Super Bowl 53: Takeaways and lasting impressions
Dante Scarnecchia deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
With all due apologies to Julian Edelman, the Patriot people should be talking about for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is Scarnecchia, not Edelman.
New England’s tough-as-nails slot receiver rightly earned Super Bowl 53 MVP, but now it feels like all the Internet is debating whether or not he’s worthy of getting enshrined in Canton one day. Working for Edelman is his postseason stat card and his penchant for coming up clutch on the game’s grandest stage; working against him is a rather long and rather mediocre regular season track record.
Maybe if the Patriots win another championship in the coming years and Edelman is a major reason why, it will be enough to get him there. Or maybe all it takes is one or two lights-out regular seasons and perhaps a couple Pro Bowl nods. The sheer fact we’re even talking about all this at least means he’s close.
Scarnecchia, on the other hand, should be a shoo-in at this point. Read any piece of sports analysis on ‘Scar,’ and chances are his name and position are prefaced by the word “legendary.” That’s how it always is when discussing Scarnecchia and his impact on this franchise: “legendary Patriots offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia.”
The 70-year-old has been working with New England in some capacity or other since 1982, although he did spend a couple years with the Colts and about three years retired before Belichick lured him back to the team.
In many ways, Scarnecchia as a coach is sort of a microcosm for the Patriots as a franchise in the Brady/Belichick era.
He rarely has much star power on his hands, and most of his players on paper don’t grade out favorably compared to some of their more famous peers around the league. But through an inimitable combination of work ethic, practice, proper coaching, teamwork, and mental toughness, the New England offensive line year after year overperforms and finishes ranked among the NFL’s best.
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In these last playoffs alone, the unit gave up just a single sack – despite facing the three best pass-rushing teams in the league in the Chargers, Chiefs, and Rams. Without Scarnecchia, there are no “Patriots offensive lines” these past two decades; and without those “Patriots offensive lines” the past two decades, there would be no Tom Brady.
That, in and of itself, is reason enough for Scarnecchia to make it into the Hall of Fame.