Imagine you're Tim Lewis, the Pittsburgh Steelers' defensive coordinator. The New England Patriots have just thrown 10 straight passes en route to what will be a stunning 30-14 win.

"They gotta run on this play, and I'm putting seven men on the line," he's thinking.

Nope.

Now, the Pats have thrown 15 straight passes.

"These SOBs have to run it now. I'm stacking the line again."

Uh-uh.

Twenty straight passes.

"If these bastards don't run on this down, I'll eat my goddamn clipboard!"

Chow down, Timmy.

After 25 consecutive passes, the Pats finally ran the ball, but by that time Lewis was talking to himself and drooling down his sweatshirt, and the game was over. This sequence of logic-defying play is a prime example why everyone in the NFL is looking toward Foxboro and wondering what kind of magic is going on. New England earned a reputation last year as a hard-nosed, all-for-one, one-for-all bunch of overachievers when the team supposedly stole its last three games from the Oakland Raiders, Steelers, and the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl to miraculously win the NFL title.

Of course, the underdog Pats didn't at all deserve it. The Raiders screamed that New England got a home-job hummer call, negating a fumble that would have wrapped the game. Everyone knows the Steelers were a better team . . . on paper. And the Rams were hands-down the best team in football. The underdog Patriots were just flat-out lucky.

Well, the dogs are loose this year, and they shoved their underrated status so far up the favored Steelers' and hated New York Jets' freckles in the first two games this year that you could read the writing by looking in their eyeballs. Tom Brady isn't a one-hit wonder for his end-of-season heroics, including the legendary "Suck on this, John Madden" drive with just over a minute left for the winning field goal in the Super Bowl. Opposing players and coaches say flat-out that the Pats are playing at a level above any other team's imagination.

Head coach Bill Belichick may actually be a defensive coaching genius, in a profession that claims to include more Mensa members than a convention of nuclear physicists. His D has been described as "state of the art." Other coaches want their teams to simply emulate it, but they can't. The constantly shifting looks given by the Pats to other teams, from play-to-play and game-to-game, have players and offensive coordinators playing with wildly twirling eyes.

Steelers Quarterback Kordell Stewart was mentally undressed by the Pats' changing patterns in the opener (as he was in last year's AFC championship game), and Stewart threw interceptions on the team's first two possessions. And Jets QB Vinny Testaverde, no sharp tack to begin with, was so flummoxed even prepping for what he would see on the field last Sunday that he started talking in tongues in an interview three days before the game. He's seen Belichick work in Cleveland, New York, and now Foxboro, and he still doesn't have a clue. Big Vinny still doesn't know where Tebucky Jones came from when he blitzed from the right, stripped him, and took the resulting fumble in for a 17-0 lead that essentially said, "Game over, New York."

But the offense is now also gearing up for New England, which in the past has been heavily reliant on it's D and special teams to set the table for the O and/or put points on the board. Nothing epitomized the Patriots' approach to the game more than their mass introduction in the Super Bowl, which gained them more fan respect than can be measured. Their offense has no real stars, except perhaps the selfless Troy Brown and nouveau glamour boy Brady. They do have some fierce, but unknown offensive linemen who consistently put a beating on their opposing numbers, keeping Brady as safe and sound as one could hope.

Brady may get the cover shots, but his head has remained the same size and screwed on straight. Along with Doug Flutie and Peyton Manning, he's one of the very few star QBs who actually concentrate on and execute ball fakes, which has a telling effect on the reaction time of the defense. It's a level of attention to detail that shows dedication to playing the game right, and doing whatever might add to your chances of winning -- even if it's not technically "cool." Brady's flailing leap, as if the center's snap had gone over his head in the shotgun formation -- when, in fact, it was short-snapped sideways to running back Kevin Faulk -- was almost laughable. It nonetheless led to a good gain while Jets' players were wondering where the hell the ball was at. Add to this reverses, fake reverses, and the aforementioned 25 straight passes, and opposing defenders don't know whether to crap or go blind.

With an impressive 2-0 start under their belts, the Pats have adopted "humility" as their watchword, and Belichick is issuing more alerts about complacency than Donald Rumsfeld and Tom Ridge combined. But on September 22, when they take on Kansas City (the "Chefs," as a friend's eight-year old son calls them) at Gillette Stadium, they won't be dogs this year for the first time, coming in as eight-and-a-half point favorites.

Will it go to their heads? Doubtful. This team, in addition to having hitters, unsung guys who make big plays, down-and-dirty scrappers who don't give an inch in the trenches, and the smartest defense on Planet Earth, has pride. They have been there, done it, and are ready to do it again.

And like a pack of dogs, they all run -- and get introduced -- together.

Issue Date: September 20 - 26, 2002