Boston.com lays down the dynasty gauntlet.

[Direckshun]

https://www.boston.com/sports/new-en...triots-dynasty

Any aspirations the Chiefs have to surpass the Patriots are laughable
The Chiefs? A Patriot-like dynasty? I’d say get back to me on that in 2037, Tyreek.
By Chad Finn, Sports columnist
July 30, 2020

I get the satisfaction the rest of the NFL gets in assuming, if not outright declaring, that the Patriots’ reign is over for good, that the dynasty of all NFL dynasties is finally deceased after almost 20 years.

Hey, maybe it is over. One probably could even say it is, given that Tom Brady is now a Buccaneer and some longtime admirable Patriots, including Dont’a Hightower and Patrick Chung, have opted out of the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Me, I’m never declaring them anything less than a playoff contender so long as Bill Belichick is around. I remember what he did in 2001, and all that he’s achieved since. Last season ended badly, and the degree of difficulty for true Super Bowl contention undoubtedly has increased, unless Cam Newton is about to have a ’99 Randall Cunningham/‘13 Peyton Manning type of renaissance.

I know this, and everyone else who has been following the NFL for the last two decades should, too: Sleep on Belichick’s Patriots at your own peril.

Of course, it’s more fun for many to declare them dead, and certainly more comforting to cast them out of sight and out of mind. I get that. I remember doing it with the dynasty Yankees in 1999 … and 2000 … and 2001, when they finally did lose. There’s not much that’s more human than dreaming about all the ways your tormentor might get his comeuppance.

What annoys me is not that the Patriots are being spoken of in the past tense. It’s the failure to appreciate the magnitude of their achievement, especially from those who know firsthand how brutal and unforgiving the NFL can be on a week-to-week basis, let alone year-to-year.

You’d think they recognize how incredible it was, given how long they’ve waited for it to fade.

Yet here we are, with Tyreek Hill of the reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs saying recently on an ESPN program that the Chiefs aren’t just thinking about repeating as champs. They’re thinking about becoming a dynasty and chasing … the Michael Jordan-era Bulls?

“Why not go seven rings?” said Hill last Thursday on ESPN’s “First Take.” “Right now we’re just chasing Jordan, so that’s what we do. So I’m going over five” – the number teammate Chris Jones predicted they would win – “and I’m saying seven.”

Now, Hill is not the first professional athlete to count his championship rings before the games have been played. The silly little pep rally LeBron James and the Heat threw to celebrate his signing in July 2010 (yep, it was that long ago) was so over the top in premature self-congratulations (“not one, not two, not three rings …”) that his two-title tenure there feels like an underachievement. They essentially had their championship parade before they even played together.

Hill and the Chiefs have won one title. One. They stand where the Patriots did in 2002 … with one ring, a brilliant young quarterback (Patrick Mahomes) helming it all, and a bright future that carries at least some uncertainty because everything in the brutal NFL carries uncertainty. They are in an enviable spot, but there is no guarantee that their promise will continue to be fulfilled. One cruel Sunday can change even the best-laid plans.

The Chiefs do know how hard it is to win once, having dealt with a devastating AFC Championship game loss to — hey, look, it was the Patriots — to end the 2018 season before getting over the hump last year. They have no idea how hard it is to win twice, or three times, and coming close to claiming six rings, let alone seven, should be downright unfathomable.


You’d think at the very least Hill and friends would remember to align their bold goals with the achievements of the two-decade dynasty from their own sport.

They are where the Patriots were in 2002. And the run for the Patriots, if it indeed is over, lasted more than another decade and a half beyond that. It amazes me that other NFL franchises don’t marvel at how the Patriots sustained that excellence.

You know what the best-case scenario for the Chiefs is? That Mahomes stays healthy, the majority of their core players stick around (Jones got his own nice payday after Mahomes’s record-setting $503 million deal), general manager Brett Veach drafts extremely well and is unemotional about parting ways with fan favorites … and the Chiefs end up being half of what the Patriots have been.

The Patriots weren’t — aren’t — just a dynasty. They were in essence two dynasties, the first three championships (2001, ’03, and ’04) and the next three (2014, ’16, and ’18) bookending a stretch of excellence (2005-13) in which lousy luck and other forces conspired to remind us just how hard it is to win a single Super Bowl.

Maybe, if everything goes right — and remember, the window is tight with key players like tight end Travis Kelce and safety Tyrann Mathieu becoming free agents after 2021 — the Chiefs could collect a couple more Lombardi Trophies in the next few years, and get into that conversation with the ’90s Cowboys as a three-title dynasty. But that is the absolutely best-case scenario.

There is no evidence that any current NFL franchise has the acumen and discipline to turn over the roster and adjust on the fly like Belichick’s Patriots did time and again as the dynasty evolved and shifted.

