Like all great sporting dynasties, the New England Patriots have had more than their share of detractors.
Their critics will point to allegations of cheating and various lucky moments that have broken their way to try to cut down their accomplishments.
However, what the Patriots achieved this weekend is nothing short of greatness.
Together quarterback Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick will go to their fifth straight AFC Championship game next Sunday, their tenth in fifteen seasons together. Of those nine prior appearances, the Patriots managed to win six of them to progress to the Super Bowl, and in doing so, crowned themselves NFL champions an impressive four times.
Other teams have also had extended periods of dominance in the NFL. The 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers went to six AFC Championships in an eight-year stretch, winning four and bringing home a Super Bowl title each time they did. Three of the Dallas Cowboys’ five Super Bowl titles came in a four-year period: the only blip in that stretch was an NFC Championship loss to Steve Young’s 49ers.
Even the Buffalo Bills won four straight AFC title games in the early 90s, before losing all four Super Bowls. However the Steelers’ run occurred before the free agency era, and the Cowboys’ and Bills’ run started before the salary cap was introduced.
Since unrestricted free agency started in the NFL in 1992, and the salary cap in 1994, NFL teams have had to deal with losing their blue chip talent to better teams or better money elsewhere in the league. These two changes ushered in a period of relative parity in the NFL and dynastic runs all but ended as champion teams had to shed some of their best players for cap reasons.
For prolonged success teams now need to be either exceptional at drafting and developing young talent from college, or exceptional at recognising talent from castoffs around the league. Since hiring Bill Belichick as their coach in 2000, the New England Patriots have been exceptional at both.
This isn’t to say that the Patriots are the only team that draft well. The Seattle Seahawks recent success has come on the back of being able to recognise talent that other teams have passed over; including All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman and Super Bowl-winning quarterback Russell Wilson, two players who were taken after the second round. Meanwhile, Cleveland Browns seem to qualify for a top-three draft pick every year, without ever getting better.
The man who separates the Patriots from the pack is the notoriously media wary Belichick.
Starting as a position coach in the mid-70s Belichick bounced around teams until finding a home coaching under legendary Giants coach Bill Parcells in 1979. Belichick’s first head coaching position would come in 1990 when he would leave the Giants to take up the role in Cleveland before being fired when the team packed up and moved to Baltimore in 1996.
Belichick would rejoin Parcells for assistant coaching stints in New York with the Giants and then the Jets. He would leave the latter in somewhat controversial circumstances, resigning in a press conference, the day after being announced as head coach, and without ever coaching a game.
Soon Belichick would be announced as the head coach of the New England Patriots where he remains ensconced today.
No coach is complete, however, without a quarterback. The QB is arguably the single most important position in all of sport. Finding and developing a quarterback is notoriously difficult, and failing to do so has destroyed the careers of many general managers and coaches. This failure has left many teams in NFL purgatory for years on end.
Even great footballing minds like Belichick need a special play caller, and as this last season has shown us, there aren’t even enough serviceable quarterbacks out there to populate the league – let alone great ones.
In 2000 the Patriots had veteran quarterback Drew Bledsoe. He had led the Patriots to a Super Bowl appearance in 1996 and had earned himself three Pro-Bowl appearances during his spell in New England.
So when Bill Belichick’s Patriots selected University of Michigan quarterback Tom Brady with the 199th pick in the 2000 NFL draft, few envisioned that the San Francisco Bay native would be anymore than a backup.
The league thought so little of Tom Brady that six other quarterbacks were taken ahead of him in the draft. Although he doesn’t hold the passing records of a Peyton Manning or Brett Favre, he does have the rings.
He is now considered by many to be the greatest quarterback of all time.
The success of Belichick and Brady has not come without scandal. In 2007 the New England Patriots were disciplined by league for videotaping the New York Jets coaches from an unauthorised location during a game, and more recently Tom Brady was accused of conspiring to have the air-pressure in his match balls taken down to below the league accepted level (making it easier to grip in cold and wet weather).
Furthermore, there have long been accusations, and suspicions that Bill Belichick and his staff go above and beyond to bend or break the rules to alter the outcome of games.
This culminated last year in an ESPN article titled Spygate to Deflategate: Inside what split the NFL and Patriots apart.’ An article in which mostly unnamed sources from around the league leveled numerous accusations at the New England Patriots, which include everything from spying on practices, to stealing playbooks from locker rooms.
Most recently the Pittsburgh Steelers implied that their headsets weren’t working in the opening game of the season and that it was a regular occurrence when playing at the Patriots’ home ground in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The Patriots dismissed this, as they have all accusations, as distractions and excuses and insist that their success comes from hard work and preparation alone.
Despite the scandals and allegations, with victory over Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday, the New England Patriots booked their place in another AFC title game, and if they beat defeat old foe Peyton Manning and his Denver Broncos they’ll march on to another Super Bowl, and possibly a fifth title. A victory for the Patriots in that game will likely close the conversation on who exactly is the greatest Quarterback of all time.
However, whether you give that title to Tom Brady or not, matters little to the New England Patriots, as what can’t be argued against is that Belichick and Brady are the most successful coach and quarterback duo the league has ever seen. Together they’ve combined for four Super Bowl titles, six Super Bowl appearances, ten AFC Championship appearances, thirteen playoff berths and 193 victories and counting.
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