"That’s funny, ever since Spygate they haven’t been able to win."

-- Terrell Suggs

Is he right? 

Well, yes, if winning is defined only as ending the season with the Lombardi Trophy. We can debate if other teams were doing what the Patriots were doing when they were busted in 2007 (and I'm aware the timeline is more than a little tricky and in the minds of many it all started with Matt Walsh in 2001, but we'll use the Mangini whistle-blowing as the divider) and what it all means but the fact is this: Three Super Bowls before Spygate, zero after. Tom Brady had a 12-2 playoff record before Spygate, 5-5 since. 

Since Spygate the Patriots have won their final game of the season once -- a 13-0 victory at Buffalo on December 28, 2008 with Matt Cassel at quarterback. So in that regard Terrell Suggs -- himself never a Super Bowl winner and not the perfect character witness, I'd ask you to Google "Terrell Suggs bleach" for proof -- is exactly right. 

And if you feel the Patriots need to win a Super Bowl to legitimize the legacy of Bill Belichick there is nothing positive that can be taken from the last six years. All the playoff losses and Super Bowl defeats to Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin have only cemented the opinion of the "Belicheat" crowd -- Ravens 28, Patriots 13 is simply more evidence that the 2001, 2033 and 2004 Patriots were largely a product of a system of cheating. Plain and simple in many circles.

And also absurd. What the Patriots have been able to accomplish over the last six seasons hasn't removed Spygate from Belichick's resume -- it will always be the black mark -- but to claim it's the reason for all success is  extreme at best and disingenuous at worst. 

Since the Jets game in 2007 the Patriots have a record of 80-24 (regular season and playoffs), best in the NFL by about 20 lengths. They have won five division titles in six years (the Jets have won 29 fewer regular-season games over the last six years, and that's the second-best record in the AFC East over that span), four AFC title game appearances and two trips to the Super Bowl. Seventeen teams in NFL history have scored more than 500 points in a season and four of those seasons have come from the Patriots since 2007.   

By any reasonable measure it's been a remarkable run. Put it another way: If Bill Belichick were just ending his sixth season as coach of the Patriots and this was his record -- with no whiff of cheating -- all that would be missing for entry to Canton is a Super Bowl. He's basically had two Hall of Fame careers in New England, you could make a real case for his post-Spygate years as Hall of Fame-worthy on their own.

But we arrive again at the problem, right? There has been no Super Bowl. And it's not as if Terrell Suggs is alone on some island here -- there are many in the media (including the greatest sports columnist in the history of this city, Mr. Bob Ryan, who wrote in the Globe last Sunday that Belichick "really, really needs to win a post-Spygate Super Bowl") who are clear about this: Until the Patriots win a Super Bowl again, Bill Belichick's entire tenure with the Patriots is invalidated. 

Now, did Belichick bring plenty of this on himself? Absolutely, and this is where the See No Evil, Hear No Evil wing of the pro-Belichick party lose me. Roger Goodell slapped Belichick and the Patriots $750,000 and a first-round pick for a very real reason -- they cheated and got busted. That will always be part of the Belichick biography and it should be.

But to question his coaching greatness borders on lunacy. Look, if the Patriots fell off a cliff in 2007 and had been just another team over the last six years I'd be inclined to agree, the three Super Bowls would have resembled the 60-homer seasons from Sammy Sosa. But that didn't happen. Just the opposite -- this has been the best franchise in football over the last six years. Tom Brady has been the best quarterback in football over the last six years, running a historically prolific offense. 

To believe that the Patriots need a Super Bowl to lessen the stench of Spygate is to believe that videotaping the Giants would have prevented David Tyree from making that catch. Anyone believe that? How about the throw from Manning to Manningham last year? Does Wes Welker catch that pass from Brady last year if the Patriots are still cheating? 

Now we can play this game forever, and it works on both sides (Tuck Rule, kicks in snow, dropped pass by Drew Bennett helped them win the first three Super Bowls), but the Patriots are probably two plays away from two Super Bowl wins in the post-Spygate era. The Patriots are a better offensive team than the Super Bowl winners -- Brady is better, the skill players are better. The inability to win a Super Bowl, it seems to me, is less about no longer videotaping the practice of opponents and more about failure to replace Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Rodney Harrison, Willie McGinest, Mike Vrabel, Richard Seymour and Asante Samuel. That's the real story, not Spygate.

But until the Patriots win another Super Bowl there will be always be those who believe Spygate is the real reason for the three titles. And in their world Terrell Suggs is right and I'm wrong. There are worse places to be.