Move over, Chuck Noll’s Steelers. Step aside, Vince Lombardi’s Packers. Tom Landry’s Cowboys and Bill Walsh’s 49ers? Sorry, folks. There’s a new team that has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s the greatest dynasty in NFL history.
Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots have achieved consistent greatness at a time when staying on top is harder than ever before, and as a result they deserve recognition for the best run this sport has ever seen.
With their fourth Super Bowl win on Sunday, Belichick and
Tom Brady have put together a run that surpasses even what Terry Bradshaw did with Noll, what Bart Starr did with Lombardi, what Roger Staubach did with Landry and what Joe Montana did with Walsh. It’s not just that Belichick has won more postseason games than any other coach. It’s not just that Brady won his third Super Bowl MVP in his record sixth Super Bowl as a starting quarterback. It’s that the Patriots are doing it during the era of unrestricted free agency and the salary cap, when the NFL is making it all but impossible for the team on top to stay on top.
Think about everything the Patriots have done since Brady became their starting quarterback in 2001: In addition to appearing in six Super Bowls and winning four, they’ve had a winning record for 14 consecutive seasons. They’ve had the only 16-0 regular season in NFL history. They’ve made it to the conference championship round of the playoffs nine times —
nine times. They’ve made it to the playoffs 11 of the last 12 years, missing only in the year when Brady was lost for the season with a Week One knee injury — and even that year they went 11-5. They’ve consistently been the best franchise in football.
It’s so hard to keep winning in today’s NFL. The salary cap and free agency mean you simply can’t keep all of your best players together for years at a time, the way those great Steelers and Packers and Cowboys and 49ers teams used to do. Even a great franchise like the Seahawks, who have been to three Super Bowls and made the playoffs nine times during this Patriots reign, also went through a rough patch in which they had four consecutive losing seasons. That’s just the way it works in the NFL. You can’t stay on top for a decade or more.
At least, you can’t unless you’re the New England Patriots. They’ve found a way to do it. They’re consistent winners like no other team in the history of the league.
