The Patriots, like the Cowboys, are one of those teams that just seem to have very "tainted" success. Not really earning their wins in conventional, "legal" means, but at times clearly cheating to get by.
The Patriots, remember, benefitted from the "snow-plow" incident, a very "home-field" advantage that gave the Pats kicker a clean surface to kick a game-winning field goal in a snow storm. And any Raider fan worth his jockstrap must remember the famous "tuck" rule that awarded the most tainted playoff victory of all time to New England. The following season, it was absolutely hilarious to watch the refs trying to implement THAT weird ruling in regular season games sensibly. They finally had to give up and now, oddly, we never hear that rule being implemented any longer.