FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — From 1947-62, the Yankees won 10 World Series. They were hated even before George Steinbrenner showed up as the biggest, baddest Boss with the biggest mouth and wallet in the land.
From 1957-69, the Bill Russell Celtics won 11 NBA titles and haughty Red Auerbach lit up that obnoxious victory cigar every damn time.
And now we have Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, knocking on the door of history, stalking a fifth Lombardi Trophy as desperately as they stalked their first together 15 long years ago.
Belichick and Brady, attempting to become the first head coach-quarterback tandem to win five Super Bowl championships should they beat the Steelers on Sunday night in their sixth straight AFC Championship game.
Belichick and Brady, Spygate and Deflategate to Roger Goodell and all those who consider them merciless emperors of this NFL Evil Empire.
The Patriots are not the Lombardi Packers, who defended the honor of the NFL against the AFL in Super Bowls I and II.
They are not the John Wooden UCLA dynasty that won 10 national titles from 1964-75, in part because it is easier to like a coach who says, “I am just a common man who is true to his beliefs.”
They are not the 1991-98 Bulls, who won six NBA titles mostly because Air Jordan was a phenomenon who left us breathless. They are not the 1996-2000 Yankees, because it was so hard not to like Joe Torre and Derek Jeter.
The Patriots are the team we love to hate, mostly because of Spygate, and because of Deflategate, and in one way it is a shame that it has to be Patriots-against-the-world, because we never will see sustained success … hell, dominance … like this again in the salary-cap era.
Mostly because we never will see a coach like this and a quarterback like this, much less together for this long.
Belichick is either the greatest coach since Lombardi or the greatest coach of all time if he were to capture that fifth Lombardi Trophy, and Brady will be the G.O.A.T if he forces the commissioner who suspended him four games at the start of the season to hand him that trophy.
It has been difficult to warm up to Belichick because he doesn’t care how most outsiders view him. When they handed out charisma, he was last in line. He is the anti-Casey Stengel, you could look it up. He is who he is, like it or not. You won’t see him on “Dancing With the Stars.” You won’t hear him making guarantees. He has no interest in winning the press conference. Only the games. Every game.
He has no equal when it comes to identifying the ideal Patriot, brainwashing 53 men and preparing them for every contingency and almost always putting them in the best positions to succeed. With the help of elite assistant coaches who can overcome the storm of losing Rob Gronkowski, Jamie Collins and Chandler Jones.
Brady is playing at a level no 39-year-old quarterback, certainly not Peyton Manning last season, ever has. He is playing the way everyone expected him to play, on his personal revenge tour, following the commissioner’s punishment that was supposed to jeopardize what is now the Patriots’ eight-year stranglehold on the AFC East title. Playing this way even without Gronkowski.
Belichick and Brady, Killer Bs stalking another Lombardi Trophy, and Killer Bs on the Steelers — Big Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell — standing in their way, on legs their head coach, Mike Tomlin, vows have not been wobbled by any distraction Brown’s foolhardy Facebook Live video that may have caused.
“I feel like everybody here feels like they’re a pretty good team, but we definitely feel that we can beat these guys,” Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier told The Post. “Everybody just has to bring their A game.”
Shazier was asked: Do you guys not like them?
“I don’t think we like any team in the NFL, honestly,” Shazier said. “Yeah, we probably don’t like those guys. They got us the last few times, and we definitely want to make sure we get our chance to get ’em back.”
Good luck. They’ll need it. Just as virtually all the others have needed it against Belichick and Brady.