He hasn’t had to face them, or devise a game plan to beat them. That’s just fine with Wally Buono, because it’s allowed him to sit back and admire from a distance what the New England Patriots will try to accomplish by beating the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII.

Like anyone with football coursing through his veins, the head coach and general manager of the B.C. Lions shares the Patriots’ passion for and pursuit of perfection. If the Patriots are victorious on Sunday (February 3) in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, not only will they be Super Bowl champions but they will have capped off the greatest year in National Football League history by mowing down all 16 regular-season opponents and three more in the playoffs.

“I think if you’re in the business, first of all, you realize how difficult it is to have a winning streak, period—never mind to run 19 games in a row,” Buono tells the Straight by telephone from his Surrey office. “It’s just hard to imagine getting that many people to be onside and on the same page that many times in a row.”

Here, Buono speaks from experience. Just two-and-a-half years ago, his B.C. Lions roared out of the gates with 11 straight victories to open the 2005 Canadian Football League season. As the wins increased, so did the talk about a “perfect” season on this side of the border. But the dream season became a nightmare, with Buono’s Lions losing seven of their final eight games, including the western final in front of their home fans.

Looking back now, Buono concedes that there were times when talk of the team’s record overshadowed how it was going about its business on the field. He’s sure that the Patriots, with more wins and having soaked up far more media attention on their streak, had to deal with the same things this year.

“I guess the only time it becomes a distraction is when you hear, ‘Oh, just go and lose a game so you can get it over with,’ ” Buono says. “That becomes an issue, because you have to decide whether you dwell on it or whether that’s a cop-out because you don’t want to prepare that week or you don’t want to sacrifice that week. But you get to the point where the Patriots are at, where nobody wants to let anybody down, so everybody’s going to work that much harder to make sure the streak continues.”

But it’s professional sports: a bad bounce, a bad call, or just one mistake at the wrong time can lead to defeat. Amazingly, the Patriots haven’t allowed any of that to bring them down. And in a sport where a team’s opponent has a week to prepare and pore over game films to find weaknesses, no one has been able to poke a hole in the Patriots.

The latter, more than anything else, is what stands out to Buono about New England’s season. “The fact everybody’s out to get them. It’s hard to imagine that when a team plays the Patriots that they’re not up for them,” he says. “So, psychologically, that has to be a tough thing to deal with, that they’re a marked team every week. Plus the fact that you know down deep at some point you’re going to have a bad day and when is that going to be?”

That’s not been often this season, and hardly anyone is expecting it to happen on the game’s grandest stage, especially against a team the Patriots beat just a month ago. Buono has been impressed when the Patriots are firing on all cylinders, but even more so when they’re not.

“I think it’s more impressive when they’re able to win and they’re not on their best. I think when [Tom] Brady goes 24 for 26 or 26 for 28, I think it’s understandable to see why they’ve won,” he says. “But when he’s not on, or he’s missing throws or all of a sudden he’s got a few turnovers, that’s when I think it’s the toughest, and that’s when you have to really be impressed with how they adapt and how they deal with it.”

The 1972 Miami Dolphins went 17-0 to set the standard of perfection in pro football. But Buono knows how much the game has changed in the past 36 years, and he believes that what’s happening now is a more impressive run.

“What the Patriots are doing today is phenomenal, really, when you consider the travel, the quality of teams they’re playing, and the fact that they’re doing it in the playoffs right now,” he says. “I don’t want to take anything away from the 1972 Dolphins, because that was a tremendous feat. But in today’s world, with travel and all the other things that go on, and with all the other great players and other great coaches, as a sports fan you should make sure you watch every time they play.”

Buono has tried to do just that, despite being busy negotiating player contracts, planning for the upcoming college draft, and starting preparations for the Lions’ training camp.

“When I was in Hawaii on vacation [in December], I think it was their 15th game, and it wasn’t shown out there and I was so disappointed because I had waited all week just to see the game just to see them play,” he says. “I was flicking channels back and forth and they didn’t show the game and I was very disappointed. Why? Because this is not something that we’ll see next year or probably might not for another 50 years. Whether you’re a Patriots fan or not, or whether you like Tom Brady or not, I just can’t imagine that you’re not excited about what’s going on.”

The Lions coach is not alone. A stadium full of people and hundreds of millions more around the world will watch the Patriots’ every move to see if they can clear the final hurdle on their path to perfection. Buono hopes they succeed, because it will give the B.C. Lions something to shoot for when they kick off their 2008 season in June.

Jeff Paterson is a sportscaster and talk-show host on Vancouver’s all-sports radio, Team 1040.