Deflategate will leave lasting impact on Patriots' legacy

CHANDLER, Ariz. - And so there they stood, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, the NFL's iconic duo, the symbol of success in the free-agency era, models of consistency and innovation and unquestioned football brilliance.

There they stood on a stage at a dais and waxed eloquent on their 15 years of shared success with New England, how they have grown as fathers and tacticians, how they better appreciate now what they often assumed in the past.

There they stood, benefactors of the two most remarkable cheating scandals in American professional sports history.

Not the worst scandals; just the most remarkable. They didn't fix games and they didn't take dives.

But they cheated.

Whether or not they win a fourth Super Bowl in six tries on Sunday, each title, each Super Bowl run will be tainted by their pathological impulse to cross a very visible line of fairness.

And that is nothing if not sad.

Their legacy is not undeserved, and maybe a bit unjust. Other teams skirt the line in other ways. They have to.

This is sad because, simply, the Patriots have been much too good to need to cheat.

Belichick and Brady have been surrounded by exceptional players and coaches: Richard Seymour and Lawyer Milloy and Vince Wilfork; Logan Mankins and Matt Light; Bill O'Brien, Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini.

Belichick and Brady have been a paragon of stability in an unprecedented era of transition in the NFL.

For instance, since 2009, the Eagles have designated four quarterbacks as starters and are in the midst of a fourth administrative upheaval. Yesterday, they announced the promotion of Ed Marynowitz to player personnel chief; this, after weeks of being spurned by a legion of personnel men who abhorred the specter of working for a second-year NFL coach, Chip Kelly, who now leads owner Jeffrey Lurie around by the nose.

The Eagles have won zero playoff games since 2009.

The Eagles once were stable, too. They even made it to the Super Bowl after the 2004 season, where the Patriots beat them.

Eventually, the Patriots became knee-deep in Spygate, a scandal in which they taped the Jets' signals on the sideline during a game. They did so after the league had explicitly warned teams to not do it. They were caught in 2007.

Any success before 2007 came under suspicion.

Now, any success that predates the recent AFC Championship Game exists under an identical cloud.

There is evidence that the Patriots used underinflated footballs in only one half of one game. There can be every supposition that the Patriots used underinflated football in every other half of every other game in which Brady played. Ever.

The question isn't that the Patriots illegally filmed other teams or deflated footballs; the question is, if they got caught doing this stuff, what else have they done all along?

A sad reality, that; because, as one league executive here said, "They didn't need to to it, because they were so good, anyway."

The NFL learned of Spygate from Mangini, then the Jets' head coach and a former Patriots assistant. The NFL learned about the deflated footballs, at least according to one report, from John Harbaugh, the Ravens' head coach who lost at New England 3 weeks ago.

How egregious must the cheating be - how massive the advantage gained - that NFL head coaches would act as whistle-blowers . . . and thereby burn precious bridges they might need in their future careers?

Sure, Harbaugh was miffed that Belichick used unusual alignments and bent the rules to his advantage during their divisional playoff game. But while using unusual alignments might be deceptive, it also is clever; and, most important, it is legal.

Altering equipment is not.

Frantic defenders of the Patriots will claim that other teams are jealous, but no one is jealous.

Validated success commands respect in the NFL more than in any other league. The best team with the best players and coaches almost always wins.

No, no one is jealous. Just disappointed.

Disappointed, considering all the Patriots have accomplished.

They have lost good players in their prime. They have overcome major controversy - former tight end Aaron Hernandez is on trial for a murder that was committed while he was a Patriot. Brady lost 2008 to a knee injury, which brought home to him the privilege that is playing pro football:

"Now, even when we lose, every time I walk off the field, I say, 'At least I can play next week.' "

Sadly, though, their legacy will not be their resilience, or their consistency, or their success.

It will be their misdeeds, and the arrogance with which they acted.

That is why there is no sympathy. That is why there is so much outrage.

Dynasties generate respect, not jealousy. People don't despise the Steelers or Cowboys in quite this manner. People respect greatness.

Nobody respects a cheater.

Minimize either event if you like, but the league sees incidents such as these as threats to the game's integrity.

In a season marred by much graver issues - domestic violence, child abuse, the murder trial - Deflategate sounds like a punch line.

The league isn't laughing.

An investigation continues, but the relevant fact is this: Eleven of the Patriots' 12 balls were deflated past the limit, and none of the Colts' footballs was illegal.

Period.

Even the Patriots do not dispute this fact.

How the balls became deflated is irrelevant. Belichick can try to manipulate the science however he likes - a disastrous public-relations charade far beneath him, by the way - but the Patriots' balls were illegal, and that's that.

That is the legacy of 2014; perhaps, the legacy of the last 15 years.

That's sad.

Consider the Patriots' remarkable achievements in an era of salary-cap stricture.

They were perfect through 18 games, and only a miracle catch kept them from joining the 1972 Dolphins. They have won with Seymour as their best player and with Brady as their best player, and they have gotten here with Randy Moss as their best player.

They have absorbed problem players such as Moss and Corey Dillon, and still they won and won and won.

They have found productive roles for the most marginal: Consider safety Patrick Chung, a disaster in Philadelphia a year ago, now a starter with an extended contract in New England.

They have done it with a revolving door at running back; Sam Cunningham, Randall's big brother who gained most of his 5,453 yards in the 1970s, remains the franchise's leading rusher.

But have they done it fairly?

The pomposity with which owner Robert Kraft, Belichick and Brady dismissed the severity of this latest violation only increases the public's ridicule and the league's anger. They refuse to acknowledge that, in the wake of Spygate, any impropriety the Patriots commit will be magnified beyond its real scope.

The real scope of Deflategate is massive, and its effect devastating.

The only true NFL dynasty constructed during the era of free agency is built not on Belichick and Brady, pillars of football brilliance and genius, but rather on pillars of sand.

On Twitter: @inkstainedretch

Blog: ph.ly/DNL