Brad Gagnon at The Score put out an interesting challenge on his blog last week, calling on sports fans to answer, Who's the team of the decade?
My answer is obvious, but not just for the reasons you might think.
Brad makes a great statistical case for the Patriots over at his place: they have won the most Super Bowls (3), are tied for the most conference titles (2), tied for the most division titles (6), have the best regular season record (102-42), and the best playoff record (14-3). They also own the first perfect regular season since the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and before that, a streak of 21 consecutive regular-season wins, more than that if you count the playoff games in between.
Then Brad has to go and sully my glowing feelings of pride by noting, correctly, "It's safe to say that the Pats would've had this thing locked up had they beaten the Giants in Super Bowl XLII."
Furthermore, he points out, on a purely statistical basis, the Pittsburgh Steelers could rival the Patriots' record in the postseason if they win the Super Bowl this year. "Consider New England to be the team of the first half of the 2000s, while Pittsburgh's the team of the second half," he concludes.
But I disagree with that. Even if the Steelers were to win this year's Super Bowl and dominate the second half of the decade on paper, there's simply no way for them to dominate the zeitgeist of the decade the way the Patriots have.
That's what we're really talking about when we're talking about the team of the decade - like Time Magazine's Person of the Year, it's not who's been the most successful or the most liked, but the most influential and / or emblematic. We're talking about the first team that will spring to mind when you think of the decade, for better or for worse, and there's a lot more to that than wins, losses and rings.
Even if the Pittsburgh Steelers establish another dynasty in the salary-cap era, it'll still be just that: another one. The Patriots were the first to do it, when it was thought to be impossible.
They began the decade in the spotlight with the controversial defection of Bill Belichick to New England from the New York Jets. Before he'd ever set foot on the field in Foxboro, Bill Belichick was at the center of attention in the league, and he's hardly left it since.
The next year, the Patriots ended a 42-year-long championship drought (read: the entire history of the franchise) in an improbable run featuring the rags-to-riches story of Tom Brady, and the parallel drama of Drew Bledsoe as he recovered from devastating injury. Once again, they were the source of controversy after the Tuck Rule game. They went on to become the underdog of Super Bowl XXXVI.
It went beyond the stories on the field, though. Playing in the first Super Bowl to be held since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, as the league's Super Bowl DVD from that year puts it, "the team flying highest was wearing red, white and blue." Bob Kraft also captured the sense of identification between team and country with his line after the upset victory: "Today, we are all Patriots."
And so on, through the dynasty years. It wasn't just that they won - it's that they won with a new style, a new scheme, and incredibly shrewd player development. They were called a "model franchise". Other teams openly aspired to mimic their success.
As if all the wins and the cultural resonance weren't enough, the Patriots were also at the center of the NFL's greatest rivalry of the last decade. It was a trifold rivalry - between two teams, the Indianapolis Colts and the Patriots; between two head coaches in Tony Dungy and Bill Belichick; and between the two premier quarterbacks of the decade, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. These two teams have played the most contentious, fraught series of playoff contests in the AFC over the last 9 years, and when Peyton Manning finally got his day in the sun, he had to go through the Patriots in the AFC Championship first.
Of course, I'm biased. I know there are people out there who would despise the idea of another superlative attached to the Patriots. People who absolutely can't stand the entire franchise, and all it stands for.
But in the end, that's what really seals this for me.
The Patriots are the touchstone team of this decade, not just because they have been successful or loved, but also because they have also been hated and failed. Throughout the perfect regular season, when the records they were breaking weren't making headlines, SpyGate was. I heard that season, on this blog, from fans I never normally hear from, like Baltimore Ravens fans. Suddenly it was important to everyone in the league whether Bill Belichick was a cheater.
The controversy spread to envelop the St. Louis Rams, an otherwise obscure former Patriots video assistant named Matt Walsh, a Boston beat reporter named John Thomase, and his newspaper, the Boston Herald, after Thomase broke news on the eve of the Super Bowl against the Giants alleging the Patriots had videotaped a Rams walk-through prior to Super Bowl XXXVI. While Walsh eventually failed to supply any evidence, the repercussions of this bombshell lasted well into Spring Training the next year. A $100 million lawsuit was filed in New Orleans over the alleged cheating in the championship game. Senators in Washington got involved. Eventually, the Herald was forced to print an embarrassing public retraction and apology for fanning the SpyGate flames.
The Patriots media juggernaut has another dimension, too, and another face: Tom Brady. Open this week's Sports Illustrated and you'll find him inside the cover in a two-page ad for bottled water. Open one from a few weeks ago and you might spy him in a Stetson ad. Pass by People, Us Weekly and the like on the newsstand, and there's Brady, his wife, his ex-girlfriend, and his baby, being gabbed about and debated over to rival the SpyGate controversies. People who don't watch football have an opinion on him and his family. He is a crossover star, instantly recognizable, on a par with the likes of Derek Jeter and Brett Favre. I can't think of anyone from this decade's Steelers who's earned that description.
