Die-nasty

I just saw one of those Internet polls over on AOL about whether the New England Stupid Patriots are a dynasty or not. Most respondents seem to agree that to really be a dynasty, the StuPats would have to win at least one more Super Bowl sometime in the next handful of years, a scenario which can't be ruled out given the team's current salary cap structure (aside from Ty Law, they have no major headaches on the horizon) and their stockpiling of draft picks this year (barring trades, they'll draft seven players in the first four rounds).

The part of the poll that gave me pause was where a big majority -- I didn't write down the numbers, but it's commanding -- assert that the StuPats are "just as good" as the illustrious dynasties of the NFL's past. So, I figured I'd do a little digging into a few numbers, and compare the offensive and defensive rankings of the two New England champions versus the average rankings of the three teams that are dynasties by general agreement: the Steelers of the 1970s, the 49ers of the 80s, and the Cowboys of the early 90s.

(A couple of caveats: for the purposes of the 49ers, I did include their totals from the 1994 team, although I've generally been on the fence as to whether that team should be considered part of the 49ers "dynasty" from the 80s. And generally, I tend to view a dynasty as requiring more than half-a-decade to really be considered "dynastic". The Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years between 1992 and 1995, but after that they were pretty mediocre. The only reason I consider the Bills to be a "lesser dynasty" is because nobody's ever done four conference championships in a row, but they fall in my mind more under "great historical accomplishment", rather than "dynasty".)

OK, here's the table, comparing the average offensive and defensive rankings of the three dynasties and the StuPats, as well as those teams' average margins of victory in their Super Bowls. Decimals have been rounded up, except under margin of victory.

Team	Avg. Offensive Ranking	Avg. Defensive Ranking	Avg. S.B. Victory Margin
Steelers, 1970s	6th	3rd	7.5
49ers, 1980s	5th	5th	19.8
Cowboys, 1990s	4th	7th	20.7
StuPats, 2000s	18th	16th	3

I also searched online for some statistical rankings of the numbers of live chickens sacrificed to Beelzebub by each of these teams, but all I could come up was anecdotal evidence at best. But my regular readers will certainly know my suspicions on that score, right?