New England Patriots are the Most Overrated "Dynasty" Ever

A small, weak man once said, "If you aren't cheating then you aren't trying." And thus corruption was born.

In the wake of more cheating from the growing Bill Belichick Cartel of Football, I am forced to go back just a few years to 2007. We can all remember the NFL’s “no-call” when it came to Bill Belichick getting busted for video-taping signals used by the New York Jets in the 2007 season opener.

Sure, Belichick was fined a half million dollars for the offense but with an estimated salary that year of just over $4 million, I’m thinking Belichick had no problem whatsoever keeping the lights on for his family. It did cost New England a first round pick and the franchise itself $250,000.

All told, an offense like this totaled less than one million dollars. Let us also not forget that the Patriots had two first round picks following that “undefeated” regular season of ’07: they lost the lower of those two picks.

I suppose it comes as no surprise that Denver Broncos newbie head coach Josh McDaniels, a member of the same busted Patriots coaching staff in 2007, is at the center of more allegations of cheating. But this time the NFL only handed down a “penalty” of $50,000.

Apparently the Broncos were up to no good when Denver met the San Francisco 49ers in the completely pointless location of London, England, of all places, on October 31. You wouldn’t think that “spying” would not be necessary to beat a 49ers team that came into that game with a single win.

On the other hand, you would think that whatever McDaniels had up his sleeve might have actually helped his team win the game. But it did not, as San Francisco won the game 24-16.

I am going to state this for all to hear and listen close. Anything that Bill Belichick has touched in the NFL without the permission of his master, Bill Parcells, is either a failure or fool’s gold. At this point, Belichick’s entire stay in New England is surrounded with shady circumstances, rule-breaking allegations or actual fraud. This started from the very beginning and I will touch on that later.

Quickly back to 2007: The Patriots had been rumored to be cheating for some time. Don’t think that they just tried it once on opening day in 2007 and just got busted like some high school kids getting into booze or something.

Why did Belichick feel the need to cheat? Well, under the guidance of Bill Parcells I would guess you should not need to. You can hardly be in the same room with Parcells for more than a minute and not end up knowing a lot more about football than you did before walking in.

Further, Parcells’ legacy as a head coach, GM, football czar or whatever he is called these days is unquestioned. Yet Belichick came away from his experience with Parcells at numerous stops with this kind of character?

I would assume that before his second head coaching opportunity, Belichick was not doing too much cheating while running the show in Cleveland from 1991 to 1995. We do know that the Browns would face relocation issues, among others, at about this time and perhaps this can explain some things Belichick faced.

Either way, the Browns were not very good and only made the playoffs one year in that time frame. Ask a Cleveland sports fan who they dislike more, LeBron James or Bill Belichick. They’ll really have to think this over.

And then comes the New England Patriots.

By 1999 Belichick was set up to replace the retiring Parcells as the New York Jets head coach. But at the press conference intended to introduce Belichick to the media and fans as head coach, this guy resigned! He was even thoughtful enough to write it down on notebook paper.

Belichick, obviously entering into “negotiations” with another team while under contract in New York, would end up costing his new team a first round pick for only the first time. Belichick has a way of losing those first round choices. This might be why he is so desperate to collect them seemingly every year.

It has been examined for several years now that the Patriots seemed to just win games in ways that really could not be explained outside of Belichick’s obvious “genius” football mind. New England was not a big spender in free agency and did not seem to be loaded with any kind of talent that made you think they were any more of a threat to win a championship than any other team in the league.

As I recall, the Patriots even allowed Deion Branch a trade because they did not want to pay him, and this was after winning a couple of Super Bowls with him. Can you imagine the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s deciding that they really wanted to play hardball with Jerry Rice? How about the Rooneys in Pittsburgh allowing Lynn Swann to leave?

Those scenarios did not happen…but in New England it did. This is not to say that Branch is even in the same neighborhood as Rice or Swann, but that is the point! New England did not need Branch and they knew it, the same way they did not need Terry Glenn after 2001.

The New England Patriots did not seem to need anything until about the time they got busted for cheating. In fact, in the off season before the *16-0 regular season of 2007, the Pats finally started spending some actual money on free agent talent, or on somebody not named Tom Brady or Drew Bledsoe.

Along came Randy Moss, ousted from Oakland for a mere fourth round pick, and even Adalius Thomas who was leaving Baltimore. Did the Patriots know that the cheating jig was about to be up, especially with the accusations getting louder and louder? It just seems, in hindsight anyway, like a unique departure from the Patriots' management style.

And never again do I wish to hear discussion about how great Tom Brady is either. Understand that I think Brady is a good quarterback. But to go beyond that, knowing the advantages he’s almost certainly had throughout his career, seems highly irresponsible.

With no fault of his own, we still have to ask that of everything he has accomplished, be it statistical records or the Super Bowl wins, what was valid and what was not valid? I don’t think anybody will ever know at this point but I do think that there is an element of disqualification in there regarding things like Hall Of Fame discussion and so forth.

Think about it: a guy drafted in the sixth round in the 2000 NFL Draft comes in with no experience and leads his team to a Super Bowl win the very next year without even starting all of that season either. Is this possible? Sure. Is it likely? Of course not.

It took Joe Montana about double that amount of playing time to win his first Super Bowl …and that was pretty dang fast! Troy Aikman had completed his fourth season. Terry Bradshaw, a first overall pick like Aikman, needed five full seasons before winning a championship.

Even the Patriots' Super Bowl wins are not exactly what you typically see in a dynasty. You can call this cosmetic if you choose, but I think that when added to the known cheating of Belichick, even the final scores of New England’s Super Bowl wins look razor thin at the very least. The Patriots won three Super Bowls by a total of just nine points. Without Adam Vinatieri…well, you know where I’m going with that.

Dynasties usually include powerful blowouts. Remember Dallas 52, Buffalo 17 in Super Bowl XXVII? How about San Francisco 55, Denver 10 in Super Bowl XXIV? That’s dynasty stuff.

Even Pittsburgh’s 16-6 win over Minnesota in Super Bowl IX wasn’t nearly as close as the score suggested. The Vikings gained just 17 yards rushing in that game and averaged just 2.5 yards per play. That says something about the Steel Curtain, winners of four championships themselves in the 1970s.  

New England can even point to long winning streaks that I believe history has already explained. Whether it’s the *16-0 deal in 2007 or simply the 21-game winning streak from 2003 to 2004, questions will always surround all of it. The true dynasties don’t have that issue.

Finally, the biggest problem I see is that the NFL doesn’t really seem too serious about stopping this kind of conduct. It’s already clear that Belichick was not suspended for his behavior in 2007 or prior and also that his “offspring” in the coaching ranks continue similar actions. If the NFL wanted to stop it they would.

Among the first things I heard said publically about the Spygate story was during a quick interview of Frank Gifford and I forget the network. When asked his thoughts of the matter he stated in almost these exact words, “I think we need to stop politicizing it.” Huh? What I think he meant was stop talking about it. Nice try Frank…and everyone else who the talking points memo. Gifford wasn’t the only NFL figure I heard say that, either.

Can you imagine what the NCAA would have done if the Patriots were in the Big East or the Big 10? Talk about “death penalty”! Fortunately the football gods intervened when Roger Goodell was simply too weak to do so in Super Bowl XLII.