Third Time’s the Trouble

Fifteen years removed from the most bitter defeat of his NFL career, Brent Jones has now identified a challenge even more difficult than winning three consecutive Super Bowls:

Coming to grips with not winning three consecutive Super Bowls.

Jones, a former Pro Bowl tight end for the San Francisco 49ers, is still tormented by the thought that his team collapsed on the doorstep of history, frittering away the 1990 NFC championship game to the New York Giants in the final two minutes. The 49ers had won two Super Bowls in a row and looked to be on their way to an unprecedented third when, just like the football that popped loose from Roger Craig’s grasp on the would-be clock-killing drive, the dream rolled away. The Giants left Candlestick Park with a 15-13 victory, winning on a 42-yard field goal as time expired.

“I still haven’t gone back and watched the game,” Jones said. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I just can’t go back and watch how it ends.”

Seven teams have been in position to execute a Super Bowl helmet trick, and seven have failed. Green Bay had its chance, as did Miami, Pittsburgh (twice), San Francisco, Dallas and Denver. In each of the past five decades, at least one franchise has repeated as Super Bowl champion. Now, after winning the title in the 2003 and 2004 seasons, the New England Patriots will have their crack at the record books, a chance to prove their ring dynasty is weightier than any other in league history.

Already, the Patriots are facing some imposing hurdles. Gone are their offensive and defensive coordinators, both of whom became head coaches elsewhere, and their two best linebackers. Meanwhile, the team spent the off-season locked in a contract squabble with its best defensive player.

All of which means ... the Patriots remain the team to beat. They are led by Tom Brady, whose 48-14 record gives him the highest regular-season winning percentage of any active quarterback with at least 15 starts. Should he win another Super Bowl, he will join Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana as the only quarterbacks to win four.

There are reasons to believe New England has a good chance to win a third consecutive championship, among them the fact the Patriots have 18 of 22 starters returning. And, if NFL history is an accurate indicator, the loss of both coordinators might not be a crippling blow. The analysts at FootballOutsiders.com looked at the 35 coordinators who left one team when they were hired to become the head coach of another NFL team -- even though Patriot offensive coordinator Charlie Weis left to become head coach at Notre Dame -- and discovered there was not a significant drop in the production of the old team.

The study showed teams that lost their offensive coordinator scored an average of 22.5 points fewer and gained 189.2 yards fewer over the course of 16 games. Considering the Patriots lost two coordinators, the study said, that amounts to about one more loss this season, not a dramatic demise.

“I think they’re still the team to beat,” said Troy Aikman, the former Dallas quarterback who led the Cowboys to consecutive Super Bowl victories in the 1992 and ’93 seasons before falling short of a three-peat.

But another player intimately familiar with the difficulty of winning three in a row, former Denver guard Mark Schlereth, thinks the Patriots will have a lot of difficulty winning it all this season and that Brady will struggle without Weis.

“What I worry about is a guy like Brady becoming a little bit sloppy with the football, maybe a little less disciplined,” Schlereth said. “I think Brett Favre will tell you his game suffered a bit when Mike Holmgren left.”

Schlereth was a fixture on Denver’s offensive line when the Broncos won titles in the 1997 and ’98 seasons. He was also there when the Broncos started 0-4 in 1999 on their way to a 7-9 finish. So he understands how things can fall apart.

He said several factors can contribute to the unraveling of a championship team, among them:

* Injuries. Because a two-time champion has played a total of two months more football than a team that failed to make the playoffs, the physical odometers of the champions have logged a lot more miles.

* Contract disputes. Champions want to be paid like champions. That’s not always possible in the era of the salary cap. That can lead to holdouts, hurt feelings and more.

* Free agency. Rivals want to be more like the Super Bowl champions, of course, so they try to raid the cupboard. It isn’t just starters who are lured away; backups are coveted too. That can leave a title-winning team lacking depth at some key positions.

* Opportunities. Everyone wants to hear what a champion has to say. Players get their own TV shows, radio shows, book deals. Distractions, distractions, distractions.

For the 1999 Broncos, there was one other rather small factor.

“When John Elway walked out the door and retired, we had a pretty good idea we wouldn’t be winning another one that year,” Schlereth said.

Then, there’s the notion that every opponent on the schedule is gearing up to knock off the reigning champs. Former Pittsburgh lineman Tunch Ilkin, who was a rookie in 1980, the year after the Steelers won consecutive Super Bowls, said the team got special attention everywhere it went. And not necessarily in a good way.

“Opposing fans hated us,” Ilkin said. “There was so much venom everywhere we went.”

Once, while going through one-on-one drills with teammate Dwight White before a game at Cleveland, Ilkin marveled at the obscenities raining down from the stands. When the two finished, Ilkin pulled off his helmet and glared at the offenders.

