ATLANTA -- One sat at his podium with a mixture of happiness and relief on his face. He’s been the boy wonder all along, even as the age ticked up with each passing year. But this time, after a trying two-plus years and with perhaps with the least amount of talent around him during this run, he finally looked his 41 years of age.
The other trudged down the bowels of Mercedes-Benz Stadium after his postgame press conference with the same determined air he’s had from the beginning, like he’s looking for the next game. He’s aged like the side of a mountain, slowly but unmistakably. He’s not quite the Old Man of the Mountain for the Patriots at age 66, but he’s just as imposing and constant.
Tom Brady. Bill Belichick. Super Bowl champions for the sixth time together after a 13-3 victory over the Rams. The most-ever titles for a player. The most-ever for a coach. Matching the Steelers for most-ever by an entire franchise.
Decades from now, mouths will be agape trying to comprehend what they’ve done during this run. Eighteen seasons. Nine Super Bowl appearances (and counting). Winning a .667 clip when they get there. All the playoff wins. All the championship games. All the confetti.
Part of you wants it to end this way, so you can picture them all as they should be: at the height of their profession.
Can they do it again? Will they want to? This one was so hard … will they be able to climb this mountain again?
Those are questions for another, hopefully, warm day in the offseason for all of them. For now, though, let’s deal with what we witnessed here Sunday night.
If there is more for Brady and Belichick, it’s not quite a bookend title to the first in 2001. Call it a matching set. Because in many ways, this team and this game closely resembled the 2001 upset of the St. Louis Rams.
Above all else, what happened in Super Bowl LIII was, again, a triumph of team over talent.
In Aaron Donald, Ndamukong Suh, Todd Gurley, Dante Fowler, Aqib Talib, Andrew Whitworth, Roger Saffold, Brandin Cooks, Mark Barron, Michael Brockers, Marcus Peters and Jared Goff, you’re talking about players who were either first-round picks (most very high) and/or elite players at their position in the NFL. They had four Pro Bowlers (Goff, Donald, Gurley and linebacker Cory Littleton).
The Patriots have nine former first-round selections, but the highest picks (Stephon Gilmore, 10th; Danny Shelton, 12th) were drafted by other teams. And Shelton really barely played this season. Only Gilmore and Brady were selected to the Pro Bowl. As individuals, you could make the case that Gilmore, Julian Edelman, Trey Flowers, Shaq Mason, Joe Thuney and David Andrews played at elite levels throughout the season.
But as has become a Patriots mantra: It’s not about the best 53, it’s about the right 53.
And this team had it, even though they didn’t always show it to others (and themselves, if they were really being honest) until there were two games left in the regular season. And then they went on a ridiculous postseason run that saw some good fortune (tuck rule, say hello to Dee Ford) come their way to set the stage for a Super Bowl victory unlike any other in their run.
Three points allowed against a Rams team that had been under 23 just once this season? The Patriots of Brady, Edelman and Rob Gronkowski didn’t score a touchdown until there were seven minutes left in the game?
Like in 2001, you wondered when the Patriots were going to seek their level. At some point they were going to run into a team that could match them, and in the end, you’d just be thankful for the ride. It looked that way for a while against the Rams.
Brady threw a bad pick on the first drive. Stephen Gostkowski missed another kick in the Super Bowl. They turned it over on downs — all in the first half.
You figured those missed opportunities would come back to bite them. It was only a matter of time before the Rams, like they did in New Orleans, would right the offensive ship and win the game if the Patriots kept sputtering along.
In the end, however, they were like the first team. By the time you realized they were really that good — a team that went 3-5 on the road in the regular season, by the way — the confetti was falling on your and their heads.
For the sixth time.
Amazing.
And then there was the coaching side. Let’s face it, the Second Patriots’ Dynasty hasn’t exactly, at times, gone as smoothly as the first one did.
From the Imperfect Season and both losses to the Giants, needing two historic comebacks to edge the Seahawks and Falcons, the loss to Wade Phillips in Denver, the off-field controversies, the Malcolm Butler soap opera, 538 yards/41 points/one late fumble against the Eagles and Nick Foles, the offseason exodus of players, Josh Gordon and the decision by the quarterback and tight end to take this past offseason off, you wonder sometimes if Belichick was still the same CEO that took this franchise from laughingstock to historic in the span of five short years.
Yeah, about that…
With Josh McDaniels by his side on offense, and Brian Flores taking over for Matt Patricia with the defense, this whole season might have been the best coaching job by Belichick in his career. It looked bad after the blowout loss to the Titans. It got worse with back-to-back losses in Miami and Pittsburgh.
“We got some things straightened out there," Belichick said of the period after losing to the Steelers at Heinz Field, "and played well in the next two games against Buffalo and the Jets, which enabled us to get into the playoffs and to get a bye in the first round. These guys, they’re competitors. When things don’t go well, they take it hard. But they have a resolve to come back and try to fix it and get it right and get it better. It was like that after the Tennessee game. It was like that after the Detroit game. Jacksonville, Detroit. We had a couple of stretches like that here, really. I always felt good about where we were, but we just kept grinding, kept playing and got it done.”
And the performance by the defense and special teams on Sunday night might have been the icing on the cake.
The Patriots tied a Super Bowl record for fewest points (three) and touchdowns (zero) allowed. The Rams and their new-genius head coach, Sean McVay, only penetrated the New England 30-yard once — by a whole 3 yards, when the Rams were subsequently intercepted.
If you had any doubts about whether or not Belichick still had his early-2000s fastball — and with some of the recent history, you had some right to wonder — you better get padding for that mitt.
New genius … the old one’s not ready to give up his crown.
Gurley was Marshall Faulk. Cooks was Isaac Bruce. Goff was Kurt Warner. McVay, say hello to Mike Martz. Belichick did the same thing to him in 2001, and he was never the same after. McVay better hope that history doesn’t hold on this one.
Instead of the Bullseye defense that attacked Martz, there was the old-school zone coverage mixed with some man to make Goff not trust his eyes. That gave time for the old-school stunts up front to work its magic for Donta‘ Hightower and Kyle Van Noy like they were TedyBruschi and Mike Vrabel. There was Gilmore making like Ty Law with a game-changing interception.
“Team defense,” said Belichick, in comments that could have been ripped from his presser 17 years ago to the day. “There is not one guy that can stop the Rams. They have too many good players, too many explosive guys and they’re too well coached.”
Throw in Brady mustering a huge fourth-quarter drive like his 24-year-old self, and the kicker making a game-clinching kick, and you have beautiful symmetry to Super Bowl XXXVI.
Seventeen years to the day the Patriots shocked the world to beat a more-talented Rams team, this version of the Patriots made the rest of the nation stand up and begrudgingly applaud with respect with yet another historic performance.
Brady. Belichick. The Patriots.
Many years have gone by. A lot of football has been played.
They’re still here.
They’re still great.
Greg Bedard is the NFL columnist, editor and owner of Boston Sports Journal.
