GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Patriots learned on Super Bowl Sunday what they seemed to have forgotten — don’t get ahead of yourself.

Don’t plan a victory parade before the victory. Don’t have your lawyers filing papers two weeks before the Super Bowl to trademark “19-0” and “19-0 The Perfect Season” before you actually are 19-0 and have concluded a perfect season. Don’t pile on inferior opponents until you have humiliated them because, one day, you may find yourself on the wrong end of such a humiliation. And don’t forget what made you great was that you never acted like you thought you were great.

The franchise that once seemed to define the idea of selflessness, humility and class somehow seemed to have lost its way on the road to perfection this year, and the result was that the nation began to hate them. Of the 97 million people who watched Super Bowl XLII, it’s safe to say most were rooting for the underdog Giants to do just what they did, which was to slap around the Patriots by beating them down on the field and up on the scoreboard. 

The Giants’ 17-14 victory was an eerie role reversal that echoed the start of the Patriots’ Super Bowl run when, in Super Bowl XXXVI, they upset a brilliant passing team not unlike what they have become. That night, the Patriots upset the 14-point favorite Rams. Six Super Bowls later, what went around came around, and they were undressed by a 12-point underdog few believed could keep the game close.

That loss proved once again that nobody’s perfect, except the 1972 Dolphins. It ended the debate that the Patriots might be the greatest NFL team or dynasty of all time. New England won three Super Bowls in seven years. The Steelers and 49ers won four but, more importantly for dynasty purposes, didn’t lose any. At 3-1, you can’t call yourself better than someone who’s 4-0. And at 18-1, you can’t call yourself better than someone who went 17-0. You can, I suppose, but what do you trademark then, “18-1 ’Cause We Didn’t Get It Done”? 

Bill Belichick

The game was over, but one second remained on the clock. The rules state that if there is time left on a dead ball or change of possession, a final play must be run, even if it is meaningless. Belichick ignored the rules, which is apparently not a first for him.

When he realized what he had done, as the game officials tried to restore order and get the teams lined up for what everyone knew would be a kneel-down by Giants QB Eli Manning, Belichick turned and stalked off the field, pushing a referee aside as he fled the scene. Maybe those officials hadn’t heard, but the rules don’t apply to Bill Belichick. Apparently, neither do the traditions of a game he professes to love. A coach does not abandon his team before the final gun. But he did.

Character, or lack of the same, is often revealed most clearly by how one reacts to defeat. Certainly this was a bitter defeat, the depths of which cannot really be understood by anyone but the people who experienced it. Weeks ago, owner Robert Kraft, speaking like the fan he used to be, said if they did not win the Super Bowl, the year would be a failure. If it’s a failure to go 18-1 and lose the Super Bowl in the final 35 seconds, then what sports is supposed to be all about needs to be redefined.

The Patriots’ season may have ended in defeat, but it was no failure. What happened on Super Sunday was that one gallant team was beaten, barely, by another. The Giants did what Belichick had so often said his team had done. They made a few more plays. Not many, but enough to win. So be it.

As for the not-quite-perfect Patriots, all that happened to them was that they lost the last game of the season. They didn’t lose the “ultimate game” because, as Duane Thomas once said, “Then why are they playing it next year?” All that happened was, in stirring fashion, one of the greatest teams ever assembled was beaten by an underdog that believed fiercely in itself and executed that way. In this case, it executed the Patriots to prove its point.

Yes, the peerless Patriots lost the biggest game of the season, but they struggled and fought and gave football fans no end of thrills and excitement right to the final second. They were not perfect in the end, but maybe that was a reminder we all could use.

Perfect? Who is?

The Patriots lost in the Arizona desert because the Giants played better than they did. Not a lot better. Just enough better to leave with a big trophy and big ups from the football world. That’s all that happened. It doesn’t mean New England hadn’t assembled one of the greatest teams to ever play the game. That’s what the 19-0 Patriots would have been, and it’s what the 18-1 Patriots are. Maybe not as great as some of them thought they were, but great enough to be admired.

Just because you don’t win the last game doesn’t mean all the games that preceded it are meaningless. It doesn’t mean your season is a failure or you are failures just because someone else made a few more plays than you did. People who come to that kind of conclusion need help, and not from a football team.

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