The Larry Holmes of NFL Dynasties
"To win without risk is to triumph without glory." -- Pierre Corneille, from "The Cid", 1636.

They said all along that one of the keys to an Eagles victory in the Super Bowl would be a perfect game from QB Donovan McNabb. McNabb was far from it, throwing three interceptions and with it, combined with a few other turnovers and horrific clock management, gift-wrapped the Super Bowl and World Championship for the NFL's latest version of a "dynasty" who yet again, barely defeated their mediocre opponents to win.

In the meantime, the Patriots, deserving or not, will go on to be hallowed as a dynasty of non-superstars and unselfish team spirit, led by a "genius" coach; about as exciting as the parity-first NFL gets these days.

Like Larry Holmes reigning champion over a mediocre stable of heavyweights during the late 70s and early 80s such as Tex Cobb, Gerry Cooney, Trevor Berbick, et al., the New England Patriots have established themselves by beating teams, three out of four seasons, that simply don't measure by any stretch of the imagination, to quality opponents.

They've beaten a highly overrated St Louis Rams side coached by a man widely reviled as a nonce and an incompetent in Mike Martz. They beat him and his Rams by a last second field goal and won by 3 points.

They've beaten a Carolina Panthers team that barely outscored their opponents all season by a mere 325-304 margin, again with a last second field goal and again, winning by 3 points.

And now they've beaten a Philadelphia Eagles team that have made a habit of losing the big games: three consecutive NFL Championship losses and a Super Bowl giveaway to boot, growing in legend with failure to the level of teams like the 80s Bills, and the Vikings of the 70s and 80s. And again, the Eagles, a team they beat by a scant three points.

The Rams, Panthers and Eagles, three forgettable teams, as forgettable as a trio like Tex Cobb, Cooney and Berbick will ever be, have fallen to the mighty machine that are the Patriots, by a collective 9 point margin.

One could certainly make the argument that the Patriots are the luckiest team in the history of NFL Champions. None of the other franchises with three Super Bowl victories or more to their credit have done so as unconvincingly and against such weak opposition.

Now that the wheels of the New England Patriots bandwagon have been officially greased and as that bandwagon has become top-heavy with pundits falling all over themselves in this era of hysterical hyperbole and groundlessly gushing hosannas of greatness to crown the Patriots, as a dynasty, let's consider what two other teams mentioned in that same breathless breath of wonder as the Patriots, accomplished against their peers:

The Packers of 1965 first defeated Unitas' Colts and then a Jim Brown-led Cleveland Browns team to win the NFL Championship. This is before they even went on to crush two consecutive Super Bowl opponents and twice defeat a superb Dallas Cowboy team coached by one of the NFL's coaching legends, Tom Landry. Their record in those three postseasons were 7-0. Where in the pantheon of great teams will Patriot patsies like the St Louis Rams, the Carolina Panthers and the Philadelphia Eagles compare?

The Steelers of 1974, to get to the Super Bowl, defeated the Buffalo Bills, led by OJ Simpson, considered for many years one of football's greatest running backs. They then trounced an Oakland Raiders team led by coaching legend John Madden before overwhelming a pathetically overmatched Minnesota Vikings team. In '75, they defeated the Colts, Raiders and then the Dallas Cowboys, three teams who long ago established their level of legendary football franchises, outscoring the three by a 65-37 margin. No three point squeakers here. They then lost in '76 to those same Raiders who went on to win a Super Bowl of their own. Two seasons later, they ran through the opposition again, this time against a Bronco team that had made it to the Super Bowl the season before, then destroyed an Earl Campbell-led Houston Oiler team 34-5 before topping it off with a dramatic victory over the defending champion Dallas Cowboys.

These are just two franchises, two "dynasties" who not only dismantled their opposition with startling efficiency but did against opponents who were, in their own right, dynasties, or were themselves led by Hall of Fame superstars.

Owed primarily to a watered-down NFL of parity, the New England Patriots have won and even then by razor-thin margins, barely being better than their opponents and yet somehow, in the intoxicating rush of over-enthusiasm, are deemed to be the equals of the greats before them.

*****

Bitterness aside, this sporting run by the New England area and its athletes and coaches is almost too deep to fathom. Only Pittsburgh, in 1979 and 1980, have given
their fans two Super Bowls, with the Steelers, sandwiched around a World Series victory by the Pirates.

And the success seems to be something in the water in New England. There's not just the Patriots and the Red Sox after all. There's also Pete Carroll, the coach of the newest "dynasty" of collegiate football, a man laughed out of New England and now the latest guru of the amateur gridiron and his success with USC. There's also the Eagles of Boston College basketball who recently became the first team in Big East history to start a season 20-0. And waving it all on is the inexplicably funny and unapologetic partisanship of the pro-Boston Sports Guy, ESPN's Bill Simmons. Simmons, as we all know, has had a successful run in recent years that staggers the imagination in its breadth and width for a comparative overnight success story of unflinchingly biased sports writers masquerading as sports comics, coming up from nowhere to national fame.

It's no wonder that for every pundit fawning over the Patriots, there are an equal number of a growing legion of New England haters, fans who have quickly grown tired of the domination and success of a single area and will root against the Patriots and the Red Sox with as much vigor and disdain as they once reserved for storied franchises like the Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys.

But let's not lose perspective. These Patriots, despite their admirable success, their gutty and inventive play, their creativity under fire and their undefeated and seemingly personally-flawless quarterback, are not the Ali, nor the Joe Louis, nor the Rocky Marciano and maybe not even Smokin Joe of the NFL.

They are the Larry Holmes of NFL Champions: wildly successful against a series of opponents from a diluted pool of talent who do not measure up to those who came before them.

Without a truly great opponent to measure themselves against they can only measure themselves against the reflection of themselves and unfortunately, in the NFL's age of parity, this is as close as they will ever come to greatness.

Hats off to the Patriots nonetheless. They've mastered the philosophy of teamwork, as every great team does and perhaps with a few more years down the road of perspective, their feats might gain an added brilliance.