“It was, ‘Hey, Dwight, you blankety-blank! You blankety-blankety-blank!’ ” Ilkin recalled. “He looks over at me and says, ‘You better keep that helmet on, Rook!’ All of a sudden all this stuff comes flying out of the end-zone seats.”

On the field, those 1980 Steelers didn’t offer much resistance. They finished 9-7, third in the AFC Central, and failed to make the playoffs.

Aikman likes New England’s chances this season. He doesn’t buy into the philosophy that the Patriots are somehow at a disadvantage because every opponent will be gearing up for a showdown against them.

“I do believe that you tend to get teams’ attention a little more if you’ve just won the Super Bowl,” Aikman said. “But I always felt that was to our advantage because none of those teams expected to beat us. So if we came out and got up on them early, I’ve always felt teams said, ‘Well, we weren’t going to beat them anyway,’ and they didn’t wind up giving us their best effort.”

Had the 49ers given their best effort in the 1990 NFC championship game, had they paid closer attention to detail and held onto the ball instead of trying to get too aggressive with a lead, they might have made history. Jones says San Francisco would have beaten Buffalo “by three touchdowns” in that Super Bowl.

Of course, that’s meaningless conjecture now.

A year ago, Jones almost worked up the nerve to pop in that videotape and watch the game.

“Then, the phone rang,” he said. “When I came back, I lost my stomach for it.”

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Three no charm

NFL teams that had a chance to win three straight Super Bowls, as New England does this year, and what happened in the third season:

* Green Bay, 1966-67: Finished 6-7-1 in 1968, third in the Central Division, after coach Vince Lombardi left aging team and went into temporary retirement, and assistant Phil Bengtson took over.

* Miami, 1972-73: Won the AFC East at 11-3, but lost first playoff game to Oakland, 28-26. Raiders lost to Steelers in AFC title game.

* Pittsburgh, 1974-75: Reached AFC title game in 1976 with what owner Dan Rooney calls the best team of that era. Lost, 24-7, to Oakland without several regulars who were injured.

* Pittsburgh, 1978-79: Aging team went 9-7 in 1980, third in AFC Central. Missed playoffs.

* San Francisco, 1988-89: Lost, 15-13, to strong New York Giants team in NFC title game.

* Dallas, 1992-93: Lost NFC title game, 38-28, in San Francisco under Barry Switzer, who took over as coach when Jimmy Johnson left in a dispute with owner Jerry Jones after ’93 title win. Won Super Bowl again after the ’95 season.

* Denver, 1997-98: Finished 6-10 and last in the AFC West in 1999 as John Elway retired and Terrell Davis was lost with a knee injury after rushing for 2008 yards in 1998.

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Games to watch

* Sept. 11, Tennessee at Pittsburgh: Ben Roethlisberger’s rookie year is over; Norm Chow’s is just beginning.

* Sept. 19, Washington at Dallas: Joe Gibbs vs. Bill Parcells is a can’t-miss meeting of the legends.

* Sept. 25, New England at Pittsburgh: Can the Steelers avenge their loss in the 2004 AFC championship game?

* Oct. 3, Green Bay at Carolina: Few teams were hotter than the Panthers in the second half of last season.

* Oct. 9, New England at Atlanta: A potential Super Bowl preview.

* Oct. 16, San Diego at Oakland: Raiders are determined not to let L.T. run all over them again.

* Oct. 23, Green Bay at Minnesota: This annual showdown will help determine the NFC pecking order.

* Oct. 30, Arizona at Dallas: Kurt Warner vs. Drew Bledsoe: Heroes or has-beens?

* Nov. 7, Indianapolis at New England: Peyton Manning gets another chance to prove he can win in Foxboro.

* Nov. 14, Dallas at Philadelphia: Is there a more bitter rivalry in football?

* Nov. 20, Miami at Cleveland: Nick Saban and Romeo Crennel square off in a battle of rookie coaches.

* Nov. 28, Pittsburgh at Indianapolis: Colts are 1-15 against Steelers since 1978. Can Manning reverse that?

* Dec. 4, Denver at Kansas City: If the Chiefs can turn their defense around, they’re a Super Bowl contender.

* Dec. 11, St. Louis at Minnesota: Might need to replace the scoreboard lights after this one.

* Dec. 18, Carolina at New Orleans: It’s December, so Jim Haslett must be fighting to keep his job.

* Dec. 26, New England at New York Jets: If the Jets had a kicker last season, this would have been the matchup in the AFC title game.

* Jan. 1, Seattle at Green Bay: Unless he turns the Seahawks into a legitimate playoff team, Mike Holmgren’s career could end in his old Green Bay haunt.

-- Sam Farmer