NFL season opener: A run at history

When he coached the 49ers, back in the days of the team's dynasty, George Seifert used to philosophize every summer that what happened the year before meant nothing.

He would argue there was no carryover effect, that, even in the era before free agency, when the face of a team changed relatively little from year to year, every team started over again every season.

Bill Belichick, who has been successful at getting his team to look ahead instead of back, has made the same argument in recent years in New England. That is one reason the Patriots became just the second team to win the Super Bowl three times in four years; they never took it for granted.

Still, New England has managed to benefit from stability in an uncertain league. Belichick, quarterback Tom Brady and coordinators Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel were the blocks upon which the Patriots managed to build the NFL's first dynasty of the 21st century.

Now, however, as the Patriots try to become the first team in nearly 40 years to win three consecutive NFL titles, even the most cynical would have to concede, finally, that Belichick is correct: This really is a new year. A team that has won 32 of its last 34 games and a quarterback who has won all nine of his postseason starts are entering into what is, for them, new territory.

Gone are not only Weis and Crennel but linebacker Tedy Bruschi, the spiritual leader of the defense, and several other key players. The Patriots were the first team since the 1994 49ers to win the Super Bowl and lose both their coordinators; as we know, the 49ers have not returned to the Super Bowl since.

Nonetheless, it would be folly to write off the Patriots because of who remains: Belichick, who has proven he's the game's best coach; Brady, who has proven he's the game's premier money player, the Joe Montana of his day; and Scott Pioli, the personnel director, who always seems to come up with replacements who are even better than the key players they replace.

Since the Packers of the '60s, who are the NFL's only three-straight champions of the last 70 years, the 49ers in 1990 came closest to three in a row. They had a one-point lead on the Giants in the NFC Championship Game, but Roger Craig lost a fumble with 2:36 remaining, leading to a field goal that won the game for New York.

The made-up word, "three-peat," rarely has been heard since then. And certainly you won't hear it now, not from Belichick or Brady.