I will preface this by noting that I would classify myself as something of a New England Patriots hater, and that I despise most if not all Boston sports teams.
That being said, I am a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due, and what Belichick and Co. have done in the Patriots organization is nothing short of remarkable.
The Patriots are the first true salary-cap era dynasty, and they’ve appeared in 10 AFC Championship Games in the Belichick-Brady era, appeared in 6 Super Bowls, and won 4 of them.
What’s scary is that, if it weren’t for the Colts making an improbable comeback from trailing 21-3 in the 2006 AFC title game, or a couple of plays going the other way in the two losses to the Giants in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI, or the Jets pulling off an upset win over New England in the 2010 AFC divisional playoffs, or Brady getting his ACL torn in the 2008 season opener…then Belichick and Brady could very well have won 6-7 Super Bowls together by now.
And they’ve done so with some of the most ruthless and efficient roster management the NFL has ever seen. No team knows how to take a calculated risk on players (Randy Moss, Corey Dillon, etc.) the way the Patriots do, and no team cuts or trades aging or reached-peak-potential players quite as coldly and logically as they do either. The Patriots are the NFL’s best at identifying and extracting value-per-player on a per capita basis.
Which then brings me to the issue of cheating. I believe the Patriots would have been good enough to win their Super Bowls without resorting to cheating. I also don’t think the cheating truly made a substantial impact on the games they won. But that is precisely the Patriots’ error. They didn’t need to cheat to win, so why cheat? This, I think, is where they stumbled. They could have simply have had their Super Bowl victories and their dynasty without letting it be tarnished by Spygate and Deflategate.
Anyway, to sum it up, the Patriots have assembled one of the NFL’s longest-lasting dynasties and they’ve done so without a roster as star-studded as, for instance, the 1980s Niners or 1990s Cowboys. Very impressive, and a business model to be studied for many years to come.
Finally, I like to point out useless sports observations, so here goes:
The Patriots are 4-0 in the Super Bowl against teams that have animals on their helmets (Rams, Eagles, Panthers, Seahawks);
The Patriots are 0-4 in the Super Bowl against teams that have letters on their helmets (Bears “C”, Packers “G”, Giants “ny”.)
There seems to be a strong feeling that the word “respect” connotates “like” or “admiration,” which isn’t strictly true by the definitions I know, but I suppose it’s natural.
I’m pretty much in full agreement with the OP. I don’t like the Patriots (no surprise, I’m a Bills fan) but I give them full credit for being a phenomenal team.
I think the best indication of their dominance is their divisional record; New England has won the AFC East title thirteen out of the last fifteen years.
After reading the subject only I thought the OP would argue that the Patriots were the greatest dynasty in all of sports ever. I would have strongly disagreed. But that they’re the greatest dynasty in the NFL ever, yeah I can agree to that. And I’m not at all a Pats fan.
IMO, the top 3 dynasties in the NFL are IMO the current Patriots, the 70’s Steelers, and the 60’s Packers. You can argue for days about how to rank those three, and the eras are so different I’m not sure a straight head-to-head ranking makes much sense.
The Patriots’ dynasty has lasted roughly twice as long, with at least a comparable level of accomplishment and very arguably superior, and with a salary cap and parity scheduling in place too.
I think the Pats have benefitted more than any other team I can think of by being in such a weak division. They have literally been unopposed for 15 years.
And the cheating is hard for me to ignore. I think it goes much deeper than we will ever know, and I also think that Belichick cheated BECAUSE it helped him and gave him an edge he believed he needed.
Still, it is hard to ignore their success, especially in the area of personnel decisions.
The Cleveland Browns from 1946 to 1956 deserve a mention. They started by winning four straight AAFC championships and then switched to the NFL and were in the title game six straight times, winning three. I suppose you could argue that they played in a somewhat early stage of pro football as Paul Brown was ahead of the curve in a lot of things.
To take a contrarian approach, with maximum respect for the Patriots accomplishments, I sometimes wonder if people have the idea of “it’s hard to keep teams together in the salary cap era” wrong. Maybe it’s harder to find a missing piece or two of the puzzle if you are a 10-6 team who loses to the 12-4 Patriots. A 10-6 team is probably near or at the salary cap so they have little flexibility to acquire the player they need to put them over the top. Jayson Stark, a baseball writer, noted that it was no surprise that Peyton manning was in the most recent Super Bowl, because Manning, Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger have been the starting QB for the AFC Super Bowl team 12 of the last 13 Super Bowls…and 13 of the last 15.
