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Tom Caron: Despite run of success, loss still hurts

The Patriots are still on the clock.

After Sunday's disheartening loss to the Giants, the Patriots are still the Boston team that has gone the longest since its last championship.

Tom Brady might be 0 for 2 in his last two Super Bowl appearances, but it's still hard to get disheartened in a city that has celebrated seven championships in the last 10 years.

The decade of dominance started 10 years ago when Adam Vinatieri split the uprights in New Orleans and the Patriots won their first championship ever.

It was an improbable win against the heavily favored St. Louis Rams, the team called "The Greatest Show on Turf."

Church bells rang throughout New England. Not only had the Pats brought New England its first-ever NFL championship, they had ended a 15-year drought that saw the Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics go without a title.

Now, championships are expected in Boston.

Red Sox fans are wondering how a World Series title has eluded their team for four whole years.

Celtics fans worry about the window of opportunity closing on a team that won a championship in 2008.

Bruins fans look at the team's recent run of .500 play and despair that the black and gold might not be able to repeat.

Columnists inside and outside of Greater Boston write about the disdain that fans across the nation hold for spoiled New Englanders.

There's a reason so much money was moving to the Giants' side in betting days before Sunday's game. Fans like cheering against the Patriots as much as they like rooting for their own team.

The hatred is well-earned. Each of the four major sports teams in town have done more than just win a championship (or two, or three.)

They've built a culture of success that has led to deep playoff runs.

It's not just the trophies won since Vinatieri's field goal in 2002, it's the staggering fact that the four teams have been in the playoffs a combined 29 times (out of 41 potential appearances) since 2001.

Now, after the 21-17 loss on Sunday, we turn our attention to the Bruins and, to a lesser degree, the Celtics.

The Bruins are certainly expected to go deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs, but with the trade deadline looming they'll need to tweak the roster if they expect to recapture the magic of last spring's championship run.

GM Peter Chiarelli engineered that run with key February acquisitions, adding Chris Kelly, Rich Peverly and Tomas Kaberle before the deadline. Two of the three were important parts of the Cup run and are still playing major roles with the team.

But the urgency we saw from the team last spring, and again this November and December, is suddenly gone.

Chiarelli can't sit around and let it continue.

Celtics GM Danny Ainge has a tougher task on his hands.

The Celts have played much better of late and are still a top-four team in the East when healthy. But does anyone really expect them to beat Miami or Chicago in a seven-game series?

As a player, Ainge was part of a team that got old before our eyes and turned from championship contender to a lower-echelon NBA franchise. It won't be easy to keep that from happening again.

The Red Sox are a very different team from the one that won two titles in four years from 2004-07.

They haven't won a playoff game in three years and are coming off a historic collapse in the final month of the season. A year ago, they were the favorites to win the World Series. Now, they're expected to have a big fight to make the playoffs.

None of that makes Sunday's loss any easier to swallow. There might be other championships on the horizon, but for now the bitter taste of finishing second is still very fresh.

Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on the New England Sports Network. His column appears in the Press Herald on Tuesdays.