A Patriots' Fan

On Sunday afternoon I became a Patriots fan. When Tom Brady got up from one knee and flipped the football to the referee, I put the great Chargers in my pocket and indulged in a moment of wondering just how good they will be this fall.

A great team lost to a great team, by a score that fairly measured the difference between the two. 21-12. As beat up as they were, it is not difficult to imagine the Chargers winning the football game. Under the conditions, it would have gone down as a victory for the ages. But there would have been sadness here, for the Patriots.

What a special team they are. They have been constant underdogs, for at least the last six weeks, against the achievement they sought. Football teams do not go 19-0 in the National Football League in the year 2007-8. Yet every week, the Patriots found a way. In his Boston Globe column after the championship game, Bob Ryan listed the scores of the Patriots' last seven games: 24-20. 31-28. 27-24. 20-10. 38-35. 31-20. 21-12. In that sequence, Ryan wrote, the Patriots embraced "all the classical virtues of just about every great team we've ever known."

The Chargers, a pretty great team themselves, who know something about being the underdog, understand that better than anybody. What other can I do, as a Chargers fan, but love the Patriots today?

I wrote a book about a winning streak. From 1954 into 1957, the Abilene High School Eagles won 49 straight games, including three Texas state championships, under coach Chuck Moser. I was not on those teams, but I played for Moser on the 1958 and '59 teams and later wrote about him in my tenure as a sports writer at The Abilene Reporter-News.

When the 1954-57 Eagles were named "The Team of the Century" in Texas high school football, I decided to write a book about the streak. The streak was the reason for the book, but the story that emerged was how they played the game. And that became the book's title: "Warbirds – How They Played the Game." Those teams had some great players, but how they played the game was mostly about the coach.

I feel that way today about the Patriots. They have some great players, but how they play the game is mostly about the coach. I am positive a book about Bill Belichick and the 2007-8 winning streak is already being written (Bob Ryan would be a good one) and will be published before summer, and I look forward to specific knowledge about him as a coach. From what I know, I believe I will be reading a few things that I will feel I have read before, somewhere.

I know that, first and foremost, Bill Belichick is organized. I know that Belichick commanded his team to play one game at a time. He still, in today's papers, refuses to rhapsodize on a winning streak. I know that his team will hit, and they will hustle. When you watch the Patriots, they run til the whistle blows. Sometimes it looks like they must have more than 11 players on the field.

What Belichick as a coach believes – and I am sure of this – is that his sole job is to provide his team its best chance to win. Everything he does strives for perfection. He knows perfection is not achieveable, but if his team can approach 75 or 80 percent of perfection, the team will have a distinct advantage over an opponent.

He didn't need to cheat. I think it will turn out not to have been his idea. He was responsible, as the head coach, and he knew he had to take the fall or lose an intangible, a bond with his players, that was more valuable to him than a $500,000 fine. The Abilene coach, Chuck Moser, said all good coaches had one thing in common: they could all develop aggressiveness in their players, yet be loved by the players. With the cheating behind him, Belichick's players in their organized, tight-knit community, went out and won their next 18 games in a row. That's the headline, but I'll be damned surprised if the book doesn't turn out to be about Belichick, and how his team played the game.