By Kevin Flanagan

BSD Correspondent

A funny thing happened to this Patriots team on the way to the AFC Championship game on Sunday against Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. A club that started preparing for the 2013 campaign in late May/early June with spring OTA’s and an offense that featured two of the top tight ends in the game in Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, and a defense featuring Vince Wilfork and Jarod Mayo has been reconstructed and resurrected right before our eyes.

We all know the story by now, shortly after the training session was over Hernandez was arrested for the shooting death of Odin Lloyd (and possibly two others a year before) and his – for lack of a better term – partner in crime at the tight end position returned from back surgery only to have his right knee blown up as a result of a vicious open field hit from Cleveland Browns’ safety TJ Ward in early December.

The defense didn’t fare any better when Vince Wilfork’s Achilles tendon let loose against Atlanta in late September followed by Jarod Mayo tearing a pectoral muscle a couple weeks later against the Saints.

The Pats weren’t just being pestered by the injury bug, it was consuming them like a hoard of locusts.

When Gronk’s knee exploded many – myself included – declared this team dead, done like dinner. The number of key players gone for the season was too much for this team – or any team for that matter – to overcome. They would be lucky to qualify for the playoffs, never mind win a game. It was simply mathematically impossible to do.

My guess is Bill Belichick was pretty good at math in school. The hoody wearing head coach has taken his lumps for his work as a general manager, but there has never been anyone better at the X’s and O’s to wear a headset on an NFL sideline. What he has done with this team that now sits only hours away from playing for the AFC Championship for the 8th time in 13 years – a record I doubt will ever be matched again – will go down as one of the finest coaching jobs of his long and storied career, if not his best.

There is a feeling surrounding this team that hasn’t been here since a fresh faced kid named Tom Brady stepped on the field at the old Foxboro Stadium for an injured Drew Bledsoe in September of 2001 and went on to win the 1st of 3 Super Bowl titles on the way to becoming perhaps the best quarterback in the history of the game.

The team Brady took over for was not supposed to win. They were not supposed to be that good. They got lucky in the Snow Bowl with the tuck rule. They caught a break against a Pittsburgh Steelers team that was clearly too full of themselves and took them by surprise. They most certainly were no match for the Greatest Show on Turf – the St. Louis Rams – going into the Super Bowl.

But, to steal a line from a native Brocktonian and a victim of that Brady led squad, the late, great Al Davis; all they did was win, baby.

The similarities don’t stop there, either. Much like that ’01 offense, the Pats have gone back to their roots when they have the ball, taking what the defense gives them. They have combined ground and pound with a short passing game to move the ball and score. On defense they have been opportunistic, coming up with big plays at clutch times.

But most of all they have ignored the noise. They have let the talking heads say what they will, let them count them out, preferring to have their voices heard on the gridiron instead of behind a microphone. They are – once again – a team that no one thinks can win, yet they sit just one game away from playing for the Super Bowl.

Utterly amazing.

Maybe they don’t belong. Maybe the big plays by players who were nameless faces starting the season will cease to happen against the Broncos. Maybe the thin air of the mile high atmosphere will take the wind out of their sails and this remarkable ride will come to an end.

Or maybe – just maybe – this plucky group of underdogs led by their coach and quarterback will do the unthinkable and just win, baby.

After watching this team do what it has done this year, anything is possible. And who knows, it might just be déjà vu all over again.