can snarl at each over ice cold PBR's...
The Patriots open their exhibition schedule on the weekend of August 8-11 at Philadelphia but an exact date has yet to be determined. New England then welcomes the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to Gillette Stadium in a nationally televised Friday August 16th night game - and will probably be the culmination of a week's worth of the two teams practicing against each other.
Tampa Bay coach Greg Schiano and New England coach Bill Belichick are long time friends who probably lobbied the league for this game to take advantage of the opportunity for the dual practices, which have been a mainstay of Belichick camps in the recent past.
The third preseason game, which is typically when a team's projected starters play the majority of snaps in a final tune-up for the regular season, is at Detroit the weekend of August 22-25 and the preseason finale is slated for Thursday and Friday, August 29th and 30th in Foxboro against - yes - the New York Giants...
The entire NFL preseason schedule is listed below:
WEEK 1 – AUGUST 8-11
Cincinnati at Atlanta (ESPN, 8/8)
Arizona at Green Bay
Baltimore at Tampa Bay
Buffalo at Indianapolis
Chicago at Carolina
Dallas at Oakland
Denver at San Francisco
Houston at Minnesota
Kansas City at New Orleans
Miami at Jacksonville
New England at Philadelphia
NY Giants at Pittsburgh
NY Jets at Detroit
St. Louis at Cleveland
Seattle at San Diego
Washington at Tennessee
WEEK 2 – AUGUST 15-19
San Diego at Chicago (ESPN, 8/15)
Tampa Bay at New England (FOX, 8/16)
Indianapolis at NY Giants (FOX, 8/18)
Pittsburgh at Washington (ESPN, 8/19)
Atlanta at Baltimore
Carolina at Philadelphia
Dallas at Arizona
Denver at Seattle
Detroit at Cleveland
Green Bay at St. Louis
Jacksonville at NY Jets
Miami at Houston
Minnesota at Buffalo
Oakland at New Orleans
San Francisco at Kansas City
Tennessee at Cincinnati
WEEK 3 – AUGUST 22-25
Carolina at Baltimore (ESPN, 8/22)
Seattle at Green Bay (CBS, 8/23)
St. Louis at Denver (CBS, 8/24)
New Orleans at Houston (FOX, 8/25)
Minnesota at San Francisco (NBC, 8/25)
Atlanta at Tennessee
Buffalo at Washington
Chicago at Oakland
Cincinnati at Dallas
Cleveland at Indianapolis
Kansas City at Pittsburgh
New England at Detroit
NY Jets at NY Giants
Philadelphia at Jacksonville
San Diego at Arizona
Tampa Bay at Miami
WEEK 4 – AUGUST 29-30
Arizona at Denver
Baltimore at St. Louis
Cleveland at Chicago
Detroit at Buffalo
Green Bay at Kansas City
Houston at Dallas
Indianapolis at Cincinnati
Jacksonville at Atlanta
New Orleans at Miami
NY Giants at New England
Oakland at Seattle
Philadelphia at NY Jets
Pittsburgh at Carolina
San Francisco at San Diego
Tennessee at Minnesota
Washington at Tampa Bay
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