INDIANAPOLIS — Here’s the thing about dynasties in football: you only see them coming in retrospect. It’s easy now to use time as a crutch and think of the inevitability of the Lombardi Packers or the Bradshaw Steelers, the Montana 49ers and the Belichick Patriots, the teams that have dominated the decades from the ’60s through the Aughts.
Inevitability?
Before the Packers became the greatest team of the ’60s they were the most wretched team of the ’50s, Red Smith once famously describing the 1-10-1 swan song of Lombardi predecessor Ray McLean thusly: “They overwhelmed one opponent, underwhelmed 10, and whelmed one.”
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Before the Steelers became the Steelers, they had played 37 years in Pittsburgh and missed the playoffs 36 times. Before the 49ers became the 49ers, they’d been 10-38 their previous three years and 39-79 in eight straight playoff-free seasons before year of The Catch. And the Pats? The day Bill Belichick started becoming a genius, also known as the day Mo Lewis knocked Drew Bledsoe into tomorrow and forced Tom Brady out of oblivion, his record as Pats coach fell to 5-13.
So the question before us is a simple one, even as some consider which of these two Giants Super Bowls was more unlikely:
Why CAN’T the Giants become the next football dynasty?
Look, they already have a good head start if you want to crash the conversation: two championships in the books across the last five seasons. What qualifies as a dynasty? There are no strict specifications other than this: win a lot in as little time as possible. The Packers won three titles in a row and five in seven years and the Steelers four in six during eras when you could keep teams intact easier.
The Niners under Montana won four in nine, and the Belichick-Brady boys won three in four, same as the Aikman-Smith-Irvin Cowboys did from 1992-95. The standards are nebulous, but not unlike Potter Stewart’s famous phrase: you know it when you see it.
What do you see from the Giants?
They have already laid waste to the idea that football is too transient a sport to keep excellence intact. They had plenty of key elements on both title teams — starting with Eli Manning and Justin Tuck — but there were 35 new names on the active roster Sunday from Supe XLII; in any business that qualifies as heavy turnover.
So you know at the start that they are guided by a brain trust — headed by general manager Jerry Reese — adept at finding talent AND replacing it. They have a coach, Tom Coughlin, who will never again spend even one hour pondering his job security; that not only guarantees stability but it’s also a recruiting tool: veteran players want to play for coaches of championship pedigree. It may seem an ironic twist given where Coughlin’s reputation used to be, but he will be a player magnet now.
So many Dynasties That Never Were get waylaid by heartbreak, exposing glass jaws, and wither away. Two that leap to mind are the ’85 Bears and the ’86 Mets, single-season dominators who won a lot of regular-season games but never returned to the parade rout. By winning this year, the Giants already have dissolved the disappointments of 2008, when they were clearly the best team for 12 weeks, and 2010, when the Eagles-game collapse hand-delivered their slot in the playoffs to the Packers, who went on to win the championship.
In many ways, the Giants are set up better than their ancestors from 1986 and 1990, another team that won twice in five years. Those Giants, in private moments, firmly believe they should have at least one more title — probably 1989, when Flipper Anderson denied them — and maybe two, with much of the regret centered around 1987, when their title defense was obliterated by a strike.
That team, though, was in its final hurrah when it beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXV. Belichick, Coughlin and Bill Parcells were soon gone. The players were older. It was a rapidly shutting window 21 years ago. Not now. Not with this team, with an average age of 27.
Can they become a dynasty? Undoubtedly. The better question is this:
Why can’t they?
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com
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