Patriots reflect on Super Bowls of the past

CHANDLER, Ariz. - Tom Brady and Vince Wilfork are the only two New England players with Patriots Super Bowl rings. They earned them 10 years ago in Jacksonville, as Eagles fans all too vividly recall.

That 24-21 victory over the Birds brought home the Pats' third championship trophy in 4 years. Yesterday Wilfork, who was a rookie starter at nose tackle that night, acknowledged that he'd figured on having several more rings by now.

"Oh yeah," Wilfork said yesterday, as the Patriots prepared for Sunday's Super Bowl XLIX meeting with the defending champion Seattle Seahawks. "I'm coming from college [Miami] where we won a lot of games . . . I was a national champion in college. My first year in the NFL, winning the Super Bowl, I was like, 'Man, this is easy. I could do this all the time.'

"Little did I know, here I am [10] years later, more excited now than then, that I'm at this level with my teammates."

Though the football world tends to see New England as the establishment and Seattle as an upstart, the Seahawks actually are the guys who have been there, done that. Only 16 Patriots remain from the team that made the most recent of the five Brady-Bill Belichick era Super Bowl appearances before this one, the 21-17 loss to the Giants 3 years ago. Only three - Brady, Wilfork and kicker Stephen Gostkowski - remain from the team that saw its undefeated 2007 season die at the hands (and helmet) of David Tyree and the Giants in Super Bowl XLII.

"A lot of guys are younger guys; you don't really have that veteran team that [Belichick] used to have," Wilfork said.

"Everybody asks me what it feels like to be a Super Bowl champ, and it's something that you can't really put into words," Wilfork said. "It's just the feeling that you have being a world champion, that everybody looks at you as a world champion. Being on that field after the game with your family and friends, the organization, the confetti coming down of your colors, and everything runs across your mind - everything that you worked for the whole year, it finally came to conclusion, you finished where you wanted to finish . . . And I've also been on that other side, where we're walking off the field, and don't like that feeling.

"But I always tell people it's the feeling that you have after being able to win this game, is what you're searching for."

Brady said yesterday he has few distinct memories from Super Bowl XXXIX, in which the Eagles came back to forge a 14-14, third-quarter tie, fell behind again by 10 points in the fourth, then took too much time scoring the TD that set the final score.

"I remember the after-party," Brady volunteered. "It's hard to do, it's hard to win this game."

Sunday, Brady will become the first quarterback to start in six Super Bowls. He was asked yesterday about the first one, following the 2001 season, against the Rams.

"That happened so fast in my life. I didn't quite understand what was going on in that time. I was just a young guy, and [back] then there was only 1 week from the time we won the AFC Championship to the Super Bowl," said Brady, now 37. "You've got to appreciate the opportunity . . . it's hard to do."

As to making six championship starts, Brady said on Media Day that "I never imagined this in my wildest dreams. I loved playing sports growing up . . . to play football in the street with the older boys was fun. To get a chance to play in the Super Bowl, I never thought I'd play in one. So it's pretty unbelievable to play in six."

Patriots running back Shane Vereen was inactive as a rookie for the team's most recent Super Bowl experience. He said Brady and Wilfork "talk about it if you ask them about it, if you're curious" about what it's like to win it all, but otherwise, the focus is, as you'd expect, on this year and this team. "We've got a lot of other guys on this team that are itching for [a ring], dying to get one."

Ivan Fears, the Patriots' running backs coach since 2002, said he remembers winning the title against the Eagles very well.

"I remember [Eagles wide receiver] Terrell Owens coming in and playing" with screws holding his broken ankle together, Fears said. Owens caught nine passes for 122 yards. "What an incredible effort, to get here and to play well."

Fears also recalled Rodney Harrison's two interceptions of Donovan McNabb, the second making the result official, with 10 seconds left.

The 10-year anniversary of the Pats' most recent Super Bowl win hasn't been a huge topic this week - partly because New England is back in Arizona, site of Tyree's catch in the biggest Super Bowl upset since Joe Namath and the Jets.

"I'm not a guy who lives in the past," Gostkowski said yesterday, when asked about that game. "Obviously, you see some highlights and stuff of it, but once the next season started, it was time to move on. I don't regret anything that has happened or hasn't happened. Life throws you some curveballs, and if losing that game was the worst thing that happens in my life, I have a pretty good life. It stunk at the time. It was a heartbreaker, but it's been seven seasons since then . . . I have two kids and a wife and two dogs, and I didn't have any of that 7 years ago. So life has changed a lot since then."

Brady said he wished "that game had ended differently, but we didn't make enough plays that day."

Safety Devin McCourty, 27, one of the best of the ringless Patriots stars, was asked yesterday what it would mean to him to be a Super Bowl champion.

"The exact feeling, I don't know yet," McCourty said. "Hopefully, I get to find out."

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