Setting the stage for today’s Patriots-Rams showdown
Patriots have had superb 17 seasons, even if many NFL fans don’t like it
Seventeen years later, the sights and sounds of that week in New Orleans stay with a man.
First and foremost, it was the first Super Bowl after 9/11. I remember so many things about that week — the great Allen Toussaint playing the media party, the late Paul Prudhomme’s restaurant, Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters at the Maple Leaf Tavern — but the security lineup that snaked around the Louisiana Superdome on game day, announcing a new world order, is forever burned into the memory banks.
There was also a press conference that week with the band that played at halftime, an Irish quartet named U2. And there was a lot of walking around the magnificent old city that would be ravaged by Katrina three years later, leading to another lineup around the Superdome.
So even if Super Bowl XXXVI served up a turkey, it would be remembered. But the meeting between the St. Louis Rams and the New England Patriots was significant for other reasons; reasons that had little to do with the time and place and everything to do with the introduction of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick to our collective conscience.
Today in Atlanta, the Rams and Patriots meet again in Super Bowl LIII and while so much has changed in the game and our world in the past 17 years, Brady and Belichick still form the foundation of the most successful franchise in the history of modern professional sports.
That they’ve done this at all is remarkable enough. That they’ve done this in the salary-cap era while reinventing themselves on an annual basis is the greatest party trick of all.
“Even when you’re running a business, keeping continuity and having people keep their ego under control (is key),” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said this week. “It’s almost two decades and we’ve been able to keep this thing running together.” There, see how easy it is?
Except it’s not, as the other 31 teams who’ve tried to replicate the Patriots’ formula can attest.
Look at the Seattle Seahawks over the last 17 years. In 2002, Mike Holmgren had just finished his third season as the Seahawks’ coach. Two years later the ’Hawks made the playoffs for the first of four straight seasons, highlighted by an appearance in the 2006 Super Bowl.
Following the 2008 season, Holmgren was replaced by Jim Mora for a year before Pete Carroll took over. In his nine years in Seattle, Carroll has won one Super Bowl, made it to another and made the playoffs seven times.
By any measure, it’s been a wildly successful run for the Seahawks. But it doesn’t come within a million miles of what the Pats have accomplished.
As for the how, you can try to explain it, but you won’t get very far. The Belichick way is about meticulous preparation, genius game-planning and uncompromising standards. Great, doesn’t every NFL coach aspire to the same things?
It’s a similar story with Brady. Over the last two decades he has established himself as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. But, during his career, he’s never been regarded as the best quarterback in the game. Peyton Manning held that title when Brady broke in before Aaron Rodgers inherited the mantle.
A couple of years ago, Pro Football Focus examined the relevant data and rated the top quarterbacks of the 2000s. Brady placed fourth behind Rodgers, Manning and Drew Brees but ahead of Tony Romo. So there’s that.
“I’ve studied (the Patriots) and tried to understand it but I’d be lying to say I totally did,” former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer said this week.
Which just leaves us to stare in wonderment even if we don’t know what we’re staring at. In 2002, Brady was a first-year starter who took over from the injured Drew Bledsoe early in the season. At that point, the kid from Michigan was little more than a game manager for a team built around defence and a power running game.
That was also the story of Super Bowl XXXVI as the Pats’ defence shut down the Rams’ offence — the greatest show on turf — before Brady engineered a late drive that led to Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning field goal.
The Pats’ dark genius would follow. A key player on that team was safety Lawyer Milloy, the leader of a secondary that was the strength of the defence. Milloy was released before the 2003 season when he refused to take a pay cut, leaving many to wonder how the Patriots could walk away from an All-Pro.
Two years later they were back, beating Carolina in the Super Bowl with Rodney Harrison in Milloy’s spot. The next year, the Pats beat the Eagles in the big game and receiver Deion Branch, who caught 11 passes for 133 yards, was named Super Bowl MVP. That off-season Branch rejected the one contract offer made by the Patriots. He was subsequently traded to the Seahawks where he spent four mediocre seasons.
In 2010 he was traded back to New England and caught nine passes in his first game.
We could go on. If you have an hour to kill, look at the running backs the Pats have employed during their reign. Anybody remember the law firm of BenJarvus Green-Ellis? And just so you know, during the Belichick era the Pats have picked 21st or higher 10 times and didn’t have a first-rounder in four drafts.
Just wondering what a draftists’ debate sounds like in Boston?
Along the way they haven’t exactly endeared themselves to the masses. But hating on the Patriots is part of their story. On Sunday they go for their sixth Super Bowl of the Brady-Belichick era in nine tries and Brady says he isn’t ready to retire.
But why should he ruin everyone’s fun?