Meet Your New Undersized, Scraptastic, Very White New England Sports Cult Hero: Danny Woodhead

Danny Woodhead, the Jets castoff and Rex Ryan-anointed "little fucker," made his Patriots debut yesterday and is already being touted as the economy-sized Wes Welker. Chief among these proponents is Dan Shaughnessy. Of course. Let's look at the best of the worst.

Shaughnessy starts things off by channeling Spiro Agnew—critics of the Patriots' unexceptional victory over the Bills are "nattering nabobs of negativity"—so you know it's going to be good. He refers to Tom Brady, the franchise's only three-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback as "Brady Gaga" because the men of Boston have become unnaturally fixated on another man's hair. But the true gems come from his fawning over Danny Woodhead (who had three carries for 42 yards and a score)—or as Shaughnessy calls him, "the little engine that could."

Responding to reports that Woodhead is "generously listed" at a towering 5'9", Shaugnessy replies to these unseen (because they are not real) critics:

Baloney. Woodhead is Dustin Pedroia. He is Nate Robinson.

Nate Robinson and Dustin Pedroia are both listed at 5'9".

He is an NFL end table. If you found yourself standing next to him at the CBS Scene, you might set your drink down on his head and continue your conversation without noticing.

That's how short Danny Woodhead is, people. We're talking short here.

In case it wasn't clear enough, Shaughnessy would like you to know that Danny Woodhead is short:

About 25 media members surrounded Woodhead's locker after his Patriot debut. When a reporter asked him if he was able to "hide'' behind the offensive linemen, he answered, "I'm probably hiding behind you guys.''

I can't confirm that it was Woodhead who made the joke about himself because I could not actually see him behind the other reporters.

I'm telling you, we're talking short.

After providing some standard biographical information that residents of Massachusetts have no doubt already begun incorporating in their Danny Woodhead souvenir macrame, Shaughnessy professes something like shock when Woodhead—who was cut by the Jets and who signed with the Patriots before playing the Jets— doesn't reveal his exact whereabouts during the game. Shaughnessy opines, "Maybe he was locked away in some secret Patriot war room, wearing a headset, spilling Jets secrets to the Patriots' sideline," which is so obnoxiously pretend-playful it makes me cringe.

Teams sign free agents from teams they are going to play all the time. No one, to coin a phrase, denies this. The Seahawks surely used some of Charlie Whitehurst's knowledge of the Chargers playbook to defeat San Diego this weekend. And even if he had been relaying top-secret info, it couldn't have been that valuable, given the result of the game.

Shaughnessy goes on to quote some Woodhead postgame boilerplate in which he credited his line and said, "All I did was try to do my job," and probably kicked at the dirt with his adorably tiny feet a couple times. Shaughnessy's full-body orgasm subsides, whereupon he writes:

Do your job. Credit the team. It's the Patriot way. We haven't had a new cult hero at Gillette in a while.

Never mind that your team is stocked with so-called cult heros and coached by a cult hero. Seriously, New England, your team beat the fucking Bills. By eight. Could you please ease up on the little-white-guy hagiography for a day or two?

He helped more than a little bit [Boston Globe] The Designed Rush, Week 3: A Handy To Guide To Patriots Grittiness [SB Nation]