Commentary

This is the end of the ‘Patriot Way’

If it ever really existed.

Tom Brady sits on the sidelines late in the fourth quarter during the game against the Kansas City Chiefs in 2014. Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

By Jordan Lebeau

May 12, 2015

3 minutes to read

Before we go any further: Balls.

If Allen Iverson were a Patriot, he would remind you that we are talking about balls. Balls. Not the game, not even practice, but balls. Tom Brady, the most recognizable face in the NFL, one of the greatest signal callers in the history of football, and four-time Super Bowl champ, has been suspended for the first four games of the season following the release of Ted Wells’ report on his Deflategate findings.

This is a good thing, for a few reasons.

It’s about as good as Roger Goodell and his league can expect to do. The NFL and its players’ union get to address issues besides domestic violence or drugs, the sources of so many of their recent problems. And Goodell gets a few brownie points in the eyes of most football fans outside of New England for laying the hammer down on the winningest QB of the current generation.

But the real winners of this whole debacle are those of us who hate forced narratives. The “Patriot Way’’ is dead, in large part because it never existed.

Timeline of Deflategate

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The Patriot Way, in which no player is bigger than the team and all personalities and agendas must bow their knees to the ultimate goal, isn’t anything special. It’s the way sports franchises should work in this day and age. And, believe it or not, many successful franchises do.

Bill Belichick is an all-time great coach, and Brady a first ballot hall of famer. The franchise has drafted extrememly well, striking gold especially in late rounds. They’ve been among the top tier of teams for more than a decade, taking home four titles and losing two by what may have been just short of divine intervention.

But let’s not kid ourselves, absolutely none of that is unique to the Patriots in such a way as to lend them any mystique that couldn’t be found with any of the other great football dynasties of yesteryear. The Patriots are a great team with a run of success worth celebrating, a system worth imitating, and a trophy closet that breeds envy. But Belichick, the man who deserves most of the credit, was not built in a decanter. He’s a branch on a coaching tree with other successful branches. That’s it.

Belichick hasn’t revolutionized offense like Bill Walsh, or defense like Monte Kiffin. He’s a great coach with a great resume. But with Deflategate nearing its end, it should be enough to make even the most diehard Pats fans give up the notion that the Patriots are somehow special in the eyes of the football gods, due to the way in which they conduct their affairs.

The Patriots are in this current bind because somewhere along the way, Belichick and company decided to put them on this pedestal. They’d have gotten off easier if they had done away with it years ago.

It’s one thing to bend or break the rules. It happens regularly. The Falcons pump in noise, Super Bowl winning QBs pay to get footballs to their liking, and so on. But, when you tout your way as some special, new invention of your own making, or allow other prominent figures to do so, getting caught red-handed becomes a storyline as big as the one unfolding before our very eyes.

The Falcons pumped crowd noise into their dome on the way to a paltry 6-10 record, and got a slap on the wrist. The ability to communicate assignments to teammates in a hostile environment is of paramount importance on the field, and a concerted effort to impede that process is outright cheating. But we’ve never endured talk of any special “Falcons Way,’’ and fans and players are better for it after watching their team get off essentially scot free.

In the case of Deflategate, it wasn’t the cake; it was the icing. The Patriots’ violation was one that may happen more often than the NFL would like them to admit. The real violation is engaging in any sort of untoward behavior under the auspice of some imagined tradition that places those involved a cut above the rest. We always knew it wasn’t true. Now, we should stop fooling ourselves.

Lest we forget, the best proof that the Patriots’ Way is a myth is sitting behind bars.