Uncharted territory: can Tom Brady and the Patriots do what no other team has done and win three straight Super Bowls?

Football Digest, Oct, 2005 by Barry Wilner

MANY HAVE TRIED, ALL HAVE failed. Now it is New England's turn.

The Patriots hardly are the first team in position to capture three straight Super Bowl titles. Since the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first AFL-NFL championship game in 1967, six franchises have won two consecutive titles, with the Pittsburgh Steelers doing it twice. None reached the Super Bowl with a third crown on the line.

Can the Pats do it? And what happened to the other clubs who failed?

First, some history. Actually, a lot of history:

* Green Bay beat Kansas City 35-10 in 1967 and the Oakland Raiders 33-14 in 1968.

* The Miami Dolphins defeated the Washington Redskins 14-7 in 1973, the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 in 1974.

* Pittsburgh downed Minnesota 16-6 in 1975, the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 in 1976.

* The Steelers also took Dallas 35-31 in 1979, then beat the Los Angeles Rams 31-19 in 1980.

* The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 in 1989 and routed the Denver Broncos 55-10 in 1990.

* Dallas took Buffalo 52-17 in 1993 and again beat the Bills, 30-13, in 1994.

* Denver upset Green Bay 31-24 in 1998 and beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-19 in 1999.

* New England outlasted the Carolina Panthers 32-29 and the Philadelphia Eagles 24,21.

Here's a look at the teams that failed in their Threepeat bids:

GREEN BAY

The Packers were approaching the end of their dominance of the NFL when the Super Bowl was created. They'd won the NFL championship in 1961, '62, and '65. With tremendous pressure on them to prove their league was superior to the upstart AFL, the Packers held up their end with their victories over the Chiefs and Raiders.

"The '60s were the time that pro football came of age, with television and the rest of it," Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke said in 1997, when the Packers finally made it back to the big game. "The Packers are what people remember, the mystique of those teams. Lombardi still comes at you--the values of Lombardi, the discipline, the pride you should have in your job. It's something people are always looking for, a universal thing."

But the team was old by '68, and iconic coach Vince Lombardi wanted a break. He stopped coaching after the second Super Bowl, handing the job to assistant Phil Bengtson. Although Lombardi grew antsy in the front office, his return to the sidelines came in Washington, not Green Bay.

Bengston went 20-21-1, the beginning of more than two decades of mediocrity for the Pack.

MIAMI

The Dolphins reached three straight Super Bowls, falling to Dallas in the 1972 game, then winning the next two. With a precision offense led by the conservatism of quarterback Bob Griese and the running of Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Mercury Morris behind a staunch line, Miami could bludgeon most opponents. When the need arose to throw, the Dolphins had Paul Warfield, who, like Griese and Csonka, is in the Hall of Fame.

The No-Name Defense actually featured some terrific names: Nick Buoniconti, Jake Scott, and Dick Anderson. Don Shula, who would become the NFL's winningest coach, was in charge. Then came the World Football League, which threw around money it didn't really have and enticed Csonka, Kiick, and Warfield to leave Miami. The Dolphins couldn't handle the dropoff in talent against such strong opponents as the Steelers and Raiders in the AFC. But one thing only the Dolphins have done is post an unbeaten season, 17-0 in 1972.

"With each year, our accomplishment stands higher and higher," says Warfield. "In 1972, the media attention was significantly less; no one was paying attention to what we were doing. Now as soon as a team wins six games in a row, the media are all over the chance to go undefeated. All of a sudden, each game along the way has a Super Bowl atmosphere. That's why it is a lot harder to do in today's setting."

PITTSBURGH

The Steel Curtain defense and a versatile offense sparked the Steelers to four championships in six seasons. The rosters read like a Hall of Fame scroll: Joe Greene, Mel Blount, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, John Stallworth, Lynn Swann, Mike Webster.

But Pittsburgh could not win three NFL rifles in a row.

Unquestionably the best team in the league in the '74 and '75 seasons, the Steelers were ravaged by injuries in 1976. Their defense played remarkably in a 104 season, allowing only 138 points and posting three straight shutouts and five in the last eight games. But the team had little offensive balance because of injuries to 1,000-yard running backs Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier during the playoffs and lost to Oakland 24-7 for the AFC Championship Game.

"That 1976 team might have been the best Steelers team ever," Lambert says. "We just shut people down, really dominated them. Teams would just give up running the ball against us." Until the Steelers were so worn thin that the Raiders handled them 24-7 for the conference crown.

Pittsburgh was right back at it in 1978 and '79, with the same fearsome defense and a more explosive offensive attack as a more comfortable Bradshaw was given the green light to go deep to Swann and Stallworth. The Steelers beat the Cowboys and Rams for two more Super Bowl championships, then began the Drive For Five--or One For The Thumb, a ring for each finger.