Super Bowl 2012: New England Patriots have chance to rank with NFL’s all-time dynasties

Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, stood in the home locker room at Gillette Stadium last Sunday evening, holding the AFC championship trophy and glancing around at an elated group of players.

“This one is pretty special,” Kraft said. “I love this team. This locker room is very special. What a great group of young men.”

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New England had just beaten the Baltimore Ravens to reach the Super Bowl. That really was nothing new to the Patriots, who will play in their fifth championship game in the last 11 seasons next Sunday evening in Indianapolis, all of them with Bill Belichick as coach and Tom Brady at quarterback. Belichick, Brady and the Patriots will try to secure their fourth Super Bowl title during that span when they face the New York Giants.

But this wasn’t business as usual for the Patriots and their owner. The team is back in the Super Bowl for the first time in four years, the longest drought since New England began collecting Lombardi trophies in the 2001 season. For Kraft, the return to the sport’s biggest stage comes at the end of a trying season that began with him helping to solve the NFL’s labor crisis even as he grieved the loss of his wife Myra, who died in July at age 68 after a battle with cancer.

“We knew we had an angel smiling down on us,” Kraft said.

During their run of dominance, the Patriots rarely have been seen as sentimental favorites outside New England. Fans in other cities still take to radio call-in shows and Internet message boards to assail Belichick and the Patriots for the Spygate videotaping scandal that was uncovered during the 2007 season. But even if these Patriots are far removed from being the popular underdogs who upset the St. Louis Rams and their “Greatest Show on Turf” in February 2002, the stretch of on-field excellence crafted by Belichick and Brady will be remembered as one of the NFL’s most enduring dynasties.

“If you don’t rank them right up there with the [Vince] Lombardi-era Packers and the Bill Walsh-era 49ers, you would be wrong,” said former Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann. “That’s the stratosphere you have to talk about, with what Bill has accomplished and what Tom has accomplished.”

Lombardi, with Bart Starr as his quarterback in Green Bay, coached the Packers to five NFL titles plus victories in the first two Super Bowls in nine seasons between 1959 and ’67. Walsh, with Joe Montana at quarterback, coached the 49ers to three Super Bowl triumphs in 10 seasons between 1979 and ’88.

Three coach-and-quarterback combinations — the Cowboys’ Tom Landry and Roger Staubach, the Steelers’ Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw and the Bills’ Marv Levy and Jim Kelly — reached four Super Bowls together. They will be surpassed by Belichick and Brady, who are attempting to match the four Super Bowl wins by Noll and Bradshaw.

“In the worst-case scenario, even if they don’t win another one . . . they’re at least in the discussion” about the greatest coach-quarterback duos in history, said former NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck. “Five in 11 years? That’s insane. And you have to remember that Brady missed a year when he was hurt. It’s pretty incredible.”