Few teams in professional sports have such a rich history of recent results that fans can argue about which championship team was the greatest.
But the Patriots can take it one step further than that. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick anchored a 20-year dynasty that yielded 17 playoff appearances and six Super Bowls. No team has consistently dominated the NFL odds market like the New England Patriots.
Here, I offer my take on a topic that's undoubtedly been debated countless times across many a New England barstool – if you had to rank the Pats teams of the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era, which ones are the best?
It's a testament to what the Pats have accomplished this century that there are Super Bowl-winning teams that don't even make the cut.
Regular Season Record: 11-5
Postseason Result: Won Super Bowl vs. Rams, 13-3
In November 2018, the Rams beat the Chiefs, 54-51, in one of the greatest Monday Night Football games of all time; three months later, the Rams were nearly shut out in the Super Bowl.
Bill Belichick won his sixth and final Super Bowl with a masterful defensive game plan that completely shut down a thermonuclear Sean McVay-led offense. For a dynasty that has assembled a long line of championship memories, this low-scoring title game may end up remembered as merely the boring championship.
All championships are created equal in the eyes of history, but the truth is that the memories of a Super Bowl punt fest mask the fact that this Pats team was not a vintage squad. By 2018, the cracks in the foundation were starting to show. The defense was great, but Brady had a rapidly degrading cast of playmakers around him.
Regular Season Record: 10-6
Postseason Result: Lost Wild Card Game vs. Ravens, 33-14
This was an excellent example of the value of a first-round bye. The 2009 Pats team gets a bit lost historically, but this was one of the better teams of the period between the two Super Bowl cluster periods.'
The 2009 Pats had great balance, owning top-6 NFL marks in scoring offense and scoring defense. Simple rating system (SRS) ranks this team ahead of five of New England's six Super Bowl-winning teams.'
But a good-not-great record in the regular season left the Pats contending with a familiar playoff foe: John Harbaugh's Ravens. And on a 20-degree afternoon in New England in January 2010, the Ravens piled up 234 yards on the ground against New England's defense, sending the Pats to a rare early playoff exit.
Regular Season Record: 13-3
Postseason Result: Lost Super Bowl vs. Eagles, 41-33
In hindsight, a high-scoring Super Bowl game between the Eagles and the 2017 Patriots should have been one of the easiest NFL bets of all time. New England boasted the No. 1 offense in the NFL in 2017, thanks in large part to a prime Rob Gronkowski year, but the defense was among the worst of the Belichick era.
That ultimately proved a mortal flaw in Super Bowl LII, where Nick Foles and the Eagles outran what the Patriots' offense could do against their own defense.