Finally, part 2

Fell asleep last night with the laptop in my, well, lap. To finish up on the Patriots this past weekend:

2. There is something awe-inspiring about Bill Belichick's ability to consistently win with only one historically superb star. The Packers of the sixties had eight Hall-of-Famers; the Steelers of the seventies had eight or nine; the Niners of the eighties and Cowboys of the nineties, when all is done, will have around a half-dozen apiece. The Patriots, right now, have Tom Brady, and maybe Adam Vinatieri (whose cause, ironically enough, would be helped by a big game this weekend against New England). Richard Seymour, Rodney Harrison? Maybe, maybe not. Teddy Bruschi? Deion Branch? Sorry. Ty Law? Long shot.

The only historical parallel I can think of (I was discussing this with Robbie-Boy on Sunday) is Bobby Knight. Personal shortcomings aside, Knight won three Final Fours and 880 NCAA basketball games with one future NBA Hall of Famer, Isiah Thomas. (By contrast, Dean Smith had James Worthy and Michael Jordan on the same team.)

How Bill Belichick succeeds is, first, bringing in players very good at very, very specific tasks, and, second, running his squad in as heartless and calculated a manner as possible. There was no earthly reason to cut Deion Branch loose; the money they saved was not needed to stay under the cap, and the amount they came in under the cap cannot carry over. Yet here they are, one win away from the Super Bowl.

3. With this season's version of the Patriots showing vulnerability, it is time to look back and truly appreciate the Super Pats of a few years ago, a team whose playoff games were almost relaxing to watch. I've rooted against Peyton Manning for a decade, but his 20-3 loss to the Patriots in the 2005 AFC Championship Game was the only time I felt sorry for him.

It is difficult to explain this to anyone under forty, but until the 2002 play-offs, the Patriots were the team of disappointments and freakish accidents, a team better known for its drunken rioters from Brookline and Framingham than anything it performed on the field. This was a team that once played a home game in Alabama, a team whose coach was fired/quit heading into the playoff bye week. When the Pats were bad they were putrid; when they were good it hardly seemed to matter, as when, in 1985, they appeared as the designated Super Bowl punching bag for the Chicago Bears. After the game, it was reported that half the team was on coke (though in fairness, if I were going up against Richard Dent and Mike Singletary I might need a little something myself). This was a team that ran fourth in Boston behind the Celtics, Red Sox, and Bruins (and when Doug Flutie played at Boston College, fifth).

The fulcrum was the (correctly called!) Tuck Rule game against Oakland in 2002. Since then, in every game but one (Denver last year), every bounce, every close call, every freakish event has broken the Pats' way, no more so than this past Sunday. And so we look to this Sunday, to see if the magic sustains itself.