As Mike Reiss of ESPN reported earlier this week, Dion Lewis joined Julian Edelman and Doug Flutie as the only Patriots ever to win both AFC Special Teams Player of the Week and Offensive Player of the Week honors.

His 153-yard, two touchdown performance against the Bills made him AFC Offensive Player of the Week. Just six weeks earlier his 103-yard kick return earned him AFC Special Teams Player of the Week.

Dion Lewis + three-down workload + Pats league-best o-line in adjusted line yards = fantasy gold pic.twitter.com/Zqqtbsln1r

— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) December 28, 2017

Edelman was AFC Offensive Player of the Week for his performance in week 17 last year at Miami. He twice earned AFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors – in 2011 and 2014.

It took Flutie 17 years.

Offensive Player of the Week

He was the Offensive Player of the Week in week five of 1988 for a four-touchdown performance against his former team, the Chicago Bears, in a 30-7 Patriots victory.

It’s hard to imagine a game like this one taking place in 2017. The Patriots ran the ball 54 times for 185 yards against a Bears defense that had only been giving up 66 yards a game on the ground. Flutie threw only 18 times, and 12 of those fell incomplete.

He completed only six passes.

But four of those passes went for touchdowns. There was an 80-yard strike to Irving Fryar in the first quarter. The second quarter saw two touchdown passes to Lin (not Len) Dawson. A fourth-quarter connection to Stanley Morgan gave Flutie his 4th TD pass of the afternoon. (In a fact that may interest only me, Dawson is now the Athletics Director at Clark Atlanta University.)

After the game, Flutie said, “I think this was my biggest victory as a professional. We played against the best defense in the league and put 30 points on the board. Which means we didn`t do much wrong.”

Bears coach Mike Ditka remarked, “There’s not much you can say about a debacle like that. It’s the worst game for the Bears since I’ve been around.”

Special Teams Player of the Week

The Special Teams Player of the Week came for one play, in a meaningless last game of the season against the Dolphins on New Year’s Day, 2006. But it was a historically significant play – the first successful drop kick completed in an NFL game since 1941.

(2006) Doug Flutie pulls off a “drop kick” for the 2-point conversion. pic.twitter.com/hnpLe6FTth

— Timeless Sports (@timelesssports_) September 2, 2017

Bill Belichick told ESPN after the game, “I think Doug deserves it. He is a guy that adds a lot to this game of football, has added a lot through his great career — running, passing and now kicking. “He’s got a skill and we got a chance to let him use it, and I am happy for him. First time since ’41. It might be 60 years again, too.”

As the story goes, Chris Berman had seen Flutie drop kick previously. Berman told Belichick. The coach called Flutie into his office and asked if he thought he could do it.

As it turned out, Flutie could, and the rest is history.

And really, any chance we can get to use the words Doug Flutie drop kick is one we’re going to take.

Dion Lewis image by Jeffrey Beall – Own work, CC BY 4.0, Link