Trying to select the top five New England Patriots seasons in the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era is not an easy assignment. Sure you could say that the top four are the seasons in which they won the Super Bowl, but that would not be accurate.
It is more difficult to run the table in the regular season, as the Patriots did in 2007, than it is to win a Super Bowl. You can be a good team that has a great day and win it all. (See Giants, New York). Only really great teams and really great quarterbacks can win week after week for 16 weeks.
The Patriots' legacy, of course, is also complicated by the accusations that they have cheated their way to the top, and there's certainly credence to that. Even if you think Commissioner Roger Goodell was too harsh with his Deflategate penalties that finally came to an end this season when Brady served a four-game suspension, it does not erase other moments in New England's checkered past.
Spygate was real and if you go back and read the May 2008 testimony former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh gave to league officials, you can only come to this conclusion: Belichick and the Patriots are willing to go to great and unsavory lengths to win football games.
And still it's impossible not to admire what they have done.
This season, in fact, has a chance to go down as their greatest of all because of everything they've had to overcome. The Patriots, despite playing their first four games without Brady and two of those games with rookie quarterback Jacoby Brissett, head into Sunday's game at Denver with an 11-2 record, tied with Dallas for the top mark in the NFL.
You have to think they've done it all on the up-and-up given how much scrutiny they must be under from the league, although it does defy logic that Brady is still getting better at the age of 39. The quarterback, in fact, should be the leading candidate for the league MVP award.
Brady has thrown 22 touchdowns and just two interceptions. His 113.6 passer rating is the best in the NFL and his 320 passing yards per game is second in the league and the second best average of his career.
Five of the Patriots' 11 wins have come without superstar Rob Gronkowski on the field and it appears as if he will only play again this season if New England reaches the Super Bowl.
Belichick, 64, also shows no signs of slowing down as a senior citizen. Just consider what the Patriots do with players that other teams did not want.
There are two examples from the Eagles. Patrick Chung looked like one of the worst safeties in football during his one season with the Eagles in 2013. In three seasons since with the Patriots, he has started all but one game and earned high praise as one of the most reliable safeties in the league.
The Eagles had no reservations about trading Eric Rowe for a fourth-round pick before the season and now he has become a starter in New England.
Malcolm Butler, an undrafted cornerback out of West Alabama, is New England's last Super Bowl hero, thanks to his goal-line interception in the Patriots' win over Seattle two seasons ago. He is also now a Pro Bowl player.
LeGarrette Blount, who is having his best season at the age of 30, has found a home in New England after a tainted past in college at Oregon and with three other NFL teams. He leads the NFL with 14 rushing touchdowns.
The Patriots have a history of taking on troubled players and making them into humbled quality contributors. They might just do it again with receiver Michael Floyd, who they claimed off waivers last week. Floyd had been released by Arizona following a DUI arrest in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Thirty other teams, including the receiving-deficient Eagles, passed on a chance to claim Floyd. You have to imagine that they all felt a little apprehensive about their decision once the Patriots claimed him because New England never seems to get those kinds of decisions wrong.
