| Benjamin Haley. 30th January, 2008 - 12:35 pm
 Sixty Minutes. It began as a rallying cry.
It was a perfect exhortation to inspire persistent effort for a Patriots' team who remembered all too well the result of failing to play for the duration. In the AFC Championship last year against the Colts, the Patriots only played half a game. That isn’t a knock on their character – they eventually just succumbed to a mixture of illness and injury that an exceptional Colts' team took advantage of. It was a Colts' team that arguably should never have found themselves in a 21-3 hole against one of the least talented Patriots' teams fielded in the Belichick era, anyway, especially not after the Patriots arrived bruised, beaten, and fatigued from a West Coast trip. Though the swings in the score were dramatic and there was a clear fulcrum on which fortune swung, the final score was probably reflective of the quality of each team.
Still, never attempt to explain to these Patriots that perhaps they were not good enough. What has always characterized these Patriots' teams from their days as the opportunistic underdogs to their current position as the top ones has been an unwavering confidence. Certainly don’t offer them the opportunity to use injuries as an excuse. The last person who tried to explain away their failure was Marty Schottenheimer, who two years ago commented that their amazing attrition rate was perhaps derailing the Patriots' season, was promptly chastised by a Patriots' team who wanted no excuses given. His team the following year – talented, cocky, and at home – lost in the playoffs to the Patriots.
Let the record show that the 2006 New England Patriots lost the AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts because they failed to play sixty minutes. They say that the winners write the histories of the world. In the NFL, coaches write whatever histories they deem helpful, win or lose. Belichick watched the tape over and over, saw names on defensive jerseys that shouldn’t have seen the field outside of a pre-season game, and came to a conclusion: they had failed to win because his players hadn’t given him a whole game’s worth of effort. No excuses. No “ifs.” No “ands.” No “buts.” With this idea in hand, he distilled the Colts' game down to one essential message to his team: “Sixty minutes.” It was chastisement wrapped in inspiration. When he got his team to understand this, to adopt the new mantra, to echo him on the sidelines, the record was written. As Napoleon told us, “History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
Sixty Minutes. It became a point of contention.
For a team that had lost the previous year for failing to do so it had to be almost farcical when others suggested, during a particularly pointed stretch of dominance, that perhaps sixty minutes was a bit too long for them to play. It was certainly too long for Tom Brady, who a few thought should have been removed in the third quarter of some games. Belichick, as his unwavering custom, ignored the hue and disdained the cry. He often times pulled Brady, but the rest of his starters got very used to playing sixty minutes. Because of this, as the scores tightened, they were a team prepared to go the distance. If any single coaching philosophy propelled them to a perfect season, it was probably this one. They would play sixty minutes. Even when it offended the tender sensibilities of other professional athletes. Even when it risked injury. Probably especially when it went against the sense of fair play that those in the media hold so very dear.
Belichick cared little for outside voices saying things that amounted to pleas for clemency. An already defeated foe could not derail them. Anyone holding a microphone was equally immaterial. Injuries were out of their control, and resting players to avoid injury was a formula for losing. This team, one of the most talented ever assembled, the coach knew, could only lose if they failed to play for sixty minutes. So he didn’t let them.
Sixty minutes. It stands as an opportunity.
Consider, for a moment, the number of issues that could have manifested themselves into performance-affecting distractions: Rodney Harrison’s HGH suspension, Spygate, running up the score, the talk of blueprints, the ’72 Dolphins, a Randy Moss restraining order, the dirty play controversy that started with Vince Wilfork and moved right on the defensive line to Richard Seymour (who for the record was also accused of head butting a Chargers' coach), and Tom Brady’s boot. All have been dismissed with aplomb. The Patriots are content to issue their official response every week when they play.
What has been equally amazing as their play on the field has been their reluctance to make grandiloquent claims off it. If there is one team who deserved to feel its oats, it was this one, yet they abstained. Not that history shouldn’t have told us to expect this. It has been their creed since the beginning of Belichick’s tenure. New York Giants' players have already, before the Super Bowl media sessions have even started, made more comments that could be interpreted in an incendiary manner than the 2001 Patriots' team to which they are often compared. Will this affect the game in a meaningful way? Unlikely, but then there are enough examples – Anthony Smith, Freddie Mitchell, Shawne Merriman – to make it clear that the Patriots, while not the most loquacious during the week before a game, are fine listeners. They talk, but they generally do so only when the issue is decided.
This season, especially, it has become noticeably clear to them that what they can control exists only between the white lines and extends for only an hour’s worth of clock. They cannot shout others down, but they can shut them up – the critics, the questioners, the conspiracy theorists, the cynics, the trodden, the jealous, the bombastic, Mercury Morris, the purported architects, the Judas' – all of them. To do so would require only that they play sixty minutes -- a task they’ve rendered routine over the past eighteen games -- one more time. Don’t think that they’re not aware of how far away perfection resides and, simultaneously, how close they are to grasping it. Sixty minutes.
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