The Pats didn't have the advantage of playing two less games and a JV schedule....
There's an old adage in sports: You can only beat who you play. Well, the '72 Dolphins beat a bunch of nobodies. None of their opponents reached the playoffs, and only two of them -- the Giants and Chiefs -- finished over .500. Each was 8-6.
The 1972 Dolphins are the only Super Bowl winner since the merger that didn't face a playoff team and the only Super Bowl winner ever that didn't face a team that won nine or more games. It looks like the Patriots will have beaten at least three teams headed for the 2007 playoffs -- the Chargers, Cowboys and Colts, and would have to beat two more: the Steelers and Giants.
What's more, that Dolphins team did not face a quarterback who finished that season with a rating north of 84 (that would have been Norm Snead, not exactly in the prime of his career).
There's something to be said for a team that knows how to win close games, but the Dolphins weren't good enough to blow anybody out in 1972. They beat the 7-7 Vikings by two, the 4-9-1 Bills by one, the 7-7 Jets by four.
And then they sputtered in their first two postseason games, overcoming a 14-13 fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Cleveland Browns, whose quarterback was the one and only Mike Phipps. That year, the Browns scored the fewest points of any playoff team. Phipps completed a lowly 47.2 percent of his passes during the '72 season