There were the early veteran-laden, defensive-focused teams with Richard Seymour and Ty Law and Tedy Bruschi. There was Brady’s evolution into an elite passer and then the best quarterback there has ever been, with favored targets ranging from Troy Brown to Deion Branch to Wes Welker, Randy Moss, Rob Gronkowski, and Julian Edelman. Sure, Brady was the constant, but the Patriots never resisted change, even if it meant saying goodbye to one favorite champion after another.

The Chiefs have a wonderful core now. To become a dynasty of the Patriots magnitude — that is, a dynasty unequaled in the annals of the NFL, for now and most likely as long as this sport lasts — it requires multiple cores.

The Patriots won their first Super Bowl in the 2001 season. Seventeen year later, with the same coach and quarterback and an ever-changing cast of admirable contributors, they won their sixth. It’s unprecedented, and I’m fairly sure it cannot be imitated.

The Chiefs? A Patriot-like dynasty? I’d say get back to me on that in 2037, Tyreek. But you’ll be long gone from the league by then. And I suspect we’ll know the truth about how short your team fell much, much sooner than that.

[backinblack]

Pats also got stupid lucky with Coach Pete choking a win away from the 1 yard line, and god knows whatever the **** going through Kyle Shanahan's mind when the Falcons imploded. Pats put in a good amount of effort in those games sure, but they really shouldn't have won either, if the NFC team had actually committed to the finish.

hell they should never have even made it to the first Super Bowl they won, but that's just a salty Raider fan talking. Brady fumbled that damn ball.

[TEX]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

**** all things Cheatriot.

End.

Yep! **** Donk Forever!
Oops, wrong thread.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by staylor26

Everybody in this thread had an appropriate response but you pillowbitergot.

Oh, right.. uhh..... **** THOSE CHOWDER EATING PUSSIES!

(Is that better?)

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by backinblack

Pats also got stupid lucky with Coach Pete choking a win away from the 1 yard line, and god knows whatever the **** going through Kyle Shanahan's mind when the Falcons imploded. Pats put in a good amount of effort in those games sure, but they really shouldn't have won either, if the NFC team had actually committed to the finish.

hell they should never have even made it to the first Super Bowl they won, but that's just a salty Raider fan talking. Brady fumbled that damn ball.

You could also say they should have won a couple more if not for a legendary helmet catch and a routine drop by Welker that he probably makes 99 times out of 100.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

You could also say they should have won a couple more if not for a legendary helmet catch and a routine drop by Welker that he probably makes 99 times out of 100.

Yeah, they could have 2 rings or 8.... and at the end of Mahomes' career, we could be saying the same thing, with the actual result somewhere in the middle.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Yeah, they could have 2 rings or 8.... and at the end of Mahomes' career, we could be saying the same thing, with the actual result somewhere in the middle.

Right.

Who knows how things would have been different for us if there’s just one minor tweak during our run.

Shit, we can already play that game with Dee Ford’s **** up.

[RealSNR]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

Oh, right.. uhh..... **** THOSE CHOWDER EATING PUSSIES!

(Is that better?)

Dude. The point is that yes, you can absolutely bring up the bullshit calls that went both ways in that Patriots string of championships as a reason for why it is so highly mathematically unlikely to ever occur again. That's fine. Math is a reason. But what do Patriots writer and just about all Pats fans say, though?

"The least you could do is put some respect behind our accomplishments!"

"You can't do what we did because you don't have the coldness or ruthlessness of Belichick to let any and all of your best players walk away for nothing."

"What we've done is absolutely incredible! Cheating scandals aside, surely the frequency of our victories means something, right?"

So is it math or is it unbelievable accomplishment? And don't give me that, "Well, it's gotta be a mixture of both...." bullshit. If it's a mixture of both, then the Packers under Rodgers and the Colts under Manning are also dynasties, because they were constantly in the discussion for a possible Super Bowl just about every year. If it's a mixture of both, then what is the actual difference between those stretches of amazing teams and the teams the Pats would trot out on the field year after year?

I'm not saying we're going to win five or six under Mahomes, but if Pats douche says we have to shut up and suck Patriot dick because of what they did, then he needs to shut up and let events play out, because when you've got the best QB in football, a top 3 best-run organization, and the coaching infrastructure that the Chiefs do, if math is irrelevant to the success of the Patriots, then it's irrelevant to us.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by RealSNR

Dude. The point is that yes, you can absolutely bring up the bullshit calls that went both ways in that Patriots string of championships as a reason for why it is so highly mathematically unlikely to ever occur again. That's fine. Math is a reason. But what do Patriots writer and just about all Pats fans say, though?

"The least you could do is put some respect behind our accomplishments!"

"You can't do what we did because you don't have the coldness or ruthlessness of Belichick to let any and all of your best players walk away for nothing."

"What we've done is absolutely incredible! Cheating scandals aside, surely the frequency of our victories means something, right?"

