Patriots take full advantage

SUPER BOWL XXXIX: In the two-week run-up to the Super Bowl, Donovan McNabb had made no secret of what he considered the key if his underdog Philadelphia Eagles were to upset the defending world champions.

"If we can eliminate turnovers we have a chance," said the quarterback. This bit of wisdom did not exactly make him Nostradamus, but it did prove prescient. He was intercepted three times, his team-mate LJ Smith lost a fumble, and the New England Patriots took advantage of the miscues to post a 24-21 win to secure their third Vince Lombardi Trophy of the past four years.

New England's triumph in Super Bowl XXXIX immediately unleashed a torrent of "dynasty" talk, not all of which was misplaced. With Sunday night's triumph at Alltel Stadium, the Patriots not only equalled the mark of the Dallas Cowboys, who a decade earlier had won three of four Super Bowls, but in posting their ninth consecutive post-season win they matched the 38-year-old record of Lombardi's Green Bay Packers, whose achievement coincided with the Super Bowl's inception.

Even in victory, the Patriots refused to utter the "D word". "We've never really self-proclaimed ourselves anything," the New England quarterback Tom Brady, who has been at the helm throughout this remarkable run, told the press afterwards, "but if you guys want to say we're great, we'll accept the compliment."

On Sunday night Brady threw touchdown passes to David Givens and the linebacker Mike Vrabel, and 11 of his 23 completions wound up in the arms of the receiver Deion Branch. Branch, whose bountiful evening matched the Super Bowl record of San Francisco's Jerry Rice, was named the game's Most Valuable Player. It was the first time in New England's Super Bowl run that Brady had not been accorded the honour, but this win put him in elite company indeed: only Pittsburgh's Terry Bradshaw, San Francisco's Joe Montana and Dallas's Troy Aikman have led their teams to as many championships.

Brady's composure was remarkable in the circumstances. On Wednesday his grandmother had died. A day later his father, Tom Snr, who had flown back to California to make the arrangements, was himself taken to hospital.

McNabb had hoped to become only the second black starting quarterback to win football's ultimate game, and although he completed 30 of the 51 passes he threw, including touchdowns to Smith, Brian Westbrook and Greg Lewis, he sadly reflected on the balls caught by players wearing white New England jerseys.

The Eagles did score the game's first touchdown in the second period, but who knows where the game might have gone had they been able to get on the board with an earlier drive? A 14-0 lead might have altered the complexion of everything that followed.

For the third time in the Patriots' three wins, an Adam Vinatieri field goal eventually provided the three-point margin of victory. On this occasion Vinatieri did not have to perform any last-minute heroics; it was the other New England kicker who did that. After the punter Josh Miller pinned Philadelphia deep in their own half with 55 seconds left and no time-outs remaining, McNabb's desperation pass was intercepted by Harrison to seal the deal.

"We were too sloppy to win," said the Eagles receiver Terrell Owens, who defied medical advice to play on a still-healing broken leg and caught nine passes for 122 yards. "We made too many mistakes. We could have won and that hurts."