Love 'Em or Hate 'Em, People Watch the Patriots

By Mark Maske
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 9, 2007

Watching the New England Patriots win is nothing new to football followers. They won three Super Bowls in four years between the 2001 and 2004 seasons and have been in the playoffs for six of the last seven years.

But the feeling is different this year, as Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady pursue a fourth Super Bowl title together and the Patriots try to join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only teams to go through a season unbeaten. The Patriots, who some call the best football team ever, have become villains. They began the season mired in a cheating scandal and since have been accused of embarrassing opponents by running up the score.

"To a lot of people," said David Carter, the executive director of the sports business institute at the University of Southern California, "they stand for some of the things that are lacking in sports."

Having escaped Baltimore on Monday night with a 27-24 win over the Ravens -- the most watched cable program in television history -- the Patriots, now 12-0, play the 9-3 Pittsburgh Steelers in Foxborough, Mass., today in what might be the most challenging game left on their schedule. They finish with home games against the New York Jets (3-9) and winless Dolphins before a season finale at the Meadowlands against the New York Giants (8-4).

The Patriots weren't always the team everybody loves to hate. When they won their first Super Bowl on Feb. 3, 2002, with an upset over the St. Louis Rams, they were a plucky underdog. They took the field en masse instead of having players introduced individually, and what could have been better than having a franchise named the Patriots win the first Super Bowl after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks?

Belichick was a curmudgeon, but in a non-menacing way. There was something oddly cool about an Xs-and-Os genius of a coach who wore such intentionally anti-glamorous hooded sweatshirts and was pals with rocker Jon Bon Jovi. Brady was the fresh-faced 199th pick in the 2000 NFL draft made good.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft built one of the most successful brands in the NFL, with the franchise's value being estimated by Forbes magazine this year at just less than $1.2 billion. Belichick and front-office chief Scott Pioli were so skilled at crafting rosters filled with inexpensive players that the Patriots didn't have to spend too much of Kraft's money to win championships. They were truly the model NFL franchise.

Now they're a renegade team, at least in the minds of many fans in the other 31 NFL cities. The biggest blow to their image came when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick $500,000 and the Patriots $250,000 and stripped the team of a first-round draft pick next spring for using videotaping equipment to steal the play signals of the New York Jets' coaches in the opening game of the season at Giants Stadium. The episode became known as "SpyGate" and created an uproar, with some contending that Belichick should have been suspended. Don Shula, the coach of the undefeated '72 Dolphins, even suggested that the Patriots' record might deserve an asterisk in the record books if they go unbeaten.

The Patriots have become the modern-day equivalent of the old Oakland Raiders, whose owner, Al Davis, popularized the phrase, "Just win, baby."

Said former Raiders coach John Madden, "We led the league in boos."

The longtime broadcaster, now with NBC, recalled in a recent conference call with reporters that he would tell his players just before they were to take the field for a road game that he didn't know if they would be cheered or booed. Then, he said, he'd add: "If they boo you, they respect you and they're afraid of you. If they cheer you, they don't respect you and they're not afraid of you."

Belichick seems to use his team's new image in a similar fashion, pushing the Patriots to show their detractors they don't need to cheat to win. In a league known for its parity, they've won their games this season by an average margin of 21.7 points. They beat the Washington Redskins 52-7, and the Buffalo Bills 56-10.

Even so, Madden said he doesn't think fans have the same level of antipathy for these Patriots that they once had for the Raiders, in part because the ire isn't aimed at popular players like Brady and linebacker Tedy Bruschi, who returned from a stroke suffered in 2005 to be a major contributor to the team again.

"I don't know that they're hated like that," Madden said. "You can go back to the SpyGate thing, I know that, but when you think of the players, I would think this team is probably half loved and half hated."

Indeed, Brady seems to have mostly escaped the backlash. At a late-October owners' meeting in Philadelphia, Kraft said: "I would say every female in New England between the ages of 2 and 80 is nice to me so they can meet him." He currently dates supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

The Patriots seem more popular than ever with their own followers. Carter, the sports business expert, said they remain interesting to, even if not beloved by, other fans as well.

"It's the team that you love to hate," he said in a telephone interview. "If you were sitting there watching the Celtics-Lakers or Yankees-Dodgers playing for a championship, you didn't have to like them to know they were a great brand. You were still watching. It's the same with the Patriots. They used to be milk and cookies. They were clean-cut. They were Tom Brady. Now they're disliked.

"But if you dislike them, part of it is because of their success. In many ways, that reinforces the success of their brand. The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference."

Yet even Brady has been an accomplice to shows of on-field ruthlessness by the Patriots this season.

"We're not trying to win 42-28," the quarterback said recently on Boston radio station WEEI. "We're trying to kill teams. We're trying to blow them out if we can. You want to build momentum for each week. You don't want to be up 42-7 or 35-7, and all of a sudden you look up and it's 35-21. We don't want to be part of that. You don't want to go into next week realizing that for the last 18 minutes of the game your team didn't play well or didn't play up to its capabilities. You gave other teams momentum for the next time they play you, or you gave another team a reason not to be intimidated."

The prowess of the Patriots is unquestioned.

"The whole operation looks magnificent," said Marv Levy, formerly the Bills coach and now their general manager, after watching the dismantling of his team. "They certainly rank with the best I've ever seen, absolutely."

There have been some cracks in the foundation showing recently, however. The Patriots have had to overcome fourth-quarter deficits against three of their last four opponents -- the Indianapolis Colts, Philadelphia Eagles and Ravens. The Eagles and Ravens, both having mediocre seasons, managed to make the Patriots' defense look vulnerable, while also getting pressure on Brady and making wide receiver Randy Moss all but disappear because of physical play.

"I anticipate more games like this, to tell you the truth," Bruschi said in the Patriots' locker room after the Eagles game. "Teams play their best football coming down the stretch. Take [the Bills game]. Is it gonna be like that every week? I doubt it. I highly doubt it. We're gonna be in some battles."

The Patriots are still on pace to shatter the NFL's single-season scoring record. Brady is on course to break the one-year record for touchdown passes, and Moss the mark for touchdown catches.

"It's the best offense I've ever seen," Madden said. "Tom Brady is playing the position of quarterback right now better than I've ever seen anyone ever play it in my history. Where they go as the best team, I think offensively they're right there."

The defense, Madden said, doesn't rank among the all-time greats, but it might not matter.

Belichick would have the option of sitting down Brady, Moss and other top players in the regular season finale if the Patriots have home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs already clinched. Yet Belichick has given little indication that he intends to let up under any circumstances this season.

Until the near misses by the Eagles and Ravens, the NFL season had a feel of inevitability to it. That usually wouldn't be good for interest level and television ratings. But ratings for the Patriots have soared and NBC producer Fred Gaudelli said viewers have a fascination with greatness, as when fans have tuned in to watch golfer Tiger Woods or basketball legend Michael Jordan no matter the score.

"They make it pretty entertaining," Gaudelli said, "and I think Belichick in his own way makes it entertaining because of the way he just refuses to acknowledge any of it."