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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

Patriots look for perfection

PHOENIX – Routed. Romped. Annihilated.\nThese are all common descriptions for the way the New England Patriots handled the first half of their 2007 schedule,\nnot to mention dismantled, demolished and pulverized.\nBut in the season’s second half, those words were replaced by squeezed past, edged, even survived in five subsequent games, plus two close, if not suspenseful, playoff victories.\nSure, the Patriots are the only 18-0 team in NFL history, and a win over the New York Giants in the Super Bowl on Sunday will give them the first perfect season since the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and a fair claim on “Best Team Ever.”\nBut they sure haven’t been accused of piling on the points lately. Even some of the weaker opponents on the second-half schedule tested them, most notably the Ravens. New England needed a last-ditch drive aided by Baltimore penalties, and a dying-seconds touchdown pass by Tom Brady to win 27-24 early last month.\n“The one real scare where I thought it might have been over was Baltimore,” defensive end Ty Warren said. “Those couple of penalties that happened, I was like, ‘Here we go again.’ I felt like we had a chance after those penalties. With those penalties, they let us back in the game. It gave you a chance to go down and do what we did.”\nBut they didn’t have to do much of anything except run out the clock with their backups for so many games on the way to 10-0. Such as victory margins of 24, 24, 31, 21, 17, 21, 21, 45 and 46.\nSo what happened to the routs? Why have opponents led the mighty Pats in each of their last three games, including the Giants by 12 points in the third quarter of the season finale? And both the Jaguars and Chargers in the playoffs?\n“We can’t control who we play or who is on our schedule,” veteran safety Rodney Harrison said. “We go out there and try to win a football game. At first it was, ‘You guys are putting up too many points.’ Now, it’s come around where we are only winning games by three points, and you guys started complaining about that. We are just happy to be here.”\nStill, for a team with a whopping zero on the right side of the win-loss column, the Patriots have displayed certain vulnerabilities recently.\nThe Giants exposed the defense somewhat in that 38-35 loss to end the season. The Chargers showed that a physical approach at least gives an opponent a chance, and they also forced league MVP Tom Brady into some poor decisions and three interceptions.\nNot to mention spraining \nhis ankle.\nBrady practiced Monday and has no doubt he’ll play Sunday. The Giants have no doubt they can play with the Patriots — and avoid all those descriptive verbs applied to those early-season romps.\n“You know they are here to make history and for us to be the first team to beat them ... I think it would be one of the most entertaining games and the best scenarios you could have for a Super Bowl,” Giants receiver Amani Toomer said. “I thought we felt we could beat them in Week 17, so this is a chance to reassure the fact that if we cut down on the mistakes in the fourth quarter, we’ll have a great chance to win. But that game is dead. We have another game to play, and hopefully, we’ll keep the same type of fire and be able to compete the same way.”\nThat’s exactly what it will take, of course, to beat the unbeaten.

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