Coaching, discipline make Pats hard to top in playoffs

	Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is 12-1 in postseason games. Robert Beck/SI
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He had just arrived in America's Finest City, and as Richard Seymour sat in the bus that transported the New England Patriots to their hotel in La Jolla last Friday night, the veteran defensive end felt mighty fine about his team's prospects against the top-seeded San Diego Chargers.

His message: It's the coaching, stupid.

What Seymour actually said was, "We feel like if it's a close game, we've got the advantage. We've been in a lot of situations like this before, and I think we thrive in those situations, because we practice them all the time."

Seymour, the lone Pro Bowl selection on the New England roster, was almost resigned to the fact that the talented Chargers -- whose rookie tackle, Marcus McNeill, became the team's 10th Pro Bowler on Wednesday when he was named an injury replacement -- would jump to a lead in Sunday's divisional playoff game.

"It's a long game," he said. "Anybody can do well early on, but there's something about the heart of a champion in the fourth quarter -- sucking it up, being able to stay cool under pressure, and doing whatever it takes to win a game. We feel that's when we're at our best."

Now, I know what you're thinking, and you're probably correct: I wouldn't be dredging up these quotes from Seymour had I not almost perfectly predicted the outcome, a 24-21 victory that sent the Patriots to Indy for this weekend's AFC Championship game against the Colts. After falling behind 14-3 in the second quarter and 21-13 in the fourth, New England rallied to pull out a game it seemed to have little chance of winning for much of the afternoon.

Surprised? Seymour wasn't, nor was Tom Brady. Nor were those who've been around the NFL long enough to understand the impact that coaching has on the biggest football games of all. And not just the coaching you see on your TV sets, but the very culture of a team as imparted by the man who programs it.

As I tried to explain to so many people in San Diego in the days leading up to the game -- from Chargers long-snapper David Binn as we watched Saturday's Colts-Ravens game at Rocky's in Pacific Beach, to the young wannabe-hipster who treated me to a stirring rendition of Shawne Merriman's "Lights Out" dance while hovering over my table at Sushi Ono in Hillcrest that night -- it's not just about Xs and Os or managing the clock, though Bill Belichick certainly excels in those areas, too.

The bottom line is that Marty Schottenheimer, as much as I like him personally and admire his professional accomplishments, has habitually fielded teams that are either overly tight or devoid of match-tough focus -- or both -- come playoff time. And now that Schottenheimer will officially return to coach the Chargers in 2007, I hope he and his players will do everything in their power to try to reverse that trend.

Conversely Belichick, who has won 12 of his past 13 playoff games and has a chance to capture his fourth Super Bowl in six seasons, has consistently put teams on the field who are bold and engaged when huge games are on the line. Schottenheimer said it himself when I talked to him at the team's facility last Friday: "Those teams he coaches, they play hard and they know exactly what they're doing. They're as technically and fundamentally sound as any team in football, and I think that's how he sustains it, year after year."