NFL

By any standard,
Patriots are dynasty

Belichick will lead team
back to big stage very soon

David J. Phillip / AP

Look for coach Bill Belichick and the Patriots to return to the Super Bowl soon. New England is a dynasty, says columnist Mike Celizic.

COMMENTARY

By Mike Celizic

NBCSports.com contributor

updated 4:44 p.m. ET Feb. 8, 2004

HOUSTON - You could never think of them as a juggernaut, crushing everything in their path, and you can look at almost every one of their wins and see where the other team could have won it and sometimes should have won.

It was that way for 12 straight wins closing out the season and it was that way for the 15th win that propelled this somewhat ordinary team into the ranks of the extraordinary.

Go ahead, call the Patriots a dynasty. Maybe in days of yore, you had to be great for a long time to earn that title. But today is different. Win four exhibition games in a row and someone will start anointing you as one of the all-time greats. Win two Super Bowls in three years and you really are among them.

You don’t have old-fashioned dynasties anymore, not when the salary structure and the draft make it possible for teams to go from outhouse to penthouse overnight. Look at the Panthers, who might have laid a dynastic foundation Sunday night. Two years ago, they were 1-15. Last season, they were 7-9. This year, they probably would have beaten any team in the NFL except the one they faced in as great a Super Bowl as you’ll ever see.

The Panthers weren’t cowed by the Patriots as the Colts had been in the AFC championship game. They were shut down for almost the entire first half, but everytime the Patriots crept ahead, Jake Delhomme and his receivers — Muhsin Muhammad, Steve Smith and Ricky Proehl — did something you couldn’t believe and came right back.

When the Patriots went ahead 21-10 at the beginning of the final quarter, I thought that was it for Carolina. The next thing I knew, they were leading by a point. The last thing I knew was that these two teams that weren’t supposed to be able to score 30 points between them if they had six games to do it had put 61 points on the board, the last three tacked on by — who else? — Adam Vinatieri, who missed a kick early in the game and had another blocked, but never misses game-winners.

And that’s what makes the Patriots worthy of being called a nascent dynasty. They are incredibly well coached, they never panic, they have a quarterback who doesn’t do anything but win, a kicker who’s deadly with the game on the line, and, although they never blow anyone out, they always get just as many points as they need to win.

There’s no reason they’re going to stop doing that. They may lose players, but they’ll reload. They lost their two starting safeties and finished the game with backups. They lost their best defensive player at the beginning of the year in a contract dispute, and they threw a rookie in the mix and moved on. They could lose Ty Law, their best corner, next year, and still they’ll put up wins.

That’s not a predictions. It’s a fact.

“You win 15 in a row and win the Super Bowl championship, that’s pretty good,” even Bill Belichick had to admit. The Patriots’ coach isn’t big on taking credit for his coaching. But he’s real big on giving credit to his owner, his general manager, his trainers, his players and the kid who runs out on the field to retrieve the kicking tee.

While working for Bill Parcells, who used to be the best coach in the business, Belichick won two Super Bowls in six years with the Giants. Now he’s won two in half that time with New England.

“You can put that up there with the other teams that have had outstanding accomplishments,” Belichick admitted.

Two in a row would be more impressive, to be sure. But three in four years, or even three in five would also be an accomplishment that is far more difficult now than it was when the Steelers were winning four in the 1970s or when the 49ers were winning five with Joe Montana and Steve Young.

After what quarterback Tom Brady did, which was merely to put up his biggest day of the year, he’s being compared more and more with another seemingly regular guy who did incredible things under the greatest pressure the game provides. Both he and his coach think it’s premature to put him in the class of that other guy, Joe Montana.

Brady rejected being put in such company with an “aw shucks” grin. “He threw a touchdown to win,” he pointed out. “I didn’t throw a touchdown to win it.

“He was an incredible player. There’s no way I’m close to that yet.”

Montana won four Super Bowls, so Brady is halfway there. But he shares qualities with Montana, the first of which is that he gets cooler as the game gets hotter, and the most important of which is his ability to do whatever is needed to win.

“He’s got a lot of poise. He’s accurate. He reads the defenses well. You could go on and on,” said Belichick when asked what makes Brady special.

Asked to go on, Belichick added: “He’s a winner.

“That’s what a quarterback’s job is, to do the things he needs to do to win. Tom does that as well as anyone.”

And Belichick prepares his teams to win as well as anyone, too.

You can think about all the yards and points his defense gave up, particularly on monster plays. It’s true. But the offensive line went up against what is supposed to be the best defensive front in the NFC and got through the game without yielding a sack. Against a defense that doesn’t allow anyone to run, they created holes and moved the ball on the ground.

“This never gets old,” said Belichick, owner of four Super Bowl rings now, two as an assistant and two as a head coach.

He’ll savor this for a day or two, but by week’s end, if not sooner, he’ll be in his office laying the groundwork for next year. Fifteen other coaches will meanwhile be trying to figure out a way to be as good as he is in the AFC and another 16 will be doing the same in the NFC.

But you have to figure that as long as he has the big-game quarterback and a team that doesn’t believe it can lose, he’ll keep coming back with this outfit. You have to believe Belichick and the Patriots will be back on the NFL’s biggest stage.

If that’s not a dynasty by today’s definition, I don’t know what is.