The biggest mistake a sports fan can make is to imagine it could have been different. That if only such and such a player had moved such and such a way, then such and such a thing would have changed, leading to such and such—and victory. This is to radically misunderstand what makes a game a game, which is that millions of people agree about a series of random, yet specific events. It is insane to imagine that there was some other, secret metaphysics happening, that a team was destined to win when suddenly some other thing, some dropped pass or blown call, robbed you of something. The entire thing is a fiction. You were not robbed. What happened, happened. Now it’s over.

Bill Belichick says there are two things a receiver has to do: get open and catch the ball. There are, he emphasizes, many ways to do this. But consider, against the vast continuum of human skills, the specificity of these two. Consider that Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals was paid over $20 million this year for his ability to get open and catch the ball. It is a travesty, some will say, that people are paid so much for something so simple. But this is wrong. It is, in fact, a glorious thing: it speaks to the power of collective belief. It is what allows a six-foot-five black kid from Rand, West Virginia, to become Randy Moss, the common denominator in two of the greatest offenses of all time. The second of these, the famed 18-1 2007 Patriots, met ignoble defeat when Moss couldn’t quite haul in a pass from Tom Brady as time wound down. Or maybe the game was over before then, but the point is, the possibility was there. It would have been absurd, but it was on the table. Moss had just completed the greatest season ever by a wide-receiver.

On Sunday night, when Tom Brady threw his last second desperation Hail Mary, the ball was batted around and, as it fell, a leaping Rob Gronkowski came close to catching it. He didn’t. He was injured. He had just completed the greatest seaso...