A Discussion About Winning

As promised I intend to post on a wide variety of topics. Here is another of my interests. Football. My longtime favourite NFL team the New England Patriots has just extended its record for consecutive wins to 20. The former record was 18 held by 5 different teams.

Now the fact is, that this is an even more remarkable achievement because of the rules in place to ensure parity in Football. They work, and as such keep any team from becoming significantly stronger then the rest.

You see the Pats, winners of 2 Superbowls in the past 3 years really aren't better then their competition, at least on record. There are no superstars in New England, no Payton Manning's, no Michael Vick's, just a bunch of football players, playing their hearts out. In fact if you look at the statistics so far this year, no one on New England is even near the top in any category.

So whats their secret? I believe it is the players faith in their coaching staff. Bill Belichick has convinced them that if they play at their best, and follow the game plan, on any given Sunday they can beat any other team.

The inevitability of a winning streak is that it must eventually come to an end. That could have happened this week. Seattle is quite good, and it may well happen next week when they play the 5-0 Jets.

But in the long run it doesn't matter. The fact is, at this moment the Patriots ARE the best team in football. And not a star amongst them.