THE SUPER BOWL AT 50
ARE THE PATS THE BEST SUPER BOWL ERA DYNASTY?
The Most Successful N.F.L. Team of the Last Half-Century
Patriots Dynasty Has a Claim on Being the Best
The Patriots of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady can now claim to be the most successful team of the Super Bowl era.
They have won four championships, which ties Belichick for most by a head coach (with Chuck Noll) and Brady for most by a quarterback (with Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana).
As a tiebreaker, Brady holds the record for most Super Bowl appearances by a starting quarterback, with six, while Belichick is tied with a coach other than Noll — Don Shula.
As a tiebreaker, Brady holds the record for most Super Bowl appearances by a starting quarterback, with six, while Belichick is tied with a coach other than Noll — Don Shula.
Belichick and Brady have also won their titles when N.F.L. rules have made dynasties harder to build. Consider that five franchises won at least three Super Bowls in the 20 seasons before the salary cap took effect for the 1994 season. In the last 20 seasons, only the Patriots have.
Beyond football, the Patriots arguably join the 1990s Yankees as the most impressive team in any major sport in North America over the last 40 years. Multiple championships remain the norm in the N.B.A., where a single great player or two can dominate the game. And multiple championships were common in every sport in the 1950s through the 1970s — be it by the Packers, Yankees, Celtics, Canadiens or others.
But since players have won more freedom to negotiate their contracts and to change teams, sustained excellence has become very rare. The Yankees of Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Joe Torre did it. The Patriots have joined them.
A second team worth considering is the 49ers of the 1980s and 1990s. Like the Patriots, San Francisco had a run spanning 14 seasons in which it won several championships, five in the 49ers' case, with no Super Bowl losses. That team also had a regular-season record similar to the one the Patriots have had since 2001, winning about 75 percent of its games. (In fact, the 49ers’ best 14 regular seasons in a row covered a slightly different span, 1984 to 1997, and it’s the only such modern run better than New England’s.)
No player, however, played on all five 49ers championship teams. The run also spanned two head coaches, with Bill Walsh winning the first three titles and George Seifert winning the last two.
The Best Regular-Season Runs
Since the 2001 season, Tom Brady’s first as the Patriots’ quarterback, the team has a .759 winning percentage. The only franchises with better 14-year runs are the Bears (at .767) and the 49ers (.760).
If anything, a better argument against New England is that Belichick and Brady aren’t enough to make the 2001-14 Patriots count as a single team. By this definition, the Steelers of the 1970s (who won four Super Bowls in six years) may be the best candidate. More than 20 players appeared on all four championship teams.
Those Steelers, like the Packers of the 1960s, also deserve credit for their dominance. They often won handily. On the other hand, the Patriots win some style points of their own. Every one of their six Super Bowls has been decided by four points or fewer, and five of the six — the two losses to the Giants, the wins over the Seahawks, Panthers and Rams — have involved nerve-jangling final minutes.
A loss to Seattle on Sunday would have left the Belichick-Brady Patriots with two distinct periods: the early one, when they won three Super Bowls, and the late one, when they kept losing heartbreakers. The win over Seattle changed the story.
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