The Patriots are the luckiest dynasty ever

We are days away from the Patriots likely winning their sixth title in 18 seasons of Brady and Belichick.

It has been horrible.

It has been lucky as hell. Lucky. As. Hell.

There is not a single Patriots fan who accepts the slightest argument that the last 18 years have been what they are for any other reason than "Brady's the GOAT. Belichick is the GOAT. Best franchise ever! If you disagree you're just a jealous hater." Reasoning with these people is impossible.

Sure, not everything has been luck. I grudgingly admit they're very good.

But my god, no franchise has EVER had such a long, lengthy run of stupendous good fortune, or luck.

It begins in the very game that kicked this whole thing off...the tuck rule game in January 2002. Oakland outplays the Pats in the snow, and late in the game they get a strip sack of Brady and a game-clinching fumble recovery. Game over. Except a replay somehow overturns the call due to an unknown rule that was also interpreted wrong. Then Adam Vinatieri somehow kicks a 40-some yard field goal through a blizzard, the game goes to OT and the Pats win.
In the AFC championship, the Pats win at Pittsburgh by getting both a punt return touchdown AND a blocked field goal return touchdown.
In the super bowl, we get Mike Martz inexplicably ignoring the best offensive weapon in the league, Marshall Faulk, for most of the game.
Then in the final drive, the refs call J.R. Redmond out of bounds when he isn't, and refuse to call an obvious intentional grounding on Brady. Either play called properly, that game.goes to OT and the Rams might win.

In the 2003 super bowl, Carolina and Jake Delhomme outplay the Pats and Brady, but John Kasay sends a kickoff put of bounds, gifting the Patriots great field position on the eventual game winning drive.
In the divisional round that year, the Titans Drew Bennett drops a wide open 4th down pass that would have at worst put the Titans in chip shot FG range.

In the 2004 super bowl, they get to play against an Eagles team with Terrell Owens playing on one leg. They get an Eagles team that managed the clock so.horribly that their final desperation drive had about 30 seconds left instead of a couple minutes.

In the 2006 playoffs at San Diego, Brady throws a pick that would have most likely ended the game...except on the runback Marlon McCree somehow fumbles the ball BACK to New England, who goes on to win.

In 2007 they get busted for Spygate, but nothing happens. A fine. A lost draft pick. A metaphorical slap on the wrist.
Their unbeaten run is aided by the refs handing them a game in Baltimore due to a phantom timeout.
The AFC playoffs break their way as the Steelers and Colts get knocked out early. The Chargers knock the Colts out, and in the process lose both Tomlinson and Rivers to major injuries. So in the AFC title game the Patriots face a Charger team with no Tomlinson, and a badly hobbled Rivers.

Luck mercifully ran out for them in the super bowl, and for really the next few years. But it roared back with a vengeance.

2011 AFC title game. Ravens outplay them, and are in position to win. Joe Flacco drops a perfect pass in to Lee Evans for a game winning touchdown....which he drops. But okay a FG still sends it to overtime....except Billy Cundiff Blair Walshes the thing and the Patriots win.

In 2014 they see Peyton Manning and the Broncos upset by the Colts, handing them an easy AFC title game at home. They get busted for Deflategate. But at least justice is about to prevail in the super bowl. Seattle has the ball on the brink of a game winning touchdown. All they have to do is run it one more time with Marshal Ly.....what.....they passed....and got picked off? The decade of the Patriots at least being denied a title is over.

Two years later it hits a.new level of ridiculousness. A 28-3 lead is not undone without a hell of a lot of help. The Falcons had every bit as much to do with what happened. Run the ball at all. Show even a trace of intelligence with a lead that is insurmountable 99% of the time. Nothing the Patriots do in the last 25 minutes of that game matter if not for the Falcons collective choke.
And even to get to that game they played a Steelers team without Leveon Bell.

Last year they're on the ropes against the Jaguars of all teams, but another collection of bad calls and bad opponent strategy bails them out.

And now this year. If the damn Texans hold onto that win in Philly the Pats don't get a bye week. They get a zero effort from the Chargers. Then the AFC title.game in KC is a joke. That trio of abominable calls(the Edelman muff, the.Hogan catch, the roughing the passer) all but giftwrap a win that STILL doesn't happen if Dee Ford doesn't line up a few inches offsides for no reason whatsoever.

Through it all, particularly this decade, the Patriots are routinely gifted easy divisional round games(the Tebow Broncos being the most absurd one). They are gifted top seeds due in no small part to the routinely embarrassing AFC East, which aside from the Jets has never put up any fight(and even the Jets have been horsebleep since 2011).

It is SO much easier to do what they have done when the margin for error is so much bigger. None of the other major NFL dynasties have ever had anything close to this level of ineptitude in their opponents. I could give the Patriots credit for.2001 through 2007. There were legit great teams they had to get through(Colts, Steelers, Chargers, even the Jaguars were better than most 2010s.AFC teams). But the 2011 through.2018 AFC has been a joke, aside from the Peyton Manning Broncos, who were the only other truly good team in the AFC, and who to no surprise.always  eat the Pats in the playoffs. The Steelers have badly underachieved. The Andrew Luck Colts have barely gotten started. The Ravens fell off after Ray Lewis retired. The Chiefs looked like a possibly formidable foe, but their defense turned out to be catastrophically bad. No team has stepped up. The Patriots have basically been the politician running unopposed.

They have had everything in their favor. If anything the fact they're  playing in only their 9th super bowl of this era should be taken as a surprise.