FOXBORO, Mass. (AP) – The scene was familiar, an annual celebration played out in a dark, chilly parking lot at the home of the New England Patriots.

They were greeted by a passionate crowd when they returned home Monday as Super Bowl champions for the second straight year. Players signed autographs again and fans got another chance to touch the Vince Lombardi trophy.

But there was a difference.

This time, as five buses pulled up with their precious cargo – the silver Super Bowl trophy and the team that won it – a new chant went up from the crowd of about 2,000: “Dy-na-sty, Dy-na-sty, Dy-na-sty.”

Still, there was some reluctance by the Patriots to embrace that description even after they became only the second team to win three Super Bowls in four years when they beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21 Sunday night in Jacksonville.

“Let’s see what happens next year,” owner Robert Kraft said as he struck a pose that is becoming routine – clutching the championship hardware.

His son, team vice chairman Jonathan Kraft, already has found another goal.

“We’re going to take a week off and then we get ready for next year,” he said, “because we want to get three in a row. That’s something that never has been done.”

For now, the Patriots are enjoying this one.

Many players went from their bus to a metal barrier where some fans in the orderly crowd had waited at least four hours.

“This is sort of an exclamation point for what we’ve been doing the last four years,” linebacker Tedy Bruschi said. “I wish I could have stayed out here and had everybody touch (the trophy). It’s theirs just like it is ours.”

Tom Brady didn’t return to Boston’s Logan Airport with his teammates, heading instead to New York where he taped an appearance on Monday night’s “The Late Show with David Letterman.”

“I’ve heard people that have lost Super Bowls say that’s the toughest defeat they’ve ever had,” he said. “Hopefully, we don’t have to experience much of that.”

The audience laughed, then Brady added, “We haven’t yet.”

The team gets another welcome on Tuesday, this time in Boston with a “rolling rally” through city streets fashioned after a similar parade last fall for the World Series champion Boston Red Sox.

The Patriots will ride on a dozen World War II-era amphibious duck boats normally used to haul tourists around Boston. But with the Charles River frozen over, the parade route will stick to the streets and won’t include a trip on the river that was part of the Red Sox rally.

The greeting party at Gillette Stadium was much smaller than last year’s group even though the weather was warmer Monday.

Offensive tackle Matt Light approached the crowd with the Lombardi Trophy but without the white bathrobe with the Super Bowl logo that he wore at last year’s return to keep warm. He quickly donned one.

“Now it’s a tradition,” he said. “If we win a Super Bowl I have to wear a bathrobe. It just doesn’t feel right if I don’t.”

To many of his teammates, each championship is as special as the others.

“We never get tired of this, and never get tired of seeing the fans and making them happy and giving them something to cheer about,” said Troy Brown, who played receiver, defensive back and returned punts against the Eagles.

Receiver Deion Branch, who was named MVP after catching a record-tying 11 passes in the Super Bowl, captured the scene on a video camera.

“We started out shaky, scared a couple of people, but we pulled it off,” he said. “Just to go back-to-back, that’s big, that’s hard.”

And – like the Patriots’ first two Super Bowl championships – just as rewarding to the man who said on Jan. 21, 1994, when he bought the team, “My objective in buying the Patriots is to help bring a championship to New England.”

Little did Robert Kraft know they would deliver three of them.

“It’s like having another beautiful child,” he said. “Each child is special in its own way and I hope we keep having children.”

AP-ES-02-07-05 2157EST