Model franchise

With 2008 season looming, Patriots still have organizational blueprint

Do your job.

In the Patriots organization, it’s much more than three simple words. It’s on the sign that greets players at the entrance to Gillette Stadium. It’s the constant mantra of coach Bill Belichick, who repeats it over and over to players on the sideline during games. And it’s a phrase that speaks to the heart of New England’s success: Even after its shattering loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII, it’s a large reason why, with the 2008 NFL season set to begin this weekend, the Patriots are a good bet to be the last team standing in February at Super Bowl XLIII.

“We all have an important job on this football team, and we all have to do that job,” Belichick said. “Whoever is coaching the linebackers has to coach the linebackers, whoever is playing left end has to play left end, whoever is the contain guys has to be the contain guys. Everyone has to do their job. That is where it all starts.”

But it’s about much more than what happens on the field. Belichick, owner Bob Kraft and the rest of the Patriots organization have managed to win three Super Bowls in seven years because everyone in the franchise is keenly aware of what they need to do to make the team a success. In short, everyone knows exactly what their job is: The owners make the financial decisions, the football men make the personnel decisions,  and the players play. No one oversteps his boundaries. That rare and delicate balance between ownership, front office, coach and star is the real secret to their sustained success.

It may seem simple, but the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs are the only other pro sports team of the last 10 years that has been able to strike that same harmonious approach between the four most important parts of the organization. Small wonder that the Patriots and the Spurs are part of a mutual admiration society, and are the two most successful sports franchises over the last decade.

“To have sustained excellence over a decade is extremely difficult, and the Spurs have done it as well as anyone,” Patriots GM Scott Pioli told Sports Illustrated. “What is really impressive is their player development, the fact that they’ve brought in so many international players and integrated them into a system.”

But in the NFL, when it comes to sustained success, it’s the Patriots who stand alone.

“Ownership is smart enough to realize that Belichick and Pioli are football-wise people, and they put the football fortunes into the hands of football people,” said Charley Armey, a longtime player personnel man who helped build the St. Louis Rams team that won Super Bowl XXXIV.

“That’s a credit to Robert Kraft, that he’s allowing the football people to function, and that’s why they’ve had so much success. He’s relied and depended on their judgment about players and player moves and roster adjustments and so on and so forth, and it’s paid off for them.”