Historic 19-0 wouldn’t make scandal history

GLENDALE, Ariz.

Ever. It’s often considered a useless word. It means always, continuously, at any time, in any possible case, by any chance. More often than not, a point can be made without it.

It has a place today: “Through the journey, there are three categories on how you are judged,” Patriots linebacker Junior Seau said. “There’s a category that is called ‘good.’ There’s a category called ‘great.’ And there’s a slim category called ‘ever.’

“There’s an opportunity there. We have a chance. We have a chance.”

Then everyone gets to decide where his team belongs in NFL history, and how much its cheating ways should play in the discussion.

If there was any doubt New England would defeat the Giants in Super Bowl XLII at University of Phoenix Stadium, the resurfacing of Spygate has probably quashed all of New York’s hopes and dreams of what would be deemed one of the great upsets in the game of Roman numerals.

The last thing Tom Coughlin’s team needed was to get its opponent ticked off by some grandstanding senator demanding the league revisit New England’s early season videotaping shenanigans. The only thing worse for the Giants would have been pictures surfacing of Eli Manning cozying up to Gisele.

Controversy fuels the Patriots like gasoline does your car. They feed off it, embrace it, devour it like just another overmatched defense or large tree behind which to do more illegal filming, all the while never allowing it to distract from the end result of winning. These people have the tunnel vision of a miner. The more you infuriate them, the better they play.

“You are always going to have critics, people looking at you and saying different things,” Patriots safety Rodney Harrison said. “But if you can’t find motivation going out on that field, you need not play. You step on that field and you should already be pissed off enough.”

So come tonight, when you are done rating the television commercials and Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are being presented another Lombardi Trophy, ask yourself where the Patriots at 19-0 should rank among those teams to enjoy such a moment.

Best ever?

Not without stipulation.

It would be ridiculous to dismiss the cheating when deciding where to place these Patriots among the greatest teams, not when they were caught breaking rules during the season being considered.

But how much an effect it had on this year’s record or past championships is as subjective as arguing about the best cell phone companies. Simply, it’s part of this remarkable run and for each individual to determine how much.

I don’t think the cheating played a major role in 18-0, but I also believe it’s ludicrous to assume the Patriots just began using these tactics the last two years.

This much isn’t arguable: New England is the best team in the salary cap era, in a time when evaluating and drafting is far more complicated and parity is more the rule than exception.

The Patriots have been perfect this season with just two certain Hall of Famers (Brady and Seau) and another (Randy Moss) who wasn’t a major part of that discussion before catching 23 touchdowns this year. Other teams had more talent. The Patriots beat them all.

But are they better than the 49ers of the 1980s or the Cowboys of the ’90s or the Steelers of the ’70s or the Packers of the ’60s? Does it matter?

What a season like this does — other than hopefully making those pathetic unbeaten Dolphins from 1972 go away for good — is remind us of the game’s dominant franchises. It allows us to value them more. Undefeated doesn’t necessarily mean best, but it sure gets the discussion going.

“At the beginning of the year, our goal wasn’t to go undefeated,” Brady said. “We didn’t come into minicamp saying, ‘Let’s go 19-0.’ We’ve been dealing with that all season. We had no control of an undefeated season in Week 5. We just wanted to be in position to win the AFC.

“A lot of the other things are out of our control — expectations of people and things they say about you. But when the game ends and hopefully we score more points, it’ll be a hell of a celebration and a hell of an offseason.”

It will also mean some will talk about 19-0 and use the word ever. Whether it fits or not is questionable, but it has a place today. So does the cheating aspect.

Both of which make this Super Bowl interesting.

Ed Graney’s column is published Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.