While Connecticut has divided football loyalties, it is part of New England. And New England is again celebrating the victory of its team, the Patriots, in Super Bowl LI.

The success of the Patriots franchise over the past two decades is unprecedented in the history of the National Football League. There have been other dynasties. But no team has stayed at or near the top for this long.

Starting with its first Super Bowl victory in 2002, following the 2001 season, New England has been in the playoffs 14 times, reached the American Football Conference championship game 11 times, including the last six AFC title games (a record) and has appeared in the Super Bowl seven times, winning five Vince Lombardi Trophies.

This is more impressive because it has come during the era of free agency, which allows players to move from team to team in pursuit of the most lucrative and secure contracts. It’s difficult to hold a successful team together.

New England is no exception. As they do on any team, players have turned over year to year. Twenty-eight of the 53 players who suited up for the Patriots in Sunday’s victory in Houston were not on the Patriots team that won the championship just two years ago in Tempe, Ariz.

The constants have been team owner Robert Kraft, Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, a physical marvel at the top of his game at age 39 and a now record-holding four-time Super Bowl MVP.

Kraft picked the right coach and has given Belichick broad authority in managing the team. Season after season, Belichick gets his players to buy into a team-first mentality, stressing team success over individual statistics. Players who don’t buy in, even very good ones, are traded for future draft picks.

Belichick values players with skills that he can use in multiple ways, and who have the smarts to adjust to game plans that change week to week in response to the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses. The 64-year-old coach, who has been coaching in the NFL for 42 years, has taken many a player who achieved little on other teams, or who were considered too small or slow for their positions, and made them integral parts of the Patriots.

No personnel decision was more important than selecting Brady, a part-time starter from the University of Michigan, in the sixth round of the 2000 draft. If Belichick had fully recognized Brady’s potential, he would have drafted him much earlier. But give the coach credit for keeping Brady on the team in 2000 by carrying four quarterbacks, a highly unusual move. When in 2001 Brady replaced an injured Drew Bledsoe, a big star in his own right, Belichick took the controversial but correct step to place Bledsoe on the bench when he returned to the roster, sticking with Brady.

There have been Giants disappointments. Those two Super Bowl losses came at the hands of the New York Giants, Connecticut’s other team (oh, there are a few New York Jets fans). The 2008 Super Bowl, tainting what would have been an undefeated season, was particularly painful for the Patriots and their fans.

And there have been controversies. The videotaping of play-calling signals by other coaches led to Belichick being fined $500,000 by the league, while the team lost a first-round pick in the 2008 draft. In the 2014 playoffs, the league accused the Patriots of letting the pressure out of the game balls to improve grip, a charge the team and Brady deny. That led to an extensive court battle and Brady’s suspension for four games, served at the start of this season.

The punishment motivated a Patriots team that achieved a gaudy 17-2 record. Sunday’s victory proved the most improbable. Trailing the Atlanta Falcons 28-3 in the third quarter, New England completed the greatest fourth-quarter comeback in NFL playoff history, scoring a 34-28 overtime victory.

Fittingly, making the greatest play was the quintessential Patriots player, receiver Julian Edelman. Officially listed six-foot tall, but seemingly smaller, the Patriots selected Edelman, a quarterback out of Kent State, in the last round of the 2009 draft, knowing he would never play that position in the NFL.

Belichick converted him to a receiver. He has proved to be a very good one. On Sunday, fighting for the ball with three Falcon defenders, Edelman made an improbable, bobbling catch with the ball an inch from the turf. Without it, the Patriots perhaps do not complete the comeback.

But he did. And they did. And the legacy grows.