But as one of my friends said a few years after Brady won another big game “He’s like Derek Jeter…some guys just know how to win”.
The Indianapolis Colts may give that distinction a run for their money. The Colts’ record in the playoffs may indicate that their division’s softness may have inflated people’s perceptions of them.
Couldn’t disagree more. I rank the Patriots at the bottom of all NFL dynasties since the 1960s. They have played in a weak division for the entire run and the rules of the game have changed to allow so much passing that it’s ridiculous. And Brady would have gotten killed had he played in an earlier era. He has never had to take the hits that Bradshaw, Montana, or Aikman took.
And the Patriots never would have been in the Super Bowl against the Rams had the officials not made one of the worst calls in NFL history. Not to mention that NE most likely cheated their way to a victory against the Rams.
I don’t really understand the “salary cap” argument. If anything, it’s allowed New England to hang on longer because there are no longer any powerhouse teams like in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Imagine the Patriots in the NFC during the '80s and '90s. They would have been extremely average.
Why do you *think *the rest of the division has looked so weak for so long?
The rest of the league has the same game rules, last I checked.
His ability to *feel *tacklers approaching and slip them is one of the skills few other top QB’s possess at his level. He has a quick release and rarely has the time to throw deep anyway.
Even granting that, which there is no reason to, that’s one season out of their entire run. And, it opens the door to discussing all the calls that have gone *against *them.
And yet *they *are a powerhouse team. Does the salary cap not apply to them as well? Does it not make it more difficult to become and stay a dominant team? And does parity scheduling also not make it more difficult every year? Give Brady credit for regularly restructuring his contract to allow the team to bring in and keep other top talent, the way Manning did *not *with the Colts, btw.
Different rules would have meant a different way to build the team, sure. Is that a point?
Leave it to a Patriots fan to imply that the two losses they give their division rivals account for all the rest. The AFC East is loaded with suck and has been for a very long time. The Patriots are a virtual lock for the playoffs every year.
If the Patriots had to play in the AFC North, especially since the onset of the Marvin Lewis era in Cincinnati, things would be a LOT different. Pittsburgh and Baltimore have accounted for 4 Super Bowl wins and 5 appearances in the last 10 years, and the AFC North regularly sends 3 teams to the playoffs even after they wreck each other twice a year. Even the Browns have made the playoffs since the last time Buffalo did.
In fact, since the Browns came back into the league in 1999 (prior to the Brady era so you can’t say I left out any of the Patriots’ run), here’s the AFC East’s playoff history:
New England: 13 appearances (2001, 2003-2007, 2009-2015)
Miami: 4 appearances (1999-2001, 2008)
New York Jets: 6 appearances (2001, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2010)
Buffalo: 1 appearance (1999)
But hey, nothing like getting six easy wins a year, right? Every division has their doormat. In the AFC East, that’s every team not named New England.
I couldn’t agree more (and hey…that was complimentary towards the Bengals!). The AFCN has been arguably the toughest, most physical division in the NFL for over a decade now, and the top three teams have inspired some pretty heated rivalries.
The Patriots are a great team and Brady is one of, if not the best ever at his position, but let’s get real…the other three teams have stunk for a long time, and even on the rare occasions that they sniff success they rarely replicate it year over year.
I don’t think the stats support this. Since 2000 the AFCN has produced 4 AFC champions and the AFCE (AKA Patriots) 6 so that seems to give a major edge to the Pats. According to this page the AFCN has the most wins for a division (334) over the last ten years but the AFCE is only 6 behind (328, 1.8% difference).
What do the stats have to do with what he said? But if you want stats, just look at my previous post. The Patriots play in a creampuff division, and the playoff appearances demonstrate that. This makes the case for me. The AFC East is the Patriots feasting on garbage and little else.
Now, I concede that the Patriots are well-managed and well-coached. But hell, if Pittsburgh were dining on the Browns or teams like them 6 times a year they would be halfway to the playoffs every year, and once in the playoffs history has shown that anything can happen. The Patriots’ “dynasty” has been helped immensely by the mediocrity of their division.
