For a historic football game, the New England Patriots’ 24-10 victory over the Miami Dolphins yesterday was pretty unexciting. The Patriots won their 19th consecutive game to break the record of the 1972-73 Dolphins, the 1933-34 Bears, the 1989-90 Niners, and 1997-98 Broncos, offering yet another indication of how businesslike the New England machine has become.

As CBS color man Dan Dierdorf put it midway through the third quarter, “If this game was the Super Bowl, you’d have the feeling that New England would have put it away by now.” Actually, you had that feeling at halftime, when the score was only 17-7.

The Patriots have followed the classic pattern for success in the NFL by eliminating mental mistakes and scoring early through the air.

The Patriots follow the classic pattern for success in the National Football League: Their philosophy, as established by head coach Bill Belichick, is to eliminate stupid mistakes, take the offensive early through the air, and make their opponent pass to catch-up. They had fewer first-quarter rushes last season than any team in their conference, which means they were passing early and running late.

The popular wisdom is that the Dolphins, who have scored just three touchdowns in their first five games, have had trouble generating an offense because of Ricky Williams’s departure. But the Patriots demonstrate every week how to score points without an All-Pro candidate like Williams. Corey Dillon, acquired this past summer, might be their first, though not if the Patriots keep giving him just 16 carries per game.

Neither team ran the ball particularly well yesterday: Miami had just 44 yards on 14 carries at the half, while New England had 60 yards on 20 tries. But the Pats finished with 138 yards rushing to 67 for the Dolphins, who were able to run the ball a meager 12 times in final two periods. In other words, both teams were running at about the same level of effectiveness; it was just that the Pats got more opportunities to run the ball because they jumped out to an early lead and took fewer penalties on offense, which left them with fewer third-and-longs.

Tom Brady also fared much better early in the game than his hapless Miami counterpart, Jay Fiedler, who was 4-of-11 for 40 yards in the first half. Brady wasn’t needed much in the first half, going just 7-of-15 for 76 yards with two short TD passes and one interception, but his performance was enough to give the Pats a 10-point lead.

In the second half, Brady threw just two passes, both incomplete, and spent the better part of the third and fourth quarters handing off to the Patriots’ collection of running backs. Leading 24-7 early in the third after a cheap touchdown set up by a Miami fumble, the Patriots had the luxury of keeping the ball on the ground and not taking any risks while running the clock down, while Miami passed and passed in a furious attempt to catch up.

Brady’s gaudy stats in the Super Bowl (32 completions for 354 yards and 3 touchdowns, earning him the MVP award) were wildly untypical of his average game. He was 16th in passer’s rating last season, right around the league average, which is not particularly impressive considering the level of support he gets from the rest of the team. He seldom throws over 30 passes a game and this season is averaging fewer than 20.

What Belichick wants in a quarterback, though, Brady has in abundance. He’s mobile enough to avoid big hits, strong enough to take one, and cool enough to stay within the game plan – he has been intercepted 15 times in his last 621 throws. In terms of effectiveness, he very much resembles the quarterback whose team’s record he has just broken, Bob Griese of the Shula-era Dolphins.

Brady was successful against the Dolphins yesterday despite having to make do with three of his top four targets (Deion Branch, Troy Brown, and Bethel Johnson) out of the lineup. The team was little handicapped as David Givens, no. 4 on the wide receiver depth chart, hauled in four receptions and a touchdown; Dave Patten, no. 5 on the chart, had Pats’ longest reception, 28 yards.

The Pats’ substitutes are as good as most team’s starters – or rather, they are chosen carefully to play specific roles so that the players they replace aren’t missed. When a player is expendable, like former starting running back Antowain Smith, the Patriots acquire somebody as good or better; in this case Corey Dillon, who was stuck with the Cincinnati Bengals for seven years.

While the team boasts no superstars – and, so far at least, no superstar salaries to soak up salary cap money – among the NFL champions, everybody is good, and the players are chosen as much for their coach ability as for their talent.

A few years ago, everyone was proclaiming the end of the dynasty in the NFL, but the Patriots are right on the verge of establishing a dynasty the equal of the Walsh-Seifert ’49ers, the Johnson-Switzer Cowboys, or even the Chuck Noll Steelers, who won four Super Bowls between the 1974-1979 seasons.

They’ve done it through a mix of shrewd coaching, adroit use of the draft (they picked up two starters in each of the last four drafts), timely trades, and, of course, luck. As Branch Rickey once pointed out, luck is the residue of design, and right now, the New England Patriots have the best design in pro football.