'We're about winning'

That's how linebacker Willie McGinest describes the Patriots' attitude, which has them on the cusp of three Super Bowl titles in four seasons.

By JOANNE KORTH
Published January 30, 2005

	[AP photo]
	Patriots quarterback Tom Brady spikes the ball after a 23-yard touchdown pass to Deion Branch during the Patriots 41-27 AFC Championship victory at Pittsburgh.

The rumpled looking man in the baggy sweatpants is a modern day football genius.

His chin does not jut.

His eyes do not glare.

His voice does not boom.

But Bill Belichick is on the cusp of NFL idolatry, a geek at the helm of a dynasty that isn't supposed to exist. In an era of salary cap induced parity, the Patriots are one victory from their third Super Bowl title in four seasons. Their secret?

Old-fashioned concepts such as teamwork, loyalty and humility. From the star quarterback to the special teams grunt, the Patriots boast a lineup of lunch pail players who would rather win championships than pocket an extra million dollars. And it starts with Belichick, the man in the unfashionable attire who applied an economist's mind to his love of football to forge the NFL's model franchise.

"We're about winning," linebacker Willie McGinest said.

Indeed. The Patriots have won 31 of their past 33, including an NFL record 21 straight, and are 56-16 the past four seasons.

Belichick is 9-1 in the playoffs, the same as legendary Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi, for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named. Quarterback Tom Brady, a sixth-round pick who turned out to be the modern day Joe Montana, is 8-0 in the playoffs.

Nothing stops them. Not a revolving lineup, not the salary cap, not the unsettling departure of beloved veterans, not the gluttonous pitfalls of prosperity.

"I have great respect for New England," said Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher, whose top-seeded Steelers lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. "For how Bill has approached the game, how the football players, and him particularly, have stayed very grounded and very focused through all their success. With the respect they have for each opponent, the respect they have for the game, to me, they are a model football team."

In 1993, the NFL introduced a little bookkeeping procedure called the salary cap. The idea was to limit every team to the same payroll to keep one - baseball's New York Yankees come to mind - from hoarding the best players. For the most part, the NFL's parity play worked, with one exception.

The loophole in the league's accounting was the preposterous notion of an egoless team. A collection of players driven not by escalating salaries, but enlarged hearts. Players who consider it more noble to pitch in than cash in.

"Personal accolades are great, but if you can't play along with people, how can you be a leader?" said McGinest, a first-round pick of the Patriots in 1994.

"If you can't elevate your team to play better or get guys to play better off your performance in the system, you can't be a leader. And if you don't win, who cares? You might have a lot of personal accolades, but if you don't win games or win championships, who really cares?"

Before the salary cap, it was possible to have both. NFL dynasties of the past - the Packers in the 1960s, Steelers in the '70s, 49ers in the '80s and Cowboys in the '90s - were laden with Hall of Fame players present and future.

The Steelers never could have paid Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Mel Blount, Mike Webster, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth in today's league. And the salary cap caught up to the free-spending 49ers and Cowboys.

New England continues to defy. In 11 seasons since the salary cap was introduced, only four teams have made multiple Super Bowl appearances. St. Louis, Denver and Green Bay reached the title game twice, and New England is about to play its fourth.

The salary cap was supposed to render the dynasty extinct. But an economics major from Wesleyan in Middletown, Conn., the son of a Navy football coach, outsmarted the system.

Belichick does not believe in superstars, hyperbole or, for that matter, smiling. Using problem-solving skills learned at Phillips Academy in Andover, Md., the same prep school where Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush matriculated, Belichick diagrams plays, breaks down opponents and manages the salary cap with an analytical approach rarely seen in sports.

Belichick and Scott Pioli, the team's vice president of player personnel, are the architects of New England's rise. Owner Robert Kraft hired the two in 2000 and, to his credit, gave them complete freedom regarding personnel matters.

After using the free agent market to win the Super Bowl after the 2001 season, Belichick, 52, and Pioli, 39, turned to the more economical means of the draft to maintain success. At the start of the 2004 postseason, nearly half of the 53-man roster included picks, 16 from the past three drafts.

Every season, New England evaluates nearly 4,000 college players on athleticism, leadership, selflessness and ability to fit into the team's unorthodox schemes. By draft day, the list is whittled to about 100.

Waiting to greet each wave of new arrivals is a core of six veterans who have been together since New England, with Bill Parcells as coach and Belichick as an assistant, lost to Green Bay in Super Bowl XXXI. Linebackers Tedy Bruschi, Ted Johnson and McGinest, corner Ty Law, receiver Troy Brown and kicker Adam Vinatieri are about to play in their fourth Super Bowl.

"We call ourselves the "four-timers' because we sort of have a special fraternity amongst ourselves in knowing that we have been here through various coaching staffs and we have been able to go to a Super Bowl and succeed and then reach rock bottom and then dig ourselves out," said Bruschi, the hard-scrabble face of the franchise.

"With us sort of leading the way about how things are supposed to be done around here and how the Patriot attitude is supposed to be, I think we have been able to welcome guys in and show them how things are supposed to be done here."

New England was 14-2 during the regular season but had just four Pro Bowl players, including Vinatieri and a special teams guru, Larry Izzo. The others were defensive end Richard Seymour, who has missed the past three games with a knee injury, and Brady.

Okay, here, the Pats got lucky.

Brady was an unheralded college player who backed up Brian Griese the season (1997) Michigan won a national championship. But since coming off the bench to replace the injured Drew Bledsoe early in 2001, Brady has been the NFL's most complete quarterback, able to take control on the field and eager to share the credit.

"He is a guy who has portrayed the very best of football quarterbacking the past couple of years," Bruschi said. "So Joe Montana was the best in his day, and I think we have the best quarterback today."

An avid film studier, Brady prepares like a Boy Scout. He is unflappable in big games, unassuming in victory and uninterested in becoming the locker room prima donna he so easily could be with his perfect teeth, celebrity girlfriends and GQ good looks. On Feb.6, Brady will try to join Montana as the only three-time Super Bowl MVP.

Anyone who flinched when Belichick traded Bledsoe after the 2001 season won't admit it now. In fact, all of Belichick's questionable moves seem to work, from the cost-cutting release of popular safety Lawyer Milloy five days before the start of the 2003 season to the use of Brown, a 12th-year receiver, at cornerback in an injury-depleted secondary.

When no one else was willing to give Cincinnati a second-round pick for disgruntled running back Corey Dillon, Belichick made the deal. Dillon rushed for a team-record 1,635 yards and became a model teammate.

"You come to this team, and you fit in," Brady said. "You can't help it."

Future decisions await Belichick, who likely will lose his two top assistants. Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis will coach at Notre Dame, and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel is expected to be Cleveland's next coach.

There will be salary cap issues as well this offseason. Brady's salary jumps from $535,000 to $5.5-million. Law is due $5.9-million. Dillon jumps from $660,000 to $3.85-million. Vinatieri, whose last-second field goals delivered two Super Bowl victories, is a free agent.

But none of it matters this week.

Belichick is one victory away from joining Chuck Noll, Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh as the only coaches with at least three Super Bowl rings, mastermind of a franchise like no other in the NFL.

"Bill uses a different technique," nose tackle Keith Traylor said. "I don't know what it is, exactly. But he gets his point across, and he gets it across well. This team is about winning. They take care of us. They have a real good winning tradition.

"It's fun being part of it."

Information from Times wires was used in this report.

[Last modified January 30, 2005, 00:37:55]