GLENDALE, Ariz.-- --The New England Patriots made us ponder the true meaning of perfection for much of the NFL season, and for what? So they could suddenly look mortal in the Super Bowl that would have cemented one of football's greatest dynasties.
Maybe it's just as well.
Their march toward the first 19-0 season had made us all a little uncomfortable, what with the juxtaposition of competitive perfection with the flawed personalities that dotted the Patriots' payroll.
Better to celebrate the youthful exuberance of Eli Manning than the win-at-all-cost ethic of Bill Belichick. Better to let the 1972 Miami Dolphins pop open their first-loss champagne than argue into eternity whether the Patriots deserved to be considered the greatest team in history after Spygate and Rodney Harrison's substance-abuse suspension and, well, why even go on?
The Patriots were beginning to shake off the tawdry mantle of Spygate when a new allegation surfaced this weekend. The Boston Herald, citing an unnamed source, reported that Belichick's minions taped a St. Louis Rams practice the day before the 2002 Super Bowl.
Who knows how deep this thing goes, but if the Pats had completed their undefeated season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell might have had to ask Bud Selig if he could borrow a couple of asterisks before Major League Baseball runs out.
Even though the Lombardi Trophy will be safe in New York and the Giants will go down among football history's greatest giant killers, there's still the small matter of how the Patriots will be viewed by history.
Do we treat them as Goodell did this week and just act as if Belichick committed a technical violation by taping signals during the season opener against the New York Jets, which would make any question about the legitimacy of the still-impressive Patriots dynasty just so much ethical nitpicking?
Or do we hold Belichick and the AFC champions to a standard more befitting a team that almost did something no NFL team has ever done before?
The right answer is probably somewhere in between. The Patriots' terrific - but unconsummated - season certainly was not the result of the lingering camcorder conspiracy, and it isn't fair to discount New England's three championships this decade based on an unsubstantiated allegation about the 2002 Super Bowl.
It is fair, however, to wonder whether Belichick spent too much time in his youth watching Mission: Impossible and figuring out ways to make the end justify the means.
If it eventually is established that the Patriots stole the Rams' red-zone plays before the first of their three Super Bowl wins, there should be hell to pay, and that definitely would sully everything Belichick has accomplished.
Fortunately, that's a subject for another day, because the Giants have taken their place among the greatest party poopers of all time with last night's victory. This win was every bit as impressive as the one that Joe Namath and the Jets pulled off in 1969 to put the American Football League on the map.
And Manning emerged from the shadow of his big brother with a workmanlike performance and a late touchdown drive that proved he really did turn an evolutionary corner during the Giants' up-and-down season.
He led the Giants into the playoffs and presided over an unprecedented string of 10 straight victories on the road, including playoff upsets over the solidly favored Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers.
Last night, he conducted the Giants' offense with a steely calm beyond his years and silenced anyone who previously doubted his some-thought-inherited status as an elite quarterback.
He certainly wasn't perfect, but that's OK.
Now, nobody is.
peter.schmuck@baltsun.com
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