IRVING, Texas (AP) — The New England Patriots drove home the point, Sunday, that they’ve been making all season: there is no team in the NFL like them.
No, not even the Indianapolis Colts, the league’s only other unbeaten side.
Yes, the Patriots’ 48-27 win over Dallas was more difficult than beating teams like the Jets, Bills and Browns. And yes, the Cowboys actually took a 24-21 lead at the start of the second half.
But there was never a point during the biggest and most hyped game of the 2007 NFL season where the Patriots didn’t seem in control against a team that was 5-0 when they started.
Once New England took back the lead — five minutes after Dallas had gone ahead — it scored on its last five possessions.
All of that despite the loss of running back Sammy Morris, already a sub for the injured Laurence Maroney, and tight end Benjamin Watson.
Despite having no running game, after three quarters, the Patriots had 31 points and 24 rushing yards, a rarity in a game where the general rule is if you can’t run, you can’t score.
The Patriots, however, routinely overcome stats like that, largely because of Tom Brady, whose five touchdown passes increased his season total to 21 and made him the first NFL quarterback ever to have three or more touchdown passes in each of the first six games of a season.
“Not only is he the most accurate quarterback I’ve every played with but he’s one of the smartest,” said Wes Welker, who with Randy Moss and Donte’ Stallworth have given Brady the receiving corps he’s never had, even in three Super Bowl wins.
Said Moss, the most heralded of the those additions: “Peyton Manning has had his three receivers. Now Tom has his.”
Dallas spent a lot of time early concentrating on Moss — “the other 81,” as Terrell Owens called him last week.
No problem. Brady simply threw to Stallworth, who had seven catches for 136 yards and a touchdown, and to Wes Welker, who had 11 catches for a career-high 124 yards and two scores.
Despite all that, Dallas stayed with the Patriots into the third quarter, which is closer than any of New England’s first five victims stayed. When the Cowboys took the lead after the first drive of the second half, it was only the second time this season the Patriots have trailed — they were behind Buffalo early in a game they eventually won 38-7.
New England has now scored 230 points in six games and allowed 92, averaging 38.3 a game and never scoring fewer than 34.
Its defense gave up a few big plays Sunday, but rarely seemed on its heels. When it had to stop the Cowboys it did, allowing just three points after Dallas took that lead in the second half.
“They gave me so many different looks, it was kind of like …,” Dallas quarterback Tony Romo said. Then he stopped, unable to come up with specific words to describe what Bill Belichick’s multiple looks were doing to him.
The next Game of the Century for the Patriots comes in three weeks at Indianapolis, where they came within a final drive of going to the Super Bowl last season — when they didn’t have Moss, Welker and Stallworth. The Colts, who were off Sunday, are 5-0 but their wins haven’t been nearly as dominant as New England’s.
Beyond that, who knows?
The Patriots beat the best team in the NFC Sunday and afterward said all the right things, like Brady, who was pressed a few times about what it would be like to break Manning’s record of 49 TD passes in a season.
“I don’t think like that,” he kept saying, which is exactly what Manning said two years ago, when he broke Dan Marino’s record of 48. “If we’re on the 1-yard line, I’d just as soon hand it off and get the touchdown. We’re a team. Individual goals happen because of opportunity.”
The Patriots’ opportunity this year is to win a fourth Super Bowl. It also would be Brady’s fourth, tying Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.
Every New England player now dismisses that with the “one game at a time line.”
Of course.
But unless Brady gets hurt, it’s even money.
Anyone who watched Sunday’s game knows that.
Source: www.sportingnews.com
