Bill Belichick: NFL Schedule-Makers Didn't Give Patriots A Chance In 2001
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Bill Belichick not only has encyclopedic knowledge of the sport of football. He's also got a memory like an elephant.
Whether it's stories of his days with the Giants in the '80s or even some of his first years in the NFL in the '70s, Belichick can often recall specific plays from specific games that otherwise may have been forgotten by just about everybody involved.
And so it was no surprise when Belichick reflected on the 2001 Super Bowl-winning Patriots team that was honored on Sunday, Belichick recalled a certain quirk of the schedule from 15 years ago.
"I still think it's pretty interesting how the NFL schedule gave us a bye the last week of the season," Belichick said after Sunday's win over the Rams. "Like, 'You guys will be out of it, so you can go ahead and start your vacation early. Go ahead on home.' So I think that certainly surprised the schedule-makers. Of course, we ended up having to play [in Week 17] because the 9/11 game got postponed with Carolina in Week 2. But when the schedule came out we saw that our bye was the last week of the season. [Laughs] I think we surely, we didn't follow along to the script that they had written for us. But that's all right.
Indeed, the Patriots were scheduled for a Week 17 bye in 2001. It ended up being a Week 16 bye, when all of the Week 2 NFL games were postponed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. That postponement pushed the Patriots' game in Carolina to Week 17.
The impact of the scheduling change on the Patriots was immense. Drew Bledsoe was injured in the team's first game after the postponement, opening the door for Tom Brady. The second-year quarterback led the team to a 10-2 record the rest of the way en route to a Super Bowl the following February. The team would go on to win three more championships, and Brady just earned his 201st career victory on Sunday.
Clearly, Belichick perceived the scheduling quirk as a slight against his team. And he's never forgotten it.
