It’s intriguing watching Patriots pursue perfection

The NFL season is less than one-third over, yet it’s already been distilled to one issue, unquestionably the greatest issue that can be raised in pro football.

Can a team go through an entire season undefeated?

The team in question is the New England Patriots, now 6-0, who seem invulnerable. They’ve got the highest-scoring offense in the NFL and have the second-stingiest defense. They’ve got the most prolific quarterback in Tom Brady and the hardest-to-cover wide receiver in Randy Moss, and they resemble (bow your heads) Joe Montana to Jerry Rice.

They went on the road last week and stepped on the Cowboys’ necks at the end of the game as if Dallas were a JV team.

And after it was proved by the NFL that the Patriots had cheated by videotaping opponents’ signals, the Patriots have played as if somebody cheated them, with a vengeance, whipped into a frenzy by the offending party, their coach, Bill Belichick. Having already beaten the Cowboys into submission, the Patriots nonetheless rolled into the end zone with only seconds remaining to score what appeared to be a spiteful touchdown, the kind that leads you to pity the team on the wrong end, even the previously undefeated Cowboys.

It’s a wondrous thing to watch, these Patriots, Brady throwing to Moss, Brady throwing to Wes Welker, Brady throwing to Donte Stallworth. Nobody, until now, has thrown for 21 touchdowns through the first six games of a season. Brady is on pace to throw 56 touchdown passes (Peyton Manning has the record, 49). Brady’s passer rating (128.9) would be an NFL record. His 72.5% completion rate would be an NFL record.

Of course, there’s a difference between greatness and perfection, which is why people become obsessed with any team that looks capable of going undefeated. Just the scores (38-14, 38-14, 38-7, 34-13, 34-17, 48-27) suggest the Patriots are untouchable, to the point that you look at the schedule and ask, “Can anybody beat the Patriots?”

OK, it’s not like pro football doesn’t have this issue pop up every now and then. In fact, every few years, six weeks into the season, there’s a team that opens the discussion.

But nobody ever finishes the job. The Dolphins went 14-0 in 1972, then 3-0 in the postseason. But since the NFL went to a 16-game season in 1978, no team has gone undefeated through the regular season. The Colts went 13-0 in 2005, and wound up losing at home to the Steelers in the playoffs. In 1998, John Elway’s Broncos went 13-0 before losing to the Giants, settled for 14-2 and a Super Bowl championship. The same season the Vikings went 15-1, losing one lousy game by a field goal, then the NFC championship game at home. The franchise has been in a tailspin since.

The 1991 Redskins went 11-0 before losing to the Cowboys and Eagles by a grand total of five points. Then they romped through the postseason for the franchise’s most recent Super Bowl. The ’83 Redskins, at times, looked like these Patriots, which is to say unstoppable offensively. But that team, with Joe Theismann, John Riggins, Art Monk, Darrell Green, the Hogs, the Fun Bunch, etc., is dismissed historically because it was obliterated by the Raiders in the Super Bowl.

The two greatest teams of the Super Bowl era are the 1985 Bears, who went 12-0 before losing to the Dolphins, and the 1989 49ers, who lost two games by a total of five points. Each won the Super Bowl. Those 49ers, created by the late Bill Walsh, who retired before that season, essentially invented offensive football as we know it today. With Montana throwing to Rice, John Taylor, Roger Craig and Tom Rathman, the offense is what the Patriots aspire to be. And the 49ers’ defense, hardly ever talked about, had Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, Keena Turner, Eric Wright, and a young linebacker who hadn’t totally lost his mind yet by the name of Bill Romanowski. The Niners were dreamy good.

And the ’85 Bears were a nightmare, a team that opponents were physically afraid of. Theismann says he can, still today, close his eyes and see the Bears’ front four of Richard Dent, Steve McMichael, the Fridge and Dan Hampton, all coming after him.

So, it’s into this discussion that the Patriots step. They seem to have a 49ers-like offense, and a touch of the Bears’ meanness and ferocity. It’s such a complete team the defending champion Colts, also undefeated, have been reduced to “also starring” on the season’s marquee.

The Nov. 4 game between the Colts and Patriots in Indianapolis probably will determine home-field advantage in the AFC. Tickets at an online site this week were selling for $1,275 to $4,500. The Patriots’ game with the Cowboys attracted more viewers than CBS has had for an NFL game since 1998. The Patriots are the story until they lose -- if they lose.

Belichick dismisses the talk. Brady dismisses it. They all dismiss it. They’ll tell you that the team on deck, the winless Dolphins, are a real threat Sunday down in Miami. Of course, there’s even drama in that matchup because the ’72 Dolphins make their yearly champagne toast whenever the last undefeated team is beaten. The Dolphins took great pleasure in 1985, on “Monday Night Football,” no less, in beating the undefeated Bears themselves. These Dolphins look like a pretty sorry lot, but by Sunday they’ll have heard a week’s worth of comments from the old ring-wearing forefathers about the pride and glory they played with, how this rebuilding season can be remembered, if for nothing else, for stopping the run of what historically has been one of the Dolphins’ most bitter rivals.

No team has ever gone 16-0 in the regular season for the simple reason that it’s too difficult. The bet here is it will prove too difficult for the Patriots too. The fun, nevertheless, is in watching a team that’s talented enough, well coached enough, resourceful enough, even ruthless enough to make us think as October turns to November that perfection is possible.