Broncos offering playoff tickets only to Western addresses

Patriots fans have spent the last year complaining about an NFL conspiracy to bring down their mighty franchise and, for some inexplicable reason, the most popular player in football. But now, they’ve got a legitimate reason for playing victim: the Broncos aren’t selling AFC Championship tickets to any addresses east of the Rockies.

Tickets went on sale Monday, and were only available to buyers with a billing address in the Rocky Mountain region, including Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, western Kansas and Wyoming. It’s a pretty common tactic, throwing up a roadblock to visiting fans, particularly those with the ability to travel in very loud numbers.

Now, no fanbase combines arrogance and victimhood quite like New England, and this is the kind of scenario that plays into Patriots fans’ worst instincts. “As if the four Lombardi Trophies don’t illustrate how far the Patriots have come,” writes the Boston Herald’s Steve Buckley, “it says a lot that opposing teams would even consider the possibility that fans around here would take control of another team’s stadium.”

New England, of course, lost its chance to have Denver come east in that memorable November overtime game. But Patriots fans shouldn’t despair; first, there are plenty in their number who have never been within two time zones of Foxborough, and second, there’s a pretty decent chance that they’ll have one more game after this one.

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