Another Super Bowl weekend is almost upon us. But, it’s not just any other Super Bowl weekend for Minnesota as the big game is being played here.

But, there is sadness in the air here in Minnesota as the Vikings fell one game short of being able to play the Super Bowl on their home turf. While I hope threats made by Uber drivers to leave Philadelphia Eagles fans in bad areas of the Twin Cities are not true, I also hope the reputation that precedes said fans proves to also be untrue.

It’s rough when your team comes so close, and as someone who grew up in Atlanta, I can tell all of you Vikings fans this: I feel your pain.

Last year, my home team, the Atlanta Falcons, competed against the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. It was a Super Bowl that went down in history for several reasons. It was the first Super Bowl game to go into overtime. Tom Brady, who set a Super Bowl passing record, became the first quarterback in NFL history to win five Super Bowls.

But for us Atlanta Falcons fans, it went down in history for a more dubious reason. We watched excitedly as the Falcons, underdogs from the outset, took an unprecedented 28-3 lead over the favored veteran New England Patriots, who were making their seventh Super Bowl appearance since drafting Tom Brady in 2000.

That excitement turned to shock and dismay as the Patriots scored 25 unanswered points in the second half to force the game into overtime in which they scored the game-winning touchdown.

Many Falcons fans turned off their televisions shaking their heads and wondering what went wrong. How could this possibly happen? Surely this was the result of New England head coach Bill Belichick’s propensity towards cheating… I mean “misinterpreting the rules.” In the end, however, us Atlanta Falcons fans had to accept reality for what it was: we had just witnessed our team allow for the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history.

Throughout the night, my Facebook feed read like a text book on the Kübler-Ross model of the 5 stages of grief:

• Denial: “There is no way the Falcons lost!!!!!! How do you blow a 25 point lead?????”

• Anger: “The (expletive deleted) refs just gave the Patriots the game! They all love pretty boy Brady!”

• Bargaining: “If the Falcons don’t blow this one, I’ll go back to church!”

• Depression: “So sad to be a Falcons fan.”

• Acceptance: “Hey, we couldn’t have the Cubs AND the Falcons win in the same year.”

These statements were also accompanied by numerous comments regarding deflated footballs.

And now, here we are a year later. The Eagles defeated both the Falcons and the Vikings in the post season one week apart and they are going to play, of course, the New England Patriots. And performing at half time is Justin Timberlake who, considering the recent rampant accusations of sexual misconduct among famous men, seems a rather poor choice given the notorious “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004.

I find myself at an impasse, torn between my loathing of the Patriots and the team that defeated my home team and that of my adopted state, and once again simply not caring about the substandard, lip-synched half time performance. Ideally, I would love to see the Feb. 4 headline read, “Tom Brady scraped off field after thorough stomping,” but then that would be giving the Eagles too much credit as they will most likely be the ones stomped. Is there a way that both teams could lose?