So is it math or is it unbelievable accomplishment? And don't give me that, "Well, it's gotta be a mixture of both...." bullshit. If it's a mixture of both, then the Packers under Rodgers and the Colts under Manning are also dynasties, because they were constantly in the discussion for a possible Super Bowl just about every year. If it's a mixture of both, then what is the actual difference between those stretches of amazing teams and the teams the Pats would trot out on the field year after year?

I'm not saying we're going to win five or six under Mahomes, but if Pats douche says we have to shut up and suck Patriot dick because of what they did, then he needs to shut up and let events play out, because when you've got the best QB in football, a top 3 best-run organization, and the coaching infrastructure that the Chiefs do, if math is irrelevant to the success of the Patriots, then it's irrelevant to us.

Ok, but was I wrong?

[RealSNR]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

Ok, but was I wrong?

Your smug, sanctimonious response of, "Oops I forgot I'm supposed to hate the Patriots!" was pretty ****ing douchey

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by RealSNR

Your smug, sanctimonious response of, "Oops I forgot I'm supposed to hate the Patriots!" was pretty ****ing douchey

Did you miss the comment I was responding to?

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by RealSNR

Dude. The point is that yes, you can absolutely bring up the bullshit calls that went both ways in that Patriots string of championships as a reason for why it is so highly mathematically unlikely to ever occur again. That's fine. Math is a reason. But what do Patriots writer and just about all Pats fans say, though?

"The least you could do is put some respect behind our accomplishments!"

"You can't do what we did because you don't have the coldness or ruthlessness of Belichick to let any and all of your best players walk away for nothing."

"What we've done is absolutely incredible! Cheating scandals aside, surely the frequency of our victories means something, right?"

So is it math or is it unbelievable accomplishment? And don't give me that, "Well, it's gotta be a mixture of both...." bullshit. If it's a mixture of both, then the Packers under Rodgers and the Colts under Manning are also dynasties, because they were constantly in the discussion for a possible Super Bowl just about every year. If it's a mixture of both, then what is the actual difference between those stretches of amazing teams and the teams the Pats would trot out on the field year after year?

I'm not saying we're going to win five or six under Mahomes, but if Pats douche says we have to shut up and suck Patriot dick because of what they did, then he needs to shut up and let events play out, because when you've got the best QB in football, a top 3 best-run organization, and the coaching infrastructure that the Chiefs do, if math is irrelevant to the success of the Patriots, then it's irrelevant to us.

I think it's both.... the 'unbelievable accomplishment' part is all of the SB appearances over the course of almost 20 years with the same QB/coach combination (or just the same QB). The math is the idea that over the course of those almost 20 years, they could have won a couple fewer or a couple more SBs.

The math is of course a sliding scale... sliding from those accomplishments, even if they had only won 2 SBs, is still quite the slide down to Manning's two appearances and one victory or Rodgers' one appearance.

I believe luck plays a factor that's far greater than what many fans realize or want to accept, and that's at least part of the 'actual difference between those stretches of amazing teams' (and if the Colts had a decent defense at the time)... and dynasties are created or denied on the basis of luck to some extent (or even a large extent). The threshold is of course championships, and luck played a part in their 6, but it also played a part in the fact they don't have 8.

Whether Mahomes' career will be better or worse isn't completely tied to the number of championships he wins... he could end up with 12 appearances and 5 victories, or go 5 for 5, and some will say that's just as great or greater depending on the shit ton of other factors.... the Pats guy is saying the same things we may be saying in 15 or 20 years when there's the next "Chiefs dynasty" in the making, except of course with the shit load of sub context that's been included.

[lcarus]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I wonder if the rapid descent didn't do this to them.

They never got to get used to merely being good. They went from a SB champion in 2018 to completely irrelevant in 2020 (after an unceremonious 2019 dispatch). So they never just got to coast on their past successes and enjoy some pretty good, no longer great, football.

So they're just churlish dicks about it when people point out that they probably aren't gonna be worth a damn this year. So they want everyone to know that they USED to be good.

I really don't get it. Bulls fans weren't like this that I can recall and they're the nearest thing professional sports has to a similar dynasty of late.

You're right. It was a pretty rapid fall. Halfway through the season they were 8-0 and a lot of people were talking about how they might go undefeated and their defense was the 85 Bears.

Fast forward to week 17 when Miami comes into Foxborough with nothing to play for and knocks them out of a first round bye and then the Titans come into Foxborough the following week and knock them out forever.

via GIPHY

[DJJasonp]

Patriot fans - and their sportswriters - are like that 45 year old guy on the softball field that keeps telling everyone about how good they were in their 20s and 30s.

[KChiefs1]

Ross Tucker says Chiefs aren’t a dynasty...they won’t even repeat as champs.


https://youtu.be/AC1l-HqpbN8

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DJJasonp

Patriot fans - and their sportswriters - are like that 45 year old guy on the softball field that keeps telling everyone about how good they were in their 20s and 30s.