FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The New England Patriots might go ahead and lose Super Bowl LI to the Atlanta Falcons, and it won't make a bit of difference. The Patriots would be losing to the Patriot Way, because the Atlanta roster was assembled by two executives, Thomas Dimitroff and Scott Pioli, who learned the trade from their hooded yoda, Bill Belichick.
No kidding here: Dimitroff used to cut grass for Belichick in Cleveland in the 1990s. All these years later, perhaps his Falcons will mow down the Patriots in Houston and deny Belichick and Tom Brady their record fifth Super Bowl ring.
But win, lose or draw in two weeks, it's already clear that New England has never had a team more representative of its selfless and resilient dynasty than this one, including the 18-0 team that crashed against the New York Giants' front line nine years ago. That team had Brady and Randy Moss at the height of their powers, playing all 18 games before what ended up as a haunting trip to the Arizona desert.
This team? Brady, at 39, was suspended for 25 percent of the regular season. Rob Gronkowski, this roster's closest thing to Moss as an all-planet player, effectively missed 11 games, including the divisional-round victory over the Texans and Sunday night's 36-17 shredding of the Steelers.
The Patriots were also without their 2016 first-round draft pick, swiped by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the penalty phase of the Deflategate case. Who knows what that former collegian would've done for New England, but chances are he would've done something fairly useful.
So how did the Patriots do it? The Patriots did it the way they always do it.
Chris Hogan, an undrafted college lacrosse player (OK, OK, he did play one year of football for that SEC powerhouse Monmouth), reminded the three NFL teams that cut him that they swung and missed pretty badly by catching two touchdown passes and gaining 117 of his 180 receiving yards in the first half.
Dion Lewis, a 5-foot-8 back once drafted in the fifth round by another franchise (Philadelphia), did the kind of sales job that non-Patriots rarely do on his fake run-and-lateral to Brady that sucked in the Pittsburgh defense and resulted in a 34-yard scoring pass to Hogan.
Duron Harmon, one of New England's call-ups from its Triple-A team at Rutgers (Why is Belichick the only coach in America who routinely makes Rutgers recruits look like Alabama and Clemson recruits?), delivered the kind of hustle play non-Patriots rarely deliver on his touchdown-saving tackle of Jesse James, which cost the Steelers four points.
Brady, drafted 199th overall by Belichick in a different life, again made a mockery of the Pittsburgh defense by throwing for 384 yards and three touchdowns. That leaves his career box score against Mike Tomlin and staff to read like this: 22 touchdowns, 0 picks.
In the end, the gathered New Englanders chanted for Goodell the way they once chanted for Roger Clemens at Fenway. Only this "Rah-jah ... Rah-jah" was the equivalent of the "Rah-jah ... Rah-jah" reserved for Clemens when he was pitching for the Yankees -- not the Red Sox.
Brady claimed that he didn't hear the chant and that he heard only the fans' singing for Belichick's buddy, Jon Bon Jovi. "That was pretty cool," the quarterback said. It was also pretty untrue. Brady's friends will admit what Brady won't -- he's dying to stick it to Goodell by winning another ring -- and so of course the quarterback heard the fans taunt the absent commissioner and loved every syllable of it.
Goodell decided to attend the NFC Championship Game in Atlanta, where he surely felt more comfortable in the Falcons' dome sweet dome. The commissioner benched Brady for four games for his alleged role in Deflategate, and even though Belichick and owner Robert Kraft were cleared of wrongdoing in the investigation, Goodell also seized two draft picks and a million bucks.
The Patriots' machine raged on regardless. In a league designed to prevent extended dominance through the draft, the schedule, the salary cap and free agency (never mind NFL sanctions), New England won at least 10 games for the 14th consecutive season. The Patriots have won 16 out of 18 (playoffs included), in fact, and they booked their seventh Super Bowl trip in the Belichick/Brady era, a league record for both coach and quarterback.
"This didn't start at 6:40 tonight," a giddy Brady said in his postgame news conference. "This thing started in April."
Football players are forever saying this kind of hokey stuff. The Patriots actually mean it.
"Yeah, this is a good day," Brady said. "We're going to the Super Bowl, man. S---, you've got to be happy now."
Happy couldn't begin to describe the mood of Gronk's replacement, Martellus Bennett, who had appeared in two playoff games in eight seasons before landing in Foxborough. Even though his brother, Michael, won a Super Bowl and played in two for Seattle, Bennett said a trip to the big game "never felt like an attainable goal in the past." But as they've done with many newbies before him, the Patriots rebooted Bennett's expectations and priorities and taught him that individual stats are meaningless when measured against the team's annual mission statement.
At his locker Sunday night, Bennett joked about how he would FaceTime his eliminated brother in Hawaii and "kind of rub it in his face" -- the Super Bowl, that is, not some sand from the beach.
"I've got the winning disease right now, and I'm enjoying this one," Bennett said. "I don't need the antidote now."
The Patriots have now won 17 of 20 home playoff games with Brady and Belichick. Seventeen of 20. That's 85 freakin' percent. They won No. 17 in a London fog and mist that all but swallowed the Steelers whole. Tomlin, who called the Patriots a nasty name last week and effectively accused them of tampering with his headset during his last visit in 2014, did not try to blame the no-show on the East Boston man who triggered the fire alarm in the Steelers' hotel in the dead of night, Auerbach-style. Tomlin didn't blame the result on Le'Veon Bell's groin injury, either.
He just said the Patriots are AFC champs, "and rightfully so." The Patriots won their conference despite dealing away Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins, former picks in the first and second rounds, and they won despite the Gronk injury and the Brady ban.
On Sunday night, with his 10th Super Bowl trip as an NFL head coach or assistant secured, Belichick said all the things you'd expect Belichick to say about his players' commitment to team-centric goals. But he actually issued a better summary of his feelings the day after Pittsburgh's previous trip to Gillette Stadium two years ago, when Tomlin went off about his headset in a week when ESPN.com and Sports Illustrated reported on some alleged Patriots black-ops tactics.
The New England program, Belichick said that day, "is built on competition and trying to improve every day and trying to work hard. And it's not built on excuses."
The Patriots had their share of available excuses for failure this season, and they embraced none of them. In the immediate wake of the firing of Colts general manager Ryan Grigson, the man who "turned in" the Patriots in Deflategate, some New Englanders might describe this triumph as a redemptive, full-circle experience.
It's bigger than that. It's better than that. The 2016 Patriots aren't as talented as their 2007 forebears, but they hurdled more obstacles on the road to the Super Bowl.
They don't have to beat Atlanta's version of the Patriot Way in two weeks. They will win just by showing up.