Don’t Say ‘Threepeat’ in Foxboro

FOXBORO, Mass. —  Tom Brady didn’t use the words “Super Bowl.” Nor did he say “three straight,” “threepeat” or anything suggesting the New England Patriots are on the cusp of history.

Just the same, he alluded to his team’s quest to become the first to win three consecutive Super Bowls. You just wouldn’t know it from reading the team’s transcript of his chat on a practice field with a small group of reporters -- that part was excised, either by Bill Belichick or someone acting on the coach’s orders.

Here’s what the Patriots’ star quarterback said on a pleasant August morning:

“Everyone knows what the goal is. But you’re so far away from that goal, you can’t begin to think about it. We haven’t even played an exhibition game yet, we haven’t played a regular-season game, we haven’t made the playoffs yet. That’s when you start thinking about it.”

Think, yes. Talk about it, no -- a point made clear when the transcript of Brady’s interview was e-mailed to the media a few hours later.

Zap!

Verboten!

At least Brady said something. Anyone who asks Belichick about it gets, at best, a dismissal and a nasty look. Lesser players won’t even broach the subject.

In truth, trying to forget February’s goal in August isn’t a bad idea.

When the Buffalo Bills went to consecutive Super Bowls from 1990 to 1993, Marv Levy would tell his players at the start of each camp to wipe the slate clean. They were starting from scratch and whatever they had done the previous season was forgotten.

But the Bills lost all four of those Super Bowls, three of them badly. The Patriots don’t have the stigma of losing.

Not only can they become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls, but if they win the Vince Lombardi Trophy again, it will be their fourth in five years, something not even the great Steelers of the ‘70s did. Pittsburgh won four in six years: 1974, ‘75, ’78 and ’79.

The others to win two straight: Green Bay in the first two Super Bowls after the 1966 and ’67 seasons; Miami, which went unbeaten in 1972 and then won the title again in ‘73; San Francisco in 1988 and ‘89; Dallas in ’92 and ’93 (and again in ‘95); and Denver in 1997 and ’98.

All were great teams, all dynasties of a sort, although the Packers of the late 1960s were an aging team without some of the players on Vince Lombardi’s great teams that won NFL titles in 1961, ’62 and ’65. In fact, Lombardi temporarily retired after the second Super Bowl win and the Pack went 6-7-1 under Phil Bengtson, his hand-picked successor.

The first five did it without the limitations of a salary cap. The Cowboys won at the start of the salary cap era, when teams could still keep their best players.

The Broncos? They had John Elway and Terrell Davis and still ended up being penalized by the league for salary cap circumvention. Elway retired after the second victory, Davis seriously injured his knee and the Broncos haven’t won a playoff game since.

But all those teams had one thing in common: They had to overcome injuries, the bad luck that plagues all teams in all sports, and the fact they were targets for every opponent, every week.

“It’s that kind of a thing. It comes down to the bounce of the ball,” says newly minted Hall of Famer Steve Young. “If the Patriots do it, it’s one of the magnificent things in sports.”

Young knows about bounces.

He took over at quarterback for an injured Joe Montana in the fourth quarter of the 1990 NFC championship game with the 49ers holding a 13-12 lead over the New York Giants.

He led the 49ers on a long drive, looking to put them on their way to Tampa for a chance to play Levy’s Bills for their third straight title. Then Roger Craig was hit by nose tackle Erik Howard and fumbled right into the arms of Lawrence Taylor with 2:46 left in the game.

The Giants drove down the field for Matt Bahr’s winning field goal and New York went on to win the Super Bowl when Buffalo’s Scott Norwood missed a field goal as time expired.

That game illustrates a phenomenon the Patriots don’t face in the salary-cap era -- teams that were good stayed good over an extended period of time.

You can argue that the 49ers, who won five titles between 1981 and 1994, were the greatest team of the Super Bowl era because they played in a conference that had a half-dozen strong teams over that span. NFC teams won every Super Bowl between the 1984 and 1996 seasons. During those 13 seasons, San Francisco won four, the Cowboys three, the Redskins and Giants two each. The Bears’ 1985 winner was one of the best teams ever.

The Cowboys also exemplified the strength of the NFC. They had their run of three wins in four seasons broken by a San Francisco team featuring Young and Jerry Rice that beat them, 38-28, in San Francisco to win the NFC title, then totally stampeded San Diego in the Super Bowl. Those Cowboys had lost coach Jimmy Johnson after the 1993 season in a dispute with owner Jerry Jones, and new coach Barry Switzer wasn’t close to Johnson in ability.

In the ‘70s, it was the AFC that dominated, led by the Dolphins and the Steelers.