Is Super Bowl 51 the biggest game in Patriots history?
Debate the answer with Chad Finn and Boston sports fans at The Sports Q.
COMMENTARYWelcome to Boston.com’s Sports Q, our daily conversation, initiated by you and moderated by Chad Finn, about a compelling topic in Boston sports. Here’s how it works: You submit questions to Chad though Twitter, Facebook, email, his Friday chat, and any other outlet you prefer. He’ll pick one each day (except for Saturday) to answer, then we’ll take the discussion to the comments, where the mission is to have a sports conversation with occasional controversy, but without condescension or contrarianism. Chad will stop by the comments section several times per day to navigate. But you drive the conversation.Is Super Bowl 51 the biggest game in Patriots history? Look at what’s at stake. A fifth ring for Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, a fifth Lombardi Trophy for the franchise since 2001, and a chance to shove it in Roger Goodell’s face in person. Seems pretty huge to me. – Manny B. Manny
It’s definitely huge, MBM, for all the reasons you cite. If Brady and Belichick win a fifth title in tandem, the argument for any other coach/QB pairing as the greatest ever is vaporized. Vaporized, I say!
It really is vaporized, though. They’d stand alone, above all other legends. Joe Montana won four, but only three came while working with Bill Walsh on the ’80s Niners, and that’s the winning partnership that is most often compared to Brady and Belichick. A Patriots win would leave them in the dust at 60 percent of Brady/Belichick’s championship output. Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll won four with the ‘70s Steelers dynasty, but no one outside a 100-mile radius of Punxsutawney thinks of Bradshaw as a top-10 all-time quarterback.
Should the Patriots win a fifth championship since 2001 with the same quarterback and coach in place, the only argument against them as the greatest dynasty of all time will be provincial — probably from San Francisco or maybe old-school Lombardi-era Packers fans. And it will be wrong. As for the Goodell revenge fantasy, if you don’t want to see that scene play out, you’re an enemy of justice and good old-fashioned entertainment.
But … to actually answer the question, I’d say it’s the second-biggest game they’ve ever played. This one rates a half-step ahead of the Super Bowl XLIX victory over the Seahawks, which brought the long-awaited, legacy-emboldening fourth title in almost unfathomably dramatic fashion.
And it’s probably a full-step behind the Super Bowl XLII loss to the Giants, as annoying as that is to acknowledge. They were going for perfection and a chance to silence the smug ’72 Dolphins. Those opportunities come around — well, so far, it’s once-in-a-dynasty.
Agree with me. Change my mind. Tell me what you think. And I’ll tell you what I think of that.
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