Love them or hate them, if you're a football fan, you've spent a lot of time this decade thinking about and arguing about the Patriots, no matter what team you root for. They've been the underdog, the model franchise, the dynasty, the fallen heroes and the villains, all in a few short years. When we look back on this decade with all its turmoil, only the Patriots will embody it all.
One problem with the idea that the Patriots are "Team of the Decade"... they cheated their way to the top. Nobody can argue that fact... and secretly recording plays and practices DOES create quite an advantage. In fact, they did so on a couple of occasions against... guess who... the Pittsburgh Steelers... knocking them out of the playoffs.
If it had been a fair game... who knows what the outcome would have been. One things for sure, we'll never know.
The Patriots dynasty will forever be tarnished because of their tactics. It's really too bad. They were a good team.
Posted by: Dave | June 03, 2009 at 13:14
I'm with Dave here, they're cheaters. Why would Belick do it if it didn't help? I'm a Ravens fan and I'll give the team of the decade award to Steelers, and the Colts coming in a close second. Patriot coaches are cheaters, has any of them gone on to be successful without cheating?
Posted by: BmoreBlitz | June 03, 2009 at 16:56
The Patriots did not hide the fact they were filming. The people on the sidelines were seen in the open and taping.
The league sent a letter warning ALL teams not to violate the filming policy taping from the sidelines (it is allowed from other areas of the stadiums) and the Patriots broke that rule.
The NFL has never come out about how many other teams were considered to also have violated that rule. Obviously with the Patriots being tagged and made an example of by Goodell, no other team would still be foolish enough to continue filming from the sidelines.
Posted by: Brent | June 03, 2009 at 18:22
Your point about the Patriots being the team of the decade because they are, without a doubt, a team that draws the most attention--positive or negative, is supported by the first comment from Dave. There isn't anyone who follows football that doesn't have an opinion about the Patriots. I, like most folks from New England, think they are a model franchise that provides me with great entertainment year round! GO PATS--Brady is back and "we" are ready to win it all again. (That ought to get the Pat haters going!)
Posted by: Bob | June 04, 2009 at 08:38
One mistake in the post. The Patriots aren't tied with anyone when it comes to Conference Championships. They have four. For Conference Championships, they beat the Colts once, the Chargers once, and the Steelers twice in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is tied for second with 2 which they won when they didn't have to face New England. Even if Pittsburgh wins another Super Bowl this year (meaning they won a Conference Championship to get there) New England will still have 4 Conference Championships to Pittburgh's 3. Usually when two teams are tied with the same record, the League goes to tiebreakers. The first tie breaker is head to head. New England has already clinched that over Pittsburgh for this decade both in the regular season and the playoffs.
On to the comments. Fans sure can argue against the cheating accusations. It's Belichick and the Patriots who aren't allowed to defend themselves. See, the league fines coaches for criticizing referees publically. (Look what happened to Norv Turner after that 1st Denver game last year.) Can you imagine what would happen to a coach who critized the COMMISIONER'S DECISION especially with the media and other teams' fans screaming for an even worse punishment than what had already been given out? So that said, let's look at the comments. The first commentator says the Patriots recorded plays and practices. The accusation that the Patriots recorded a Rams walkthrough was later retracted by the paper that made it when they had to admit they had no evidence. Got a problem with recording plays? Then you have a problem with every team in the league including the Steelers and Colts. Check it out:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/preview07/news/story?id=2982416
All teams record plays. All teams are required by the league to record plays. Yeah, this seems to contradict Article IX of the NFL Constitution and By-Laws, right? That's because the interpretation is not that you can't film at all, you just can't use the film until after the game. (Like it's even possible to break down an hour and a half of film during a 12 minute halftime anyway, right?)
Soo . . . what's left. Oh, yeah, some people remember that the outrage wasn't over recording plays (like every team in the league does) it was over recording coaching signals. The problem there is that the league didn't have any rules against filming coaches. Sure there's a September 2006 memo from Ray Anderson who says that teams can't film coaches, but guess what? Rules can only be changed by a vote of the teams. They can't be changed through league memos. Get a copy of THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE POLICY MANUAL FOR MEMBER CLUBS VOLUME II GAME OPERATIONS which was in effect for the 2007 season. Pages A105-A106 have the league's videotaping rules. There's no rule against filming coaches. All the league has in an argument that the Patriot's placed a camera in a technically incorrect location, and they only get that argument by quoting select phrases out of context.
Even if Ray Anderson was allowed to change rules by writing memos, the Patriots won their Super Bowls before the memo came out. Since the camera filming the coaches got taken away, the Patriots posted a record of 29 wins against only 6 losses. (11-5 without Tom Brady, 18-1 with him.)
What spygate was really about was promoting the league's beloved concept of parity. The league doesn't want one team to dominate for too long. The problem was that just when they appeared to be fading away like past dynasties had done, the Patriots rebooted following their 2006 AFC Championship loss. So, with Spygate, it looks like the league took extraordinary measures to reestablish parity.
Posted by: Scott Sheaffer | June 14, 2009 